Leila Peacock
THE-STONE-THAT-IS-NOT-A-STONE
Statement
Exhibition 12-19 April 2025, by Appointment
Finissage, Sat, 19 April 2025 15-18h - The artist is present.
"Statement" is a project designed to invite an Artist to present a completed work from the current year directly from their studio in the room of StudioK3. This exclusive piece of work will be showcased and presented, having never been displayed in an exhibition context before.
Leila Peacock is a British artist based in Zurich. She studied literature in London and Canada before completing her fine art studies at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK). Her practice is a dynamic fusion of drawing, installation, and writing, often incorporating symbolic systems, alchemical motifs, historical visual culture, and speculative fiction.
Interview by Sandi Paucic, StudioK3 | 11 April 2025 | Zurich
Sandi Paucic: As we stand here at StudioK3 during installation, I’m struck by the diversity of media used in your work—there’s a holographic fan, light boxes, sculptural panels, and window paintings. Could you tell me how this presentation fits into your overall practice?
Leila Peacock: This selection brings together various strands of my practice that have been evolving over the past few years. Central to it all is a kind of symbolic language I’ve developed—figures that I call 'manic marginalia.' The term comes from the creatures drawn into the margins of medieval manuscripts—strange hybrids that seem to disrupt or comment on the main text. In my work, it’s as if those marginal figures have stepped into the spotlight.
Sandi: The figures feel ancient and yet futuristic. Where do they originate?
Leila: They come from everywhere. I’m an unapologetic thief—I steal images from medieval art, science fiction, religious iconography, mysticism, and alchemical engravings. I redraw and recycle them over and over, changing them, distorting them. It’s like I’ve built a personal symbolic vocabulary, but one that’s unstable by design. I want them to feel like echoes of something ancient but also speculative—like visual artefacts from a lost or imagined civilization.
Sandi: Do these symbols form a coherent system, or are they more intuitive?
Leila: They’re intuitive, but they do follow a logic of accumulation. I’m very interested in symbolism’s inherent slipperiness. Alchemy is a big reference for me—not just the content, but the form. Alchemical texts are intentionally opaque, full of visual riddles. I think people desire meaning, and I play with that. My works offer that sense of deep symbolic significance but ultimately resist decoding.
Sandi: Is this also where the title comes from—’The-Stone-That-Is-Not-a-Stone’?
Leila: Exactly. It’s a direct reference to the philosopher’s stone from alchemy, which isn’t a literal stone but a conceptual one. In the texts, it's often described as 'the stone that is not a stone.' It’s paradoxical—simultaneously present and unattainable. I like working with that kind of language: it resonates with the artistic process too. We work towards something we may never fully grasp.
Sandi: One striking piece here is the holographic fan showing a floating diamond. It seems like a technological take on this immaterial stone.
Leila: Yes, I see it as a kind of contemporary philosopher’s stone. It’s immaterial, yet appears real. It rotates, suspended in nothingness—a visual metaphor for the pursuit of something we can’t quite hold. I’ve been thinking a lot about light and illusion, about how we create presence out of absence.
Sandi: You also mentioned the influence of the Wilton Diptych and a kind of proto-cinema. Could you elaborate?
Leila: Yes! The Wilton Diptych is this extraordinary medieval portable altarpiece in the National Gallery in London. It’s covered in finely embossed gold leaf. The idea was that if you lit a candle in front of it, the flickering would animate the surface—almost like a moving image. It’s essentially proto-cinematic. I love that: the idea that stillness can contain motion, that an artwork can be dormant until activated by light.
Sandi: Is that what draws you to light boxes and glass surfaces?
Leila: Yes, definitely. Paper feels too static to me. I look for surfaces that can hold an image but also interact with space and light. With windows, you get the environment behind it as part of the image. With light boxes, the light becomes an internal animation. It activates the line—it’s not just drawn, it glows.
Sandi: Let’s talk about the gold sculptural works. They seem religious, almost icon-like.
Leila: They’re inspired by Russian icon frames called Oklads, which were designed to protect religious paintings. Over time, these frames became more elaborate and sometimes more significant than the paintings themselves. In my pieces, I remove the central figure—Christ or Mary has left—and we’re left with this ornate emptiness. There’s a kind of spiritual vacancy that I find interesting. What happens when the sacred image disappears, but the vessel remains?
Sandi: And the material is industrial aluminum—not real gold.
Leila: Right. It’s deliberately deceptive. Alchemists were always looking for ways to imitate gold. These panels are made from rolled aluminum, then engraved and painted to resemble something precious. It’s about the illusion of value, and the transformation of base material into something revered.
Sandi: There are also handwritten texts in capitals on those pieces. You wrote those, correct?
Leila: Yes, they’re excerpts from an essay I wrote called ‘On Art and Alchemy’. It explores how art-making can be seen as a kind of transformation—a transmutation of thought into material form. I often use handwritten text in my work, always in capital letters. When you write by hand, it becomes drawing. It has tone, urgency, it resists the neutrality of typed text.
Sandi: How do you balance the roles of artist and writer in your practice?
Leila: They’re completely intertwined. I studied literature before turning to fine art, but I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with formal writing. When I write now, it’s instinctive, fragmentary, often meant to be read visually rather than linearly. I usually draw first, then place the text around the images. The text wraps around, hides behind, gets cut off. Meaning is fractured and layered.
Sandi: There are small, almost jewel-like portraits embedded in some works. Who are these figures?
Leila: They’re loosely based on Italian Renaissance portraits, often of women. I use them intuitively, then alter them—distort them. They become like archetypes or guardians of the pieces. There’s something haunting about their presence. You recognise the form but can’t quite place them.
Sandi: In our Statement series, we often say the works are “fresh from the studio.” Where are you at the moment in your work?
Leila: Yes, it’s funny—these pieces are so fresh from the studio you can still smell the varnish. They couldn’t be fresher. It’s been great to show things that have never been seen before. I’ve been working on more of these gold panels—my carpenter makes the boards—and making the light box has made me think I might return to that medium. I'm also exploring how the drawings themselves can become structures—like a drawing inside a drawing inside a drawing. Right now, these ideas are sort of unfolding like a Chinese puzzle box.
