“A friend said my superpower is to make serious things seem lighhearted.” Danielle Radojcin meets artist Nicole Wermers at Herald St’s Museum Street space in Bloomsbury, London, where she was showing her new exhibition Tails & Fainters. Best known for her sculptural assemblages that slyly explore class, gender and the unseen labour that shapes urban life, Wermers talks through the thinking behind this latest body of work.

Born in 1971 in West Germany, Wermers moved to London in the 1990s and has lived and worked here ever since. She studied at Central Saint Martins and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2015 for her exhibition Infrastruktur.  Her installation, The Violet Revs, representing a fictional female biker gang, is currently on display at Tate Modern. She’s also a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and her work continues to offer a sharp, humorous commentary on the shifting landscapes of cities and the invisible forces shaping how we live.

Portrait of Nicole Wermers. Courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London. Photo by Peter Guenzel.