Tom Giwi

Tom Giwi’s work builds on an evolving visual language, with each new piece growing out of previous drawings. This creates a sense of continuity across their practice while allowing forms to shift and change. They are drawn to work that feels in progress — art that invites curiosity and leaves space for imagination.

Material clarity is essential to their process: metal should look and feel like metal, paper like paper. Surfaces aren’t obscured but revealed. Their background in design shows through in clean, refined compositions that feel contemporary and visually accessible.

Influences from childhood — cartoons, anime, toys, machines — quietly inform their work, not as references, but as emotional starting points. They aren’t aiming to replicate those aesthetics or work within illustration. Instead, they channel the energy, excitement, and sense of wonder those things sparked. The result is work that’s visually sharp, structurally considered, and open-ended in meaning.

While not created for a specific audience, the work aims to connect beyond the art world — to anyone willing to look closely, even those unfamiliar with or intimidated by abstract art. It remains playful and strange while asking to be taken seriously on its own terms.

Tom Giwi
tomgiwistudio@gmail.com
@tomgiwi_studio

Exhibtions

EBC WIP (2023) St Annes House
EBC Big Summer Blowout (2023) Peoples Republic of Stokes Croft
Metal Is Bendy (2024) D Unit
In Betweens (2025) Southwark Park Gallery
Rites of Ruins (2025) Peckham Safehouse

Education

Royal College of Art (RCA) MA Print, 2025
Day School (FKA East Bristol Contemporay Day School), 2023
University of the West of England (UWE) BA Illustration, 2020

02.

Tectonics

Acrylic Plastic, Screen Print, Mild Steel, Laser Cut and Engraving.

2025

Tectonics seeks to encapsulate the creative experience—the challenge of expressing abstract thoughts and emotions that often feel too vast to contain. Many creatives attempt to bring the depths of their inner world to the surface through their work, yet the process is never truly complete. As one piece reaches its conclusion, those depths shift, and the need to create begins again.

This work explores this perpetual motion, drawing inspiration from seismic diagrams that predict earthquakes caused by shifting tectonic plates. Just as these natural forces shape the earth, the creative force is immense, unpredictable, and beyond our control.

Engraved and printed onto clear acrylic, the piece invites light, reflection, and movement to continuously interact with it—ensuring it remains in flux, never static, and always evolving. Split into four panels, with three ‘plates’ engraved onto the surface, Tectonics embodies the idea that an artwork or artefact is not a singular whole but a convergence of smaller ideas developing over time. This is further emphasised by the printed textures, derived from scans of test pieces created before the final work—traces of the creative process embedded within the piece itself.