Biography
NESTA Fellow
The V&A Collection.
Author / Sculptor / Costume Designer / Installation artist.
Rebecca Truman is a mixed media installation artist working with sculpture, costume, film and text and has been a pioneer in contemporary aerial circus since 1988. She has a costume in the Victoria and Albert Museum permanent collection and the archive of her ground-breaking company Skinning the Cat (STC) is in the National Archive of Fairground and Circus. Her experience is captured in the film Women in Circus (Circus 250) .
Her circus/sculptural work and site-specific installations have toured extensively including commissions from Manchester Commonwealth Games, Princes Trust and Millenium Dome. Rebecca was awarded a NESTA fellowship which focused on the impact of retirement from performance. Work made during this fellowship led to touring installation Sky Hooked which opened at Bradford Dyehouse in 2003.
In 2018 Rebecca was commissioned by The Cartwright Hall Gallery to create the exhibition Cupola to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Circus. Cupola toured nationally for five years including appearing beside the Degas painting of the aerialist Miss Lala at The Weston Park Museum and Gallery, Sheffield.
Rebecca published her memoirs Aerialist, launched in 2018 at the Bradford Literature Festival. She is currently working on a commission Rope Women, for the National Fairground and Circus Archive to make sculptures focusing on women in Circus. This new work will be exhibited at the Sheffield archive gallery in July 2026.
Artist Statement
Rebecca Truman is a multimedia sculptor who combines casting in resin and glass with papier mâché and textiles creating performance installations with film and text.
The themes in her work are based on aspects of lived experience which includes her 40-year career in the Circus. She starts with an intuitive connection to a particular material quality such as colour, reflection, light, or form to express and explore emotional and physical states.
Her work is rooted in the space between the performer and audience and how the relationship between private interior and public exterior worlds are told through stories, anecdotes, images, and personal journeys.
These moments of noticing and making connections are mediated and materially explored through life casting natural and figurative motifs and forms.