ALI DARKE
she/her | based in London
Ali Darke is an artist, curator and researcher. Through drawing and sculpture, she creates a scenography of the inner world in response to memory and myth, and the evocative language of psychoanalysis.
Ideas of ‘haunting’, echoes of trauma, loss and psychic fragmentation are viscerally expressed in materiality and form. Her work appears to hover between life and death, entrapment and escape.
Scavenging for discarded material, she transforms their dynamic potential through incongruent amalgamations and the making process. Cutting, stitching, stuffing, shaping, and then by hanging, pinning, or collapsing the forms, she plays with their gravity and presence in space. Hybrid beings emerge, testing unsettling tipping points of beauty, absurdity and abjection. Suggesting a hinterland between the mind and the body where the unconscious leaves a trace, she discovers the unexpected and uncannily familiar.
Education:
2014-21 - Professional Doctorate in Fine Art, University Of East London
2008-09 - PG Certificate in Learning and Teaching in HE, University Of The Arts, London
1991-93 - PG Higher Diploma in Theatre Design, Slade School Of Fine Art, UCL
1979-82 - BA (Hons) Theatre Design, Wimbledon School Of Art
Exhibitions:
2024 - upSCALE, Project 78, St Leonards.
2024 - In Out, collaboration with Hive Curates, UEL, Alice Billing Connects, BOTH, London
2023 - Museum of Rooms Gift Shop, London (co-curated)
2023 - Mother of All, Blue On The Hill, London
2023 - As Above So Below, Small House Gallery, London (solo show)
2023 - Open Studios, Bow Arts, London
2023 - Mother’s Ruin, 53 Blumen, Krefeld, Germany
2023 - Bound, Stone Space Gallery, London (solo show)
2023 - States of Exchange, Hypha Studios, London
2022 - Passaggi Atina: Memento Mori, hART’s Lane Gallery, London
2022 - Toil & Trouble: How We Find Out Who We Are, APT Gallery, Deptford, London (co-curated)
2022 - Common Place, Micro, Air Gallery, Manchester
2022 - Beastly, Wirksworth Arts Festival, Derbyshire (selected) (curated)
2022 - Wells Art Contemporary, Wells Cathedral
2022 - Passaggi Atina: Memento Mori, Cortile di Palazzo Ducale, Atina, Italy
2022 - Micro-Vestiges, One to Ten Gallery, Instagram
2022 - Open Studios, Bow Arts, London
2022 - Vestiges, hART’s Lane Gallery, London (co-curated)
2022 - London Independent Short Film Festival
2022 - Paris Short Film Festival
2021 - Memento Mori, AIR Gallery, Manchester
2021 - Professional Doctorate in Fine Art, Viva Exhibition, AVA Gallery, UEL
2020 - Between Walls, Safehouse Gallery, London (co-curated)
2020 - Passagiatina, hARTs Lane Gallery, London
Residencies:
2024 - Draw International: Caylus, France
2022 - Passagiatina: Atina, Italy
2021 - Waves Collective: Research and Development Residency, Ramsgate.
2019 - Passagiatina: Atina, Italy
2019 - Summer Lodge: Nottingham Trent University
* Please get in touch with the artist to request a full CV.
www.alidarke.com
@ali_darke
ali [at] alidarke.com