ANNEMARIE WAUGH

 (State of play
Annemarie Waugh
Data Moshing Britishness
Installation view
The Lyceum gallery, 
Photo: Gary Mamay
Riverhead, May 5–July 29, 2025
The Show of Delights
Curated by me
Chocka with Delights



“Amazing!” – The Church Sag Harbor
Annemarie Waugh
Bitterest Sweet
Photo: Jess Paul
Sylvester Manor, 
Shelter Island, NY
2025

Bitterest Sweet Website: https://0105481.cargo.site

Annemarie Waugh
Bitterest Sweet
Installation view
Photo: Jess Paul
Sylvester Manor,
Shelter Island, NY
2025


Bitterest Sweet, 2025, is a site-specific art installation presented as part of the Sculpture @ Sylvester Manor: Paradise Lost exhibition curated by Tom Cugliani. The exhibit opened on Shelter Island, NY, on June 14th, 2025, and will be free and open to the public until September 14th, 2025. The exhibit is open dawn to dusk, 7 days a week. Located at Sylvester Manor / 80 North Ferry Road / Shelter, Island, NY.

Bitterest Sweet is dedicated to the enslaved Africans, Indigenous Manhansett People, and the Irish and English indentured servants who lived, worked, and died at Sylvester Manor. Bitterest Sweet features a walkway in the shape of the Nkyinkyim ‘twisting’ symbol of the Adinkra, which represents the Gyaman people of Ghana and the Côte d'Ivoire. The Nkyinkyim is a symbol representing the torturous nature of life's journey and the toughness, versatility, and dynamism required to thrive in it. It is also a symbol of dedication to service. The wavy line, which forms the main component in the design of the Nkyinkyim, depicts the meandering course of life’s journey. These ‘twists and turns’ stand as a monument to the adaptability, resilience, and versatility of those who came before, who navigated through life's complexities with wisdom and strength. The proverb associated with this symbol is “Ɔbra kwan yɛ nkyinkyimii,” which, when translated, means “Life’s road is twisted.” 
Annemarie Waugh
Bitterest Sweet
Watercolor
9 x 12 in
2025

Annemarie Waugh
Bitterest Sweet
Watercolor
9 x 12 in
2025

Ancient clan - Red (From Across the Pond)
House paint on canvas
48 x 72 in
2025

Ancient clan - Blue (From Across the pond)
House paint on canvas
48 x 72 in
2025
Annemarie Waugh
Glistening Squirrels
The Developer’s Midnight Fantasy
Mixed media
107 x 97 in
2021
Annemarie Waugh
The Developer’s Midnight Fantasy
Costumes by Marta Baumiller
Photos: Cliff Baldwin
The Ashley Shift Preserve
2021
Annemarie Waugh
Buried treasure
The Developer’s Midnight Fantasy
Holly berries, concrete
9 x 3 in
2021
Annemarie Waugh
The Developer’s Midnight Fantasy
Documentary video
3:46 
2022
Annemarie Waugh
Hi Digger
The Developer’s Midnight Fantasy
Mixed media, 2021
10 x 120 Feet

A live performance with original music, and dance that invites visitors to consider the fragility of nature through an imagined clear cutting of the Ashley Schiff forest. The project will visualize how nature can be transformed overnight into yet another development or carpark. The sharp, glossy colors of the cut-outs will contrast with the graceful beauty of nature, construction equipment will mingle with the deciduous forest. 





Annemarie Waugh
Barking mad
The Developer’s Midnight Fantasy
Mixed media on oak bark
8 x 10 in
2021
Annemarie Waugh
The Developer’s Midnight Fantasy
Poetry by Michelle Whittaker
Photos: Cliff Baldwin
The Ashley Shift Preserve
2021
Annemarie Waugh
Forest of cones
The Developer’s Midnight Fantasy
Mixed media on plywood
14 x 12 in
2021
Annemarie Waugh
Torn (Mistakes series)
Transfer, height: approximately 2 3/4 inches
2014

Mistakes is an ongoing photographic series of unobserved, unperceived, unseen, unheeded, overlooked, inconspicuous, secret, hidden, passed by, unobtrusive, blunders, disregarded, unconsidered, neglected, unrespected, unmarked, unremembered, unscrutinized, unremarked, uncontemplated, unrecognized, 
slurred over, uninspected, lost sight of, ignored, shoved into the background, rephotographed, undistinguished, unexamined, unlooked at marks. 
Annemarie Waugh
Going, going, going, gone - Clam
Pencil on paper
 48 x 97 in
2014
Annemarie Waugh
I love you forever and ever (Chemically speaking)
India ink, fabric on cut paper
42 x 60 in
2025
Collection of the Potato Farm Project.
Annemarie Waugh
Natural Selection
9 x 12 in
2012
Annemarie Waugh
CANvas Food Drive
Art installation
Food drive


1.5 Million New Yorkers Can’t Afford Food and Food Pantries Are Their Lifeline. Tens of thousands have shown up at food banks since the pandemic began People who were already going to the pantries have grown more reliant on them. –The New York Times

Instead of spending $$$ on art supplies CANs of food were purchased and became the art installation. Nonperishable foods were accepted at the gallery and at the end of the show all the foods collected were donated to Long Island Cares and The Stony Brook Food Pantry. 

The goal was to bring awareness and food to where it’s needed. A set of 44 British food slang labels, such as; Bubble & Squeak, fairy cake, scotch egg and be mom were created to wrap around the cans. The cans are then stacked in a pyramid and displayed in the gallery.

Viewers are invited to make a food donation of nonperishable foods canned food (the list of foods accepted will be displayed). They then select a British food label (All 44 labels displayed on a workstation), and wrap the label around their donated cans. In the final step they place their newly wrapped cans with it’s British label on the stacked displays along with the other cans. A Covid friendly setup. 

As an artists gesture I created some signed prints on watercolor paper of the labels and food givers were welcome to take one. 
Annemarie Waugh
CANvas Food Drive
Art installation  
Food drive
Annemarie Waugh
My head in the cloud
Pencil on paper
9 x 12 in
2019
Annemarie Waugh
English Rose (digitalizing)
Mixed media on canvas
48 x 60 in
Annemarie Waugh
Gutted
Acrylic and pencil on paper
22 x 30 in
2018
Annemarie Waugh
Mistake No1
C- print
2013
Annemarie Waugh
Cut piece
9 x 12 in
2024
Annemarie Waugh
Head in the clouds
Pen and pencil on handmade paper
8 x 10 in
2023
Annemarie Waugh
Rewilding
48 x 97 in
Mixed media on canvas
2024
Annemarie Waugh
Square Miles to UK
9 x 12 in
2012

Annemarie Waugh
Grandmas Floor (after Rauchenberg)
Vinyl, acrylic medium on fabric
11 x 14 in
2024
Annemarie Waugh
Sleeping with chatbots
Watercolor 
11 x 14 in
2024
Erased
22 x 30 in in 9 parts
Pencil and plastic flotsom
Toy boy
24 x24 in
2004
The Small and Useless
Mixed media collage 
2024

Miniatures or micro-gestures that serve no purpose except to tickle. Things modernity would discard as inefficient—glimmers, doodles, fragments – Aiden Cinnamon Tea
Annemarie Waugh
Irrational Times
22 x 30
Mixed media on cut paper
2024
Hot flash # 5329 (after Wade Guyton)
Mixed media on wood giphy
2024
Annemarie Waugh
Broken
Ceramic
9 x 3 in
2021
Annemarie Waugh
Slip up
C print
2005
Boom or bust
Annemarie Waugh
Plastic lids in plastic shells
2021
Remembering things past - Across the Pond
Installation view - Isilip Museum
2015
Annemarie Waugh
Embelishments nailed (Bitten series)
2019
Annemarie Waugh
Mistake No342 (after Christopher Wool)
Annemarie Waugh
Gutted (From Across the Pond)
9 x 12 in
2019
Annemarie Waugh
Throw a wobbly
Mixed media painting on wood
2015
Annemarie Waugh
Brolly
Pencil on paper
2016




























AnnemarieWaugh.art
amg253@gmail.com
Instagram


Annemarie Waugh is a British born, New York-based visual artist, educator and curator working in painting, and installation. Waugh’s practice encompasses research based works, and public projects that involve community participation. Surreal narratives, nature and fiction are a connecting thread throughout her work—emerging in unexpected juxtapositions.

Waugh has exhibited her work at venues including MoCA LI, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Patchogue, Christie’s and The Royal College of Art, London, Orchard Street Gallery, NYC, Front Street Gallery, Brooklyn, The Islip Museum, You + Me, Artist Films, Berlin, The Long Island Museum, Gallery North, Serendip Gallery, Japan, Aferro Gallery, NJ, and The Lycuem Gallery, Riverhead among others.





Education
MFA Stony Brook University

BA (Hons) Central Saint Martins





Solo Shows
2025 
Across the Pond
The Lyceum Gallery
Riverhead, NY

2021
#Shucked
Lawrence Alloway Gallery
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY

2013
Hanging on a Thread
Farmer’s Market Gallery
Vestibulum





Selected Group Exhibitions























































































2025 
Bitterest Sweet
Sylvester Manor
Shelter Island, NY

Bitterest Sweet is a site-specific art installation presented as part of the Sculpture @ Sylvester Manor: Paradise Lost exhibition curated by Tom Cugliani. The exhibit opened on Shelter Island, NY, on June 14th, 2025, and will be free and open to the public until September 14th, 2025. The exhibit is open dawn to dusk, 7 days a week. Located at Sylvester Manor / 80 North Ferry Road / Shelter, Island, NY. 

Bitterest Sweet is dedicated to the enslaved Africans, Indigenous Manhansett People, and the Irish and English indentured servants who lived, worked, and died at Sylvester Manor. Bitterest Sweet features a walkway in the shape of the Nkyinkyim ‘twisting’ symbol of the Adinkra, which represents the Gyaman people of Ghana and the Côte d'Ivoire. The Nkyinkyim is a symbol representing the torturous nature of life's journey and the toughness, versatility, and dynamism required to thrive in it. It is also a symbol of dedication to service. The wavy line, which forms the main component in the design of the Nkyinkyim, depicts the meandering course of life’s journey. These ‘twists and turns’ stand as a monument to the adaptability, resilience, and versatility of those who came before, who navigated through life's complexities with wisdom and strength. The proverb associated with this symbol is “Ɔbra kwan yɛ nkyinkyimii,” which, when translated, means “Life’s road is twisted.” 

The installation is also interactive, inviting visitors to walk the seven paths of the symbol while they behold the sculpture pieces and listen to the audio walk. 



The installation is amplified by a digital audio walk, which is a combination of narrative script and original poetry, including literary works by Jupiter Hammon, Maya Angelou, Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, and Michelle Whittaker. The audio walk enhances the experience by allowing visitors to listen to the story of the enslaved Africans, the Indigenous Manhansett People, and Irish and English indentured servants who labored on Shelter Island. The story shared in the audio walk is heteroglossic in nature because it is not the story of a single person or a single group. Rather, it is an interconnected tapestry that weaves the experiences and challenges of various peoples. Thus, the recording is many-voiced, with people of different ages, accents, and genders reading various segments of the story. The audio walk is underscored by an original musical accompaniment composed by Tony Doyle, which captures the sounds of waves, the twitter of tropical birds, the sigh of the wind, African drums, fire, and the creak of ships. The audio walk can be accessed via QR codes.

This work is supported by Long Island Grants for the Arts through funds provided by the office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and administered by The Huntington Arts Council. 



We wish to acknowledge the support of Sylvester Manor, the English, art, and music departments at Stony Brook University, the VOICE Lab at Stony Brook University, the Boys and Girls Club of Shinnecock Nation, the Shelter Island School, The Church in Sag Harbor, Gallery North, Jeremy Dennis and Huntington Arts. We also wish to thank all our community participants from our workshops across Suffolk County. Permission for the audio use of a stanza from Maya Angelou's "Caged Bird published in SHAKER, WHY DON'T YOU SING, granted by Penguin Random House".


www.eastendbeacon.com/a-return-to-paradise-on-shelter-island

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/03/travel/things-to-do-east-end.
southforker.com/2025/06/20/sculpture-sylvester-manor/https://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=4c4ac559-aed9-495b-b6ef-5e6e75ef8546


2025
Hale Gallery
Farmingdale State College

2024
Into the Spines 
LI MOCA, Patchogue, NY

2023
Suffolk County Community College
Faculty Art Exhibition,
Riverhead, NY





MISS-INFORMATION

Artspeak
Mix & Match:



















 
Press

Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness [interrogate fractured temporalities]
After Harryette Mullen
with Elise Armani


A. abstraction, aesthetics, allegory, anatomy, Anthropocene, anthropomorphic, archetype, armature, artifice, artifacts, assemblage, avant-garde, authenticity, axiom, axiomatic B. Baroque, Bauhaus, biomorphic, bourgeois, Byzantine C. calligraphy, carapace, canon, caricature, carotenoid, chiaroscuro, circularity, coexist, collage, commodification, composition, conceptual, contemporaneous, critique, cubism, color theory, classical D. decadence, denote, denude, degradations, denominator, delineates, dialogical, detrimental, disjunction, dislocations, discern, destabilizing, discourse, dissensus E. ecofemminist, ekphrastic, efface, endogenous, enlightenment, elucidate, equipoise, etymology, expressionism, euphemistically, exigencies F. fabricate, facilitate, fecundity, figurability, formalism, fundamental, futurity G. geologically, genealogy, genre, gestalt, gestural, generative, gothic H. heuristic, hucksterism, hierarchy, hyperobjects I. Iconography, impressionism, inchoate, inculcate, ineradicable, inimical, immutability, incomprehensible, interrogate, iconoclasm, installations, interdisciplinary, interlocutor, interiority, inviolable J. jouissance K. Kairo, kitsch L. lacunae, litigiousness, liminalities, liturgical, luminosity M. medieval, misology, misreading, mimesis, minimalism, materiality, monochrome, mutability, multifaceted, metaphorically, memento mori, modernism N. nachleben, nachträglichkeit, neoclassicism, neologism, nonsensical, neutrality O. obdurate, oneiric, ontology, ontological, ontic, op art, organon, oeuvre, Orientalism, overemphasize P. paean, palpability, paradigmatic, paradigm, paradoxical, parergon, patriarchy, pastiching, pensée, percipient, pernicious, philological, physicality, phenomenological, plethora, philology, poiesis, polyphony, preliminaries, polis, pop art, pointillism, post-impressionism, propitious, prorogate, proselytism, protean, proliferated R. rapprochement, recrudescence, recalcitrant, reenactment, reification, recitation, reconsolidation, reterritorialization, readymades, reciprocity, reformulated, recontextualizes, rhetoric, realism, rococo, romanticism S. schema, schism, semiotic, seriality, sanguinary, sesquipedalian, sinewy, social realism, somatic, somnambulism, solipsism, specialism, subjectivity, surrealism, sfumato, symbolism T. temerity, terminus, terminology, temporality, territorialization, transgression, transactional, transfigured, transmogrify, triptych, tutelage U. ubiquitous, unheimlich, utopia V. validation, vernacular, vestige, Victorian, vicissitude, visibility, ventriloquize, vanitas W. wabi-sabi



‘Chuffed to Bits’
Annemarie Waugh’s playful ode to memory, language, and Britishness
By Danielle King

We tell ourselves stories to make sense of our histories, personal or collective, real or imagined.In her solo exhibition “Across the Pond,” Annemarie Waugh tells us playful tales constructedfrom the fragments of her youth growing up in Britain. Her work is less about a recollection offacts than the texture of memory itself: elusive, fractured, and steeped in language and humor.

Nostalgia is undeniably at play here. There are familiar faces, like the animated character MrBenn (from the escapist British tv series of the same name), characters one might recognize fromevenings spent gathered around a television glowing in a dim living room. But Waugh graspsthat nostalgia is slippery terrain, riddled with irony and contradiction. Her canvases, somestretching to six feet, contain glimpses of tartans, foliage, pastries, playgrounds, and animalsintermingled with abstract gestures.

Such deliberate fragmentation feels apt. Memory seldom behaves neatly; it stutters, glitches, andcollides into fresh configurations, revealing stories more complicated and more compelling thanfacts ever could. The artist’s employment of data moshing - a digital technique that intentionallydistorts images - reflects the fragmented nature of memory itself. In her cut paper works, Waughaddresses the gaps in memory, the spaces where details fade or vanish. The careful yet childlikeact of cutting paper becomes an apt metaphor for the holes that punctuate our recollections.

Central to Waugh’s practice is language: colloquialisms from English, Irish, Welsh, Gaelic,Scottish, Cornish, and Yiddish are used as inspirations for and titles of many of the works in thisexhibition. It’s the slang of her childhood, overheard at the corner shop or on the British railplatform. Waugh’s use of language, like conceptual artist Barbara Kruger’s, is deliberate, butgentler. Where Kruger’s words provoke, Waugh’s wink. Expressions such as “Bob’s your uncle”or “It’s all swings and roundabouts” offer comfort rather than confrontation. Waugh previouslyscrawled British idioms in chalk on a large wall; ephemeral words soon erased. In “Across thePond,” these expressions become permanent, though their meanings remain fluid.

Waugh’s affection for “faffing around”- British slang for spending time idly, fiddling, dallying -is central to her artistic process. This spirit of tinkering and experimentation is evident throughout her work, allowing for discoveries that structured planning rarely permits.

In the Ancient Clan, Tartan paintings, Waugh reinterprets traditional Scottish tartan throughexaggerated brushstrokes and fluid lines, challenging the structured rigidity associated with clanpatterns. This irreverence toward heritage recalls fashion designer Vivienne Westwood’s punkreinventions of classic British motifs. Both artists understand tradition as something vulnerableand open to reinterpretation.

Another painting, Twee Bunny, exemplifies Waugh’s whimsical style. The rabbit, painted insimple, expressive lines reminiscent of a child’s drawing, conveys a lighthearted innocence.Abstract shapes, grids, and spontaneous paint gestures disrupt this scene, though, suggesting complexity beneath the surface. Here, as in classic British animations like Wallace and Gromit,humor moves slyly, working double-time to charm children and whisper clever asides to adults.

Annemarie Waugh’s Britain is both familiar and strange, a place defined by the simple pleasuresand pains of everyday life: clotted cream teas, jumble sales, Victorian seaside piers, and ever-present rain. Her work reminds us that memory, identity, and language are interpretative acts. In“Across the Pond,” Waugh crafts a narrative less about the Britain that was and more about theBritain we imagine - elusive and comforting, forever receding just beyond our grasp.


36 Hours on the East End: Things to Do and See
The New York Times,
by Add
2025

Action-spectacle
www.action-spectacle.com/summer-2024-part-iii/waugh

2024

Dictumst Tristique, Facilisis Magazine, 
Edition Two, Porta Libero
2021

Auctor Adipiscing Art Magazine, 
Porta Libero
2020






































© Annemarie Waugh, 2025 
Instagram        





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