Molly Grad
“My work addresses the parallels between civic incursions and womanhood as well as other communities across gender, ethnicity, and orientation. There’s a deep sense of embodiment for me with things people don’t necessarily notice.”
Our interview with Molly Grad offers a glimpse into the world of an interdisciplinary artist and writer whose practice moves fluidly across sculpture, painting, textiles, and public interventions. Drawing on two decades as a fashion designer for luxury houses such as Stella McCartney and Yves Saint Laurent, Molly now turns her attention to the overlooked and discarded, coaxing beauty and meaning from materials most of us walk past without a second glance. From painting on steel to weaving silk fibre with concrete, her work invites us to slow down, notice, and reconsider the value of what surrounds us. In this conversation, she shares her thoughts on material dialogue, the shift from fashion to fine art, her studio life, and the exciting projects on the horizon.
"Invisible modes" exhibition, curated by Jenn Ellis 2025
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?
I am an interdisciplinary artist and writer, and my practice revolves around sculpture, painting, textiles, and public interventions. I work with found materials as well as sculptures I form with different processes: weaving, casting, moulding as well as metal work and ceramics. I paint on steel which is a material I find fascinating – the colour does not get absorbed the same way it does on canvas and there is a constant dialogue that forms between the strokes and the surface that fascinates me. I like triggering responses from my materials and there’s always a subtle game at play whether it’s rust cultivation or pigments responding to one another. My curiosity and experimentation always have a conceptual reason: mixing silk fibre and concrete, marble and rubber can all be part of one installation or sculpture. My sculptures are formed from both existing and discarded, natural and synthetic fibre in an attempt to invert the way we socially perceive materials. I am highlighting the aesthetic possibilities of an otherwise overlooked and trodden upon quotidian elements, hovering somewhere between the natural world and integrated debris, there is often a nod to growth and possibility amidst the urban detritus and manmade destruction. For twenty years, I’ve had a (very) full time day job as a fashion designer for luxury brands such as Stella McCartney and Yves Saint Laurent, as well as designing costumes for artists and filmmakers such as Beyoncé and Martin Scorsese. Since leaving the fashion industry in 2019, I turned to art out of an interest in upending social hierarchies by engaging with the human experience in an in-depth way my previous career did not allow. I’ve always been extremely passionate about drawing and painting and that is a thread that connects my past life and current one.
There seems to be a recurring interest in things that are overlooked or discarded, objects and surfaces most people walk past without a second thought. What draws you to these everyday elements, and how does working with them shift the way you think about value and visibility?
My work addresses the parallels between civic incursions and womanhood as well as other communities across gender, ethnicity, and orientation. There’s a deep sense of embodiment for me with things people don’t necessarily notice. I love observing, noticing. It’s like eating chocolate or reading something good. I find it odd that people run off to the next thing and abandon things, structures, that could work if we gave them more attention and care – I guess my past life brings on an in-depth knowledge of cultures of waste and excess and my work refers to sitting with. Insisting. Especially now on the precipice of AI, I’m looking at this mad rush for gold – wagons driving up to rivers in a 1848 kind of way - digging blindly for the quest of the untenable “shiny” thing ahead. Questioning how can we obtain the focus on the bird, sitting patiently, in the palm of our hand rather than the elusive one, way up there in the sky? The work can get ironic at times.
Your sculptures bring together materials that wouldn't normally sit side by side, marble with rough wood, metal with concrete, industrial and organic elements in one piece. How do you decide which materials belong together, and what guides those pairings during the making process?
I build pieces over time, and each of them is very process driven. My public interventions at times inform some of the work, it’s as if all those little incidents that happen to me are research that feed certain scenarios, people, encounters, and then it seeds a process and a composition that takes place later on. My writing activates certain combinations, and I think time passes before things fall into place – lots of the materials are hints to people, times, situations that are still present even if we wish to disregard and overlook them. They are all “sites of occurrence” And there’s equally a personal association with these depictions.
Your background spans design, fashion, and now fine art, which is a significant shift in how you engage with making. How has moving between those worlds changed the way you approach creating something physical, and do those earlier experiences still show up in how you work today?
I love fashion, or more accurately clothes – they have always been shells to me – a way of forming protection, defiance or expression. In that sense my connection to clothes is sculptural, and the body is very much present in the work I do in different ways, past and present, yet I refuse to form collections or garments where I have no control over the chains of destruction they entail. I have decided to make things that are not going down production lines and I am happier about that. I have worked with costumes for films in the past (like Scorsese’s wolf of wall street and more) and I love textiles, which I’m still doing, but I’m marching to my own conceptual drum as opposed to the whim of seasons and time… I am very interdisciplinary – I’ve always used drawing or painting as an extension of how I think – and so in that sense it’s still the same - It’s just that in my past fashion life I had a purpose that was entirely different. I like shifting between voices in relation to my experiences, and step in and out of skins often – what does this feel like now. What did it feel like then.
Phantom limbs 2025
Foot locker. 2025
Interventions 2023 - 2025
Coffee table I (front), 2025
Coffee table I back (detail) 2025
What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?
I love film. Cinema matters... Still, going to the cinema is one of my favourite experiences even if I don’t get to do it as often as I would want to. I sometimes rewatch golden oldies and I enjoy revisiting how incredibly significant they are to me. I recently re-watched Romero’s Night of the living dead and It’s a film that I find astonishing and particularly relevant still. I also love Dawn of the dead 1978. There are constant echoes of those two movies within many things visual to this day and I like watching it over and over (even if I’d already seen it I still marvel at its brilliance)
Tell us a bit about how you spend your day / studio routine? What is your studio like?
I spend time writing and making every day - the percentage of each facet changes according to what project I'm working on. My studio is messy and I like it that way… I have lots of different experiments, sculptures, paintings, things I’ve begun a while ago that I can return to. It’s a work in progress in itself. I try to paint most days - I paint most nights before I go to bed as it is the best way for me to reflect on the day and reach a near meditative place.
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
I’m currently working on a solo show as well as a duo show, I’m very excited about them. I’m working on my PhD work throughout – I’m doing my practice led PhD at the Royal College of Art.
All images courtesy of the artist
Interview publish date: 09/06/2026
Interview by Richard Starbuck
