Passmore Locher is the collaborative contemporary art practice of artist filmmaker Jacqueline Passmore and artist architect Heidi Locher. Together, we create emotional, elemental, and transformative spaces.
Our work raises bold questions about the natural world, drawing on our expertise in film and architecture to explore joint notions through immersive installations, expansive moving image works, sculptural forms, and the built environment.
We are an international, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational partnership of female artists, united by a shared sense of intrigue.
We operate between London, England, and our purpose-built studio in Puglia, Southern Italy. Designed by Heidi Locher, our studio is housed in Villa Zagara Lecce, a transformed ancient Puglian family villa, now reborn as a modernist sanctuary and artistic compound.
Jacqueline Passmore is an award-winning artist and filmmaker. Her films and installations immerse audiences in stories and sensory experiences which ignite moments of clarity and human connection. Exhibited widely internationally by institutions and festivals including Tate Modern, Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), Aesthetica Film Festival, Foundation for Art & Creative Technology (FACT), Tate Liverpool, Festival International de Cine de Huesca, and Coachella, Passmore builds visually captivating, spare cinematic constructions which invoke vast narratives, inciting viewers to explore large ideas like empathy and perception. Noted for her visual and technical experimentation, Passmore began her career creating her own live hand-manipulated film and video performances on international tours with musicians, including seminal female-led electronic groups Stereolab and Ladytron. As a filmmaker, she has directed visually pioneering films and video installations for major museums, designers, and record labels, like the Design Museum, Zaha Hadid Architects and Island Records. Passmore is American-British, and of Sámi descent.
Architect and artist Heidi Locher has been called “a quiet kind of living legend.” After studying Architecture at the Royal College of Art, Locher began her career across a desk from Sir Terence Conran before co-founding the award-winning modernist architectural practice Paxton Locher with her late husband Richard Paxton. Locher has designed some of the most lauded and ground-breaking private houses in London for distinguished clientele including Douglas Adams and Gryff Rhys Jones, as well as public buildings such as Soho Theatre and Jerwood Space. Evident in the modernist expressions of Wallace House and Clerkenwell Green, Paxton Locher’s work is identifiable for its clarity of vision and refusal to compromise, attributes which continue to characterise Locher’s artistic practice. Locher’s critically acclaimed painting, video, and installation works have exhibited internationally, drawing deeply from the modernist worldview so concisely expressed in her buildings - possessing at their heart the same desire to communicate and stimulate which has set her apart as an enduring luminary of British design.