Almuth Tebbenhoff is inspired by process and particularly enjoys the way objects of beauty and intrigue can emerge from a noisy session cutting and welding steel, or from a quieter but no less messy afternoon pushing and pummelling wet clay.
Born in Fürstenau in north-west Germany, Tebbenhoff moved to England in 1969 where she studied ceramics at the Sir John Cass School of Art from 1972 to 1975. Following that, she set up a studio in London and for the next six years made studio ceramics while she developed her ideas for sculpture.
In 1981, Almuth established her Southfields studio in a former church hall. At first she worked in clay and wood but in 1986 she started a two-year course in metal fabrication at South Thames College, London. Her early pieces were monochrome - mostly grey - abstract explorations of space and volume through geometric devices. Since the early nineties, Tebbenhoff has been moving towards a freer mode of expression, creating explosive forms in bright colours through a steady evolution of processes, investigating her current themes of light, space and the origins of matter. Recently, after receiving the Fondazione Sem Scholarship, Tebbenhoff has been exploring with working with marble in Pietrasanta, Italy.
Tebbenhoff is a Fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors and has exhibited widely in Britain and Europe. In 2009 she created the ‘Star of London’ award for the BFI Film Festival and in 2013 curated the annual sculpture exhibition at the University of Leicester and was awarded an honorary doctorate. In 2019, she was elected as Vice President of the Royal Society of Sculptors. Her work The RedHead Sunset Stack is currently on display in the Sculpture in the City urban sculpture park, showing until Spring 2022.