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Biography
Alex Roberts is an artist, lecturer and collaborative researcher who curates art exhibitions and platforms of exchange. Her research interests in perception, observation and surveying empathetic gestures and recollected encounters: exploring the spectacle and non-reveal of identity, resonate in her role as Lecturer in Drawing at Duncan Jordanstone College of Art and Design. Alex steers life drawing and wider drawing practice for interdisciplinary Art & Design.
Research
Alex's practice and research process frequently develops as a two-fold method: the personal, studio-based form of research centred around the relationships of painting (and drawing), painting through drawing, drawing through painting. Often extending to public, collaborative form of curation which seeks to examine how painting beholds the viewer. Latest examples are The Performativity of Painting at The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich Galleries, and Arts Council England & British Council funded, Connect: Katowice, a British-Polish, yearlong exchange and series of exhibitions.
Working with paint and translucence, she addresses paintings’ surface, layers and spatial depth, via the play of colour and immediacy of marks. Testing the sliding scales of figuration and abstraction, her focus probes the instability of perceived identity, change, and encounters. Reviewing the expansive aspects of body language, hints of narrative, performativity and embodiment that equate with painting. Charged by these series of studio relationships often the candid paintings’, sensitive installations implicate or stage the viewer as protagonist.
Alex exhibits internationally, recent inclusions: Happy Hour, Kristin Hjellegjerde - Melior Place London; PaintLounge BERLIN; Control to Collapse, Blyth Gallery; St. Paul’s Cathedral; What Hat am I Wearing Today? MOCA London; Connect: Katowice, Rondo Gallery Katowice, Poland. Awards, Wells Art Contemporary 2020 - shortlisted, exhibiting artist; VC2020 Scholarship research funding, De Montfort University Leicester; listed for Jackson’s Open Painting Prize; AA2A residency - Bucks New University; Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust; The Eaton Fund; Arts Council England & British Council Grant - The Artists' International Development Fund; HIX Award finalist; short-listed for The Red Mansion Art Prize and Contemporary Visions VI, Beers London.
Teaching
Alex completed her MAFA at Chelsea College of Arts along with previous study at the University of Arts London: 2D Digital Design for Communication, following a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from The University of Reading. She joined DJCAD having formerly worked as a Lecturer in Fine Art (BA Module Leader for Drawing and for MA Fine Art Studio Practice) at Leicester School of Art, De Montfort University (2019-21). Beforehand teaching drawing and painting at The Edge, The University of Bath (2013-2019) and The Drawing Week, Bath Spa University (2018-20). She continues to work as a Lecturer at Bauhaus Summer School, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, alongside supporting Drawing Projects UK and Freies Zeichnen, Mediadesign Hochschule Berlin as a visiting Artist/ Lecturer.
Other academic roles include being the external examiner for BA Fine Art, University of Northampton, and a practice-based, PhD co-examiner at DMU. Alex holds an accredited teaching and learning Fellowship (FHEA) from Advance HE. Resulting from her PG Cert in Professional Learning in Higher Education and additional MA Education module, e-learning Pedagogy and Application at Bath Spa University.