Asides

Alexa Wright is an artist living and working in London (UK). She works with photography, video, sound and objects to make works that interrogate the boundaries of what we consider acceptably human. She is fascinated by narrative, and is especially interested in fragmenting and recontextualising particular personal narratives that can reveal so much about what it is to be human. Motivated by her own sense of strangeness and displacement, Alexa’s curiosity is channelled into unsettling works that challenge the viewer or listener to move out of their comfort zone. In the making of these works she often takes herself into situations where people are at their limits. These include: US jails, where she interviewed people convicted of murder, the opera, where she photographed singers during and after performance, and, most recently, two day centres for people recovering from acute mental difficulties.

Process is an important part of the work, which is often collaborative or participatory, and much of it is interactive. For example, the computer installation ‘Alter Ego’ (2005), a kind of virtual mirror where people interact with their own avatar, and ‘Conversation Piece’ (2009), an audio installation that draws attention to the mechanics of human interaction by giving the user the sense that he or she is entering into an intimate dialogue with an invisible virtual character. The photographic and video works, such as the digitally manipulated photographic self-portraits with disabilities, ‘I’ (1999) or the video installation Cover Story (2006-9), which explores the effects of facial deformity, also provoke viewers to become aware of the mechanisms we use to relate to human difference.

Alexa has exhibited in a range of different contexts, both nationally and internationally. Exhibitions include: The Flesh of The World, Justina M Barnicke Gallery/University of Toronto Art Centre (2015); Slippage, The Unstable Nature of Difference, Chester University Gallery (2015); Crafting Anatomies, Bonington Gallery, Nottingham (2015); Hybrid Bodies, PHI Centre, Montreal (2014); Jersey Arts Centre, St Helier, Jersey (2013); Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston (2012); Photographer’s Gallery, London (2012); 21_21 Design Sight Gallery, Tokyo (2010); Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien, Berlin, (2010); Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast (2009); BM Suma Gallery, Istanbul, (2008); Centro de Historia, Zaragoza, Spain (2008); SESI Art Gallery, Sao Paolo (2007); Incheon Arts Centre, Korea (2007); Powerhouse Museum, Sydney (2006); Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh (2006).