In our new short series Five Minutes With, we’ve been shining a light on the people who help bring Meadow Arts’ vision to life. From dedicated team members to our brilliant board members, trustees and the artists who we commission, we’re taking a closer look at the individuals who make everything we do possible.

In this episode of Five Minutes With, we’re finding out more about artist Cordelia Cembrowicz, who’s been co-producing art with Golden Valley residents.

I live in a densely built-up urban environment in London, in stark contrast to the rural settings where the project is based. I have enjoyed working with the Meadow Arts team on this project so much. There is a generosity of spirit from Emma, Suzie, Clare and others which has enabled the project to start and evolve in a very ambitious way.

Cordelia Cembrowicz

Cordelia Cembrowicz is a multidisciplinary artist based in London, working across sculpture, printmaking, and drawing to explore themes of political expression, social structures, and collective experience. She holds an MA in Fine Art Printmaking from the Royal College of Art (2010) and a BA in Fine Art from University College Falmouth (2006).

Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Freelands Foundation, and Goldfinger Factory, among others. Her recent works examine representations of community, from etchings of crowds to illustrations of molecular structures linked to human connection. Her latest projects include Molecule Murals, a community-driven commission opening at a central London health centre in 2025, and Our Place Golden Valley, a collaborative initiative with Meadow Arts exploring local identity and collective belonging in the Golden Valley, Herefordshire.

Clare: What inspires you as a visual artist?

Cordelia: My art practice is driven by a curiosity about the world around me. I am curious about understanding why things are the way they are, and where we fit in, as individuals and as a society or community. I think a lot about the possibility that we could live in a better way, if we adopted different processes or recognised different things. I think a lot about systems of capitalism and how social structures fit within these systems. Depicting crowd scenes or networks has been a long running theme in my practice, and the sense of friendship or kinship felt within different structures is really important to me.   

Clare: Tell us about your experiences of working with Meadow Arts and communities from the Golden Valley? What were your first impressions of that place? 

Cordelia: I live in a densely built-up urban environment in London, in stark contrast to the rural settings where the project is based. I have enjoyed working with the Meadow Arts team on this project so much. There is a generosity of spirit from Emma, Suzie, Clare and others which has enabled the project to start and evolve in a very ambitious way. I had a weeklong residency in October in order to photograph members of the communities. The work is made for three particular community hubs in three distinct rural settings Peterchurch, Kingstone and Pontrilas – a community cafe in a 14th century church, a GP practice servicing a vast rural area, and a community cafe/gym/post office/shop in another remote village. Each hub plays an important role in linking community members together and breaking down barriers and the sense of isolation that people can feel anywhere – in a rural setting breaking down this social isolation is even more important. The community hub staff were all so helpful and friendly, and the community members themselves, have been very generous in participating and sharing their image and ideas, and trusting the making process to produce artwork for their community location. 

Clare: We love the Molecule Murals concept; linking molecules associated with feeling good (oxytocin, adrenaline, serotonin) to communities and place. Where did the creative idea stem from?

Cordelia: Whilst on my degree, which I completed nearly 20 years ago (!) I read about the hormone Oxytocin and was amazed to hear that it can enable people to make friends and is released in women in times of stress. It is such a powerful hormone, which is also released in childbirth and facilitates bonding. I began creating drawings of the molecule, visualising the structure through cross hatched drawings of people from archival photographs for my degree show. Some photographs came from wartime Picture Post Magazine, others from the Margaret Morris Movement dancers at the British Library. These drawings can be seen on my website. 

In 2023 my local health centre ran a competition on the theme ‘What does community mean to you?’ to work with the practice on an artwork for their new premises. They loved the drawings on my website and commissioned me to create an artwork for the new space. This time working with members of the health centre community – staff, patients and friends of the practice. I photographed over 40 people and created a range of molecular structures, evolved from the initial drawings. Serotonin for happiness, Oxytocin for love, and Adrenalin for action. These digital collage drawings will be developed into digitally printed wallpaper along an 18-metre stretch of wall in the practice, linking the clinic rooms with the reception and a multi-use community area in the traditional waiting room space. Progress with the project is slow as the walls are not yet built, but it is exciting to think of visitors being visually welcomed into the space with the depictions of members of our own community.

Clare: We know you have a demanding job as an art teacher and you’re very active in your local community, but do you have any exciting new creative projects on the horizon? 

Cordelia: My involvement in local community projects tends to feed my art practice and vice versa. Since becoming a parent, I have been more involved, volunteering at my Residents Association and campaigning to improve social housing and against a dangerous gasworks development proposed right next door to us. I am hosting events for the London Open House festival in September on the estate where I live, which is a 1930s Grade II* modernist social housing estate called Kensal House. I am hoping to put together an exhibition presenting a range of campaign material and historical films at the tour. 

The London health centre artwork is located in a building called Kelso Cochrane House, named in honour of the man who was murdered in a racially aggravated attack in the 1950s, which led to the creation of the Notting Hill Carnival. I am exploring the possibility of making work in his honour too, for the space. I would love to continue making community artwork in health care settings, so really hope there will be more of that on the horizon. 

Clare: Who would be your dream artist to collaborate with and why? 

Cordelia: What a brilliant question! I’d love to collaborate with wallpaper makers like Timorous Beasties, and screen print team Garudio Studiage, or perhaps more ambitiously Forensic Architecture whose work I find incredible. I’d love to work with Anna Shipley who creates ecologically minded sculptures and drawings with her own paper, or Chloe Cooper on an animation project. I really love the work of David Shillinglaw for his confident and playful use of colour and symbolism.