Alison Dunhill

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Alison Dunhill (born 1950) is an English artist and art historian, and also a published poet.

Biography[]

Born in London, Dunhill trained in Fine Art at the University of Reading under Sir Terry Frost and Rita Donagh. In the early 1970s she had a studio in Florence where she associated with some of the key figures in the Situationist International,[1] including philosopher and filmmaker Guy Debord, the writer Gianfranco Sanguinetti and, later, the novelist and critic Michèle Bernstein.

Artistic career[]

Dunhill was primarily a landscape painter in her early career, and then explored more abstract forms, including mixed media artworks inspired by the surrealist ideas of chance and the found object.[2][3]

For much of her artistic career Dunhill maintained studios in London but she now lives and works in King's Lynn, Norfolk where she has a studio in the 15th century Hanseatic warehouse known as Hanse House. In 2015 she was awarded a residency at Despina (previously known as Largo das Artes), a contemporary art institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[4] She has exhibited frequently; she is a Member of the National Society of Painters, Sculptors & Printmakers; and she was a founder member of the Kingsgate Workshops Trust.[5] In July 2019 she presented new works and site-specific installations with CUSP Artists at the Undercroft Gallery in Norwich.[6]

One of her drawings selected from the (WASL) was reproduced in The Women Artists Diary 1989.[7]

Three of Dunhill's paintings, and a discussion of the techniques she used to create them from her own original photographs, were reproduced in 's book on painting from photographs published in 1995.[8]

Alison Dunhill's account of the effect on her art practice of the Covid-19 lockdown is published in Now This: Reflections on Our Arts and Cultures.[9]

Selected solo exhibitions[]

  • 1984 - Kingsgate Gallery, London
  • 1990 - Piers Feetham Gallery, London
  • 1992 - Hampstead Theatre Gallery, London
  • 1994 - Piers Feetham Gallery, London
  • 1995 - Hampstead Theatre Gallery, London
  • 1998 - Incomes Data Services, London
  • 2003 - 'Segments', Gallery 47, London
  • 2007 - Neptune Gallery, Hunstanton
  • 2012 - Greyfriars Art Space, King's Lynn
  • 2013 - Flow Films, London
  • 2015 - Largo das Artes, Rio de Janeiro
  • 2018 - Fermoy Gallery, King's Lynn
  • 2019 - 'Upscape', A/side-B/side Gallery, London

(Selected from exhibition list on artist's website)[10]

Art historian[]

As an art historian, Dunhill completed an M.Phil thesis at the University of Essex on the modernist American photographer Francesca Woodman.[11][12] This thesis provides a detailed analysis of the six photographic books that Woodman compiled in her lifetime, and examines them in the context of surrealism which, Dunhill argues, was a significant influence on Woodman.[13] Her study of Woodman's book Some Disordered Interior Geometries[14] was published in re•bus in 2008.[15] Dunhill has presented papers on Woodman at academic conferences and gallery talks at the Douglas Hyde Gallery at Trinity College, Dublin and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.[5]

She contributed a memoir to a 2010 Paris exhibition catalogue of the artist and psychogeographer, and sometime Situationist, Ralph Rumney, whom she had befriended in the latter years of his life;[1] and her published reviews include an assessment of Claudia Herstatt's Women Gallerists for Tate Etc.[16][17] She also reviewed Anna Anderson's Childhood Rituals exhibition[18] at the Freud Museum in Hampstead in 2011 for Cassone: The International Online Magazine of Art and Art Books.[19]

Poetry[]

Dunhill's early poetry collection, Gig Soup Scoop, published in 1972 by a small alternative press,[20] is now a rarity.[21] She was an Arvon Foundation mentee in 1991, leading to publication in Joe Soap's Canoe.[22][23]

More recently, two of her prose poems were long-listed for the Fish Publishing Flash Fiction Prize 2020.[24] Also in that year two of her poems were published in Issue 7 of the international online surrealist poetry SurVision Magazine.[25] Two further poems of hers were included in the Autumn 2020 issue of the Fenland Poetry Journal;[26] the cover art of this issue reproduces one of Dunhill's artworks.[27]

Her poetry pamphlet As Pure as Coal Dust, a winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize,[28] was published by SurVision Books in June 2021.[29]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Ralph Rumney – La Vie d'artiste. Paris: Editions Allia. 2010. pp. 22–23. ISBN 978-2-84485-391-2.
  2. ^ "The Magical World of Alison Dunhill". 4 May 2018.
  3. ^ "Surrealist-inspired works to fill King's Lynn gallery". 14 April 2018.
  4. ^ "Despina: Artists in Residence".
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b "Alison Dunhill, Biography".
  6. ^ "CUSP Artists".
  7. ^ The Women Artists Diary 1989. London: The Women's Press. 1988. ISBN 978-0-7043-4134-0.
  8. ^ Constance, Diana (1995). Painting from Photographs. London: HarperCollins. pp. 63–65, 81. ISBN 0-00-412712-9.
  9. ^ Borlenghi, Patricia, ed. (April 2021). Now This: Reflections on Our Arts and Cultures. Manningtree, Essex: Patrician Press. pp. 11–15. ISBN 9781838 059804.
  10. ^ "Alison Dunhill, Exhibition History".
  11. ^ "Almost a square: The photographic books of Francesca Woodman and their relationship to surrealism". 2010.
  12. ^ "Francesca Woodman's Books".
  13. ^ "Francesca Woodman's Books: Introduction" (PDF).
  14. ^ Woodman, Francesca (1981). Some disordered interior geometries. Philadelphia: Synapse Press. OCLC 11308833.
  15. ^ Dunhill, Alison. Dialogues with Diagrams. re•bus, 2008 Autumn/Winter, issue 2.
  16. ^ Herstatt, Claudia (2008). Women Gallerists in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Berlin: Hatje Cantz. ISBN 978-3-7757-1975-9.
  17. ^ "Books Etc".
  18. ^ "Alice Anderson's Childhood Rituals".
  19. ^ Dunhill, Alison (May 2011). "Housebound at Freud's house". Cassone: The International Online Magazine of Art and Art Books.
  20. ^ Dunhill, Alison (1972). Gig Soup Scoop. London: Transgravity Advertiser.
  21. ^ "Gig Soup Scoop by Alison Dunhill. Transgravity Advertiser, London. Soft cover, Limited Edition - Colophon Books".
  22. ^ Stannard, Martin, ed. Joe Soap's Canoe. Felixstowe, 1992. ISSN 0951-4864
  23. ^ "Joe Soap's Canoe issue 15, 1992" (PDF).
  24. ^ "Flash Fiction Prize 2020 Long-list".
  25. ^ "SurVision Magazine / Alison Dunhill, issue 7, 2020".
  26. ^ Dunhill, Alison. Fenland Poetry Journal. Issue 3, Autumn 2020. pp. 34, 48. ISSN 2632-8259
  27. ^ Sennitt Clough, Elisabeth, ed. Fenland Poetry Journal. Issue 3, Autumn 2020. p. 2. ISSN 2632-8259
  28. ^ "James Tate Prize".
  29. ^ Dunhill, Alison (June 2021). As Pure As Coal Dust. Dublin, Ireland & Reggio di Calabria, Italy: SurVision Books. ISBN 9781912963232.

External links[]

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