Tanya Brett has been one of our favourite discoveries at Badcock’s. It’s a great feeling to stumble upon work that excites a surging emotional response as strong as the one I felt when first seeing Tanya’s sculpture. Being an animal lover myself, I recognized someone who not only had a great passion for the subject she conveyed, but an extraordinarily descriptive talent. She is able to execute this talent with such joyous exuberance that one felt her animals might be about to leap off their plinths and start chasing each other around the gallery. The sculptures are representational yet completely bold and fresh, without a hint of the sentimentality so often seen in animal depiction.

It is hardly surprising that since graduating from Brighton with an Outstanding Artistic Achievement award her work has been hugely popular. She has been lauded by Tatler, the Evening Standard and The Independent as a rising star of the future and her sculptures are in private collections around the world. We are thrilled to be showing such a large body of work and hope you will be able to visit the gallery and fall under the spell of these magical sculptures.

Mimi Connell

Since childhood I have been drawn to animals and representations of them in art, from the prehistoric to the contemporary. I am interested in what animals signify to man; how we characterize them.

Animal representation is often sentimental. I want to show the raw power of animals along with their innocence. In my sculpture I am interested in using techniques associated with drawing; brush strokes, lines and scratches, to convey a feeling of immediacy, vitality and life.