Rosie Leventon

Leventon studied Chinese Language & Archaeology from 1974 to 1975 at London University, before completing her bachelor's degree in Fine Art from Croydon College of Art 1976-1979, followed by a Post Graduate in Advanced Sculpture at Central St Martins School of Art 1980–81.

A recurring theme running through her artistic practice is that of things that have been lost, hidden, or forgotten.

Leventon was commissioned by Stour Valley Arts to make two large earthworks which are situated in Kings Wood in Stour Valley, Kent, and form part of the Stour Valley Sculpture Trail alongside other artworks. Both pieces were shortlisted for the Rouse Kent Award for Public Art and Ring was the winner. Made in 2004, it is a concave circular piece dug out of the land itself, inspired by Anglo-Saxon barrow fields and prehistoric earthworks found in the local area in Kent. Usually filled with water, it also acts as a water source for deer in the forest. Leventon's second work in Kings Wood made in 2004 is B52, she chose this aircraft because it was the time of the Iraq war and it is such a powerful symbol . Her idea was to subvert the destructive and aggressive power of the aircraft into a living growing piece - it consists of a clearing in the monoculture of coppiced sweet chestnut trees cut into the negative shape of the American bomber . The cleared woodland allows light and biodiversity onto the forest floor.

From 2014 Leventon was commissioned by the Woodland Trust to make a permanent Earthwork for the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Woods situated in Normanton le Heath, Leicestershire, UK. The form of this artwork responds to local prehistoric archaeology. Taking on the theme of time the work consists of a large corkscrew spiral structure which visitors can interact with by walking along the spiral path into the concave centre, which is surrounded by a ring of Oaks and Wild Service trees and a further ring of bushes selected to be of particular value to birds.

Responding to a commission from the Dorset-based arts organisation b-side in 2018 Leventon produced an installation Endangered Dust for the courtyard of Portland Museum. Part of an ongoing series influenced by vernacular architecture, the form of Endangered Dust was inspired by prehistoric stone chambers cut into the rock in the Isle of Portland known as Beehive Chambers. Leventon's work was constructed from layers of hand cut plywood taking the conical beehive forms as its starting point, lit from the inside.

In 2000 she was commissioned to make a piece for the National Maritime Museum responding to the history of HMS Implacable, a Ship of the Line of which only the salvaged stern and figurehead remained. Her piece Absentee is a ghostly re-creation of the ship made from hundreds of pieces of glass. It is now suspended in the Queens House at the side of the museum beside the Turner painting The Fighting Temeraire. It is now at the Museums storage facility at Kidbrooke pending reorganisation of some of the galleries.