Kiera Saunders London, United Kingdom

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Kiera Saunders is an artist specializing in puppet making, wearable art, and workshop facilitation. She repurposes low-tech materials to design hybrid, clowny wearables, which she uses in photography, film, and performance. Kiera is a member of the costume-making team Vomiton, which explores themes such as the anonymous mask, amphibian extinction, embracing “Art from Trash is Not Trash."

Recently kiera has been creating immersive performances, researching British folklore and amphibian science. Her most recent performance "Amplexus" meaning ‘multiple frog sex’, held on May Day, was a chaotic story inspired by the shocking facts about frog and human fertility, a fitting theme for Beltane Dew, the folk celebration of new begingings. During the art live performance, the audience watched hilarious paper mâché hybrids of frogs and humans, a giant bubble wrap representation of frog spawn, a large yellow duck, and even a mycelium bride. These characters performed, ritualised, and danced to field recordings and sampling pregnancy adverts and frog facts, Kiera collabrated with sound artist, Callum Govan to created a sound piece as a companion to the live performance. This was performed and exhibited at SVA Gallery in Stroud.

Kiera is apart of the Vomiton mask-making collective with members Kiera Saunders, Miriam Craddock and Lorenzo Rangoni-Robertson born during the 2020 Lockdown. The collective was formed out of a necessity to keep making art without accessibility to studio facilities. The idea led us to use anything and everything as materials (mostly rubbish) to produce alien, animal, plant, spirit, creatures, basically anything we deem to be Vomitonomous. The collective panic we witnessed at the start of the pandemic surrounding supermarkets made us reflect on the unnatural way in which we consume food in modern society, disconnected from the process and wrapped in plastic packaging. Vomiton created an online community, encouraging people to think more about their waste through art and humour in a time when these things were increasingly important. Post lockdown, Vomiton has exhibted a solo show at SVA gallery in Stroud, performed live on stage with band 'Maranta' at The Hidden Door arts festival and at the Roundhouse Theatre in London with band 'Mermaid Chunky'.

Additionally, kiera orginises life drawing events so the public can have an immersive expereince drawing carnivalesque work objects and costumes. She also introduces drawing games and handmade tools, she turns a traditional life drawing experience upside down, encouraging other artists she meets to join in as performative sculptures and even wear the art.