top of page

Mary Yacoob’s work encompasses ink on paper, printmaking, wall drawings, large scale vinyl artworks and exhibition light boxes.

 

Yacoob redeploys the visual languages

of electrical and engineering diagrams, architectural plans, cartography, alphabetical systems, and musical notation.

 

She researches and transfigures visual source materials, creating intricate and speculative thought forms that explore drawing systems and geometry, order

and chance, appropriation and interpretation.

By taking diagrams out of their original context, she transforms them into mysterious cyphers for the imagination, creating connections between disciplines.



Email: yacoob.mary@googlemail.com
Instagram: @mary_yacoob

Mary_Modernist Teepee.jpg
Education

2022–

PhD Student, The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL

2005 –2007

Central Saint Martins, MA Fine Art

2000 –2004

Cass School of Art, London Metropolitan Univ, BA Hons Fine Art (1st Class)

1997 –2000

City Literary Institute, Fine Art Course

1992 –1995

Middlesex University, BA Hons Politics with English Literature 

Commissions

2020

Writers Mosaic, commissioned drawings for publication

2019

Uncertain Ruins, Swiss Cottage Library, site specific vinyl artwork

2014

Canalology, POST Artists commission, London, site specific artworks

2013

Trove: Thrift Radiates Happiness at the Municipal Bank, commissioned print

2010

Away Day POST Artists Network, site specific works

2009

Mid Pennine Art Gallery site specific drawings

2006

Circ Interventions, “Power of Art” Commission, the Arts Council and BBC

2005

Day-to-Day Data, drawings for publication launched at Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham 

Solo Shows

2024

Brutal Space, Bobinska Brownlee New River Gallery

2021

Window vinyl installation, Surgery Gallery

2020

Schema, Five Years Gallery

2019

Draft, The Hospital Club

2012

Works on Paper, Westland Place Gallery

2011

The Infinite Combinatorium Part 0, Curated by Crowd 6, Trove

2010 

Centre for Recent Drawing

2009

Cities, ANZAC Centre, Royal Brompton Hospital

2008

Propositions for Cities, Seven Seven

2007

Invisible Cities, The Courtyard Studio

Residencies

2020

North Devon Artist Residency

2019

Mutton Fist Press printmaking residency

2011

AA2A printmaking residency at Camberwell College of Art and Design 


 

Relevant Work Experience

2019 to date    

Associate Lecturer (part time) Cass School of Art, London Metropolitian University

2019/2020     

Six art workshops for adults and children at Mutton Fist Press/Swiss Cottage Library

2019 to date            

Lectures about my art practice at Bath Univ, Leeds Univ, London Metropolitan, Winchester School of Art

2020              

Talk at solo exhibition, Five Years Gallery


 

2010 - present
2010 - present
Group Shows

2024

Hard Paper, Phoenix Gallery

2023

Linear Soundscape, Crawley Road Studios

The New Accelerator, Ruskin Gallery

2022

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

Circle and Light, Laurent Delay

Every Cloud, Bruce Castle Museum

A Generous Space, The New Art Gallery Walsall

North Devon Artist Residency Group Exhibition, Bay View Gallery, Combe Martin

Summer Breakdown, Bobinska Brownlee New River Gallery

Alignment, Gallery 46

Ecologies of Drawing: In Situ, Drawing Research Network

2021

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

North Devon Artist Residency Group Exhibition, Bobinska Brownlee New River Gallery

Can We Ever Know the Meaning of These Objects? Gallery 46

2020

Leeds Summer Group Show 

Impartial Iteration, Saturation Point

2019

Face to Face Art, Warsaw, Poland

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

8 Lines, Platform A Gallery

Liminality: Temporal Impressions, Gallery 46

2018

Noel Limits, Mutton Fist Press
The Ghost Tide, Thames Side Studios
Liminality (The unknown), Gallery 46

2017

Two Places at Once, Online exhibition with POST
Contemporary British Prints, Foss Fine Art, in association with Dark Matter Studio

2016

Saturation Point | The five-year anniversary | Open studio, ACME Studios
Parable Displaced, POST Artists at St. Aphege Church, Whitstable

2015

Contemporary British Drawing, Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, China

Multiplied, Printmaking Art Fair at Christies with Dark Matter Studio

Generator, Kaleidscope Gallery

Five Floors, Eighteen Artists, Century

Manorism, ExFed

2014

Beguile the Night: Beyond Drawing, Dark Matter Studio

Co-Imagine: Re-development of Peckham Rye Station Gateway, Bussey Bld/CLF Art Café V&A Tottenham Takeover, with POST artists, V&A

Canalology, POST Artist Network Arts Council funded exhibition along Tottenham’s canals 

A Bright and Guilty Place II, PayneShurvell at the Hospital Club

Crossing Lines, & Model, Leeds

2013

Works on Paper, PayneShurvell at Collective Gallery 

Cascades: past, present and future, Studio 180

Process Matters, Stoke Newington Library Gallery

Thrift Radiates Happiness,The Municipal Bank, Birmingham, curated by Trove

Do you remember it – or weren’t you there? London Gallery West, University of Westminster

2012

Poster Production, Portman Gallery, Morpeth School, London

Virulent Experience, Conway Hall, London

Surfaces: Works on Paper, Sput+Nik Gallery, Porto, Portugal

At Play, Ovada, Oxford

At Play 4, South Hill Park

Ten Anniversary of Bookartbookshop, Red Gallery 

2011

Launching Pad, Galerie8

Utopian Arts Fest, Parlour Gallery

Shall/Will, Camberwell College of Art

Broken Telephone, with POST artists at Exchange Project Space

Grange Gardens Sculpture Project, Galerie 8

2010

From the Dustheaps, Charles Dickens Museum, London

A Bright and Guilty Place, PayneShurvell,

POST Away Day, London

Preambles and Perambulations, Charles Dickens Museum, London

At Play, South Hill Park Gallery, UK

Harsh Lines and Spongy Surfaces, Island Projects at Hackney Wicked Festival, London

Quantified Aesthetics, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, USA

2009

I can bring this to your city, Island Projects at Hackney Wicked Festival, London

This is a Stick Up, Launch Collaborative, Oxford 

2nd Sheffield Artist’s Book Prize Exhibition

Transition, Mid Pennine Arts Gallery

Three by Three Becomes Guest Projects, Yinka Shonibare Space, London

AM Bruno, Bookartbookshop, London

Sound Ways, Sight Waves, Sights and Sounds of Edmonton, London

Three by Three (4), Yinka Shonibare Space, London

2008

Shift - Reflections in Time and Place

Wrapped and Encased in Liverpool 08, Wolstenholme Projects, Liverpool 2008

Little Things, The Parlour, London

2007

MA Degree Show, Central Saint Martins, London

Drawings Inspired by “Invisible Cities”, The Courtyard Studio, London

In>Visible Traces, The Old Boys Club, London

Io Sono Solo In Una Terra Straniera, Unitre Milano, Milan, Italy

DIY, Nolias Gallery, London

11.472, Bargehouse, London

2006

q, Curator Space, London

Identikit, temporarycontemporary, London

Sound Practice 2006, Goldsmiths College of Art

Identikit, temporarycontemporary, London

2005

Sound Café, Jedburgh Community and Arts Centre, Scotland

A-Mart: Ale and Porter Arts, Bradford on Avon

Counter Measure, Florence Arts Trust

Besucher/Visitors, Gallery VorOrt, Hamburg, Germany 

2004

Shop, Space-twotentwo

60-Seconds, Salon, Darklight Film Festival

60-Seconds, Space-twotentwo and 291 Gallery

BA Fine Art Degree Show, London Metropolitan University

Made in 2004 Part II, Morley Gallery

Dino, Indo Bar 

2003 Animation show reel with Morley Art College students, Cargo 

2002 Art in Poplar, Mile End Art Pavilion

2002 From the Cradle to the Grave, Unit 2 Gallery, London Metropolitan University

2002 End of year show, Westminster and Kingsway College 

2001 Swains Green Haymaking Festival

2000 City Lit Fine Art show, The October Gallery

1999 City Lit Fine Art show, The City Lit

 


 

Collections

Guest Projects/Yinka Shonibare; Brunel University Art Collection; 

Artist books in Tate Archive, Chelsea College of Art and Design Special Collection, London College of Communication, and others

Awards

2020

Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants

2005

Arts and Humanities Research Board Award

2004

Royal Female School of Art Foundation Bursary

2004

Owen Rowley Award 

2002

Ellen Clarkson Award 

bottom of page