membership / artist member

Alistair Gentry

http://www.gentry-a.co.uk/
download cv here

I am a writer and artist, or an artist and writer. For the past ten years I have made and shown visual arts work across Britain and internationally.

My work is diverse, encompassing video, animation, installation, photography, text, performance, sound works, programming, electronics, roleplaying and various hybrid genres or formats derived from them. These commissions and self-initiated works have been seen and heard in digital media, on radio, television and the stage, in art galleries, at film festivals, in print and on the net.

Group exhibitions include ‘New Forest Pavilion’ at the La Biennale di Venezia 2005, ‘Blink’ at Gasworks Gallery, London in 2006, ‘Broadcast Yourself’ at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle and Cornerhouse, Manchester 2008, plus many other shows and festivals in the UK, Hong Kong, China, the Netherlands, Poland, Estonia, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Canada, the United States and Japan. Much of my work involves oratory and storytelling, sometimes in the form of performance lectures or roleplaying.

Interests and influences on my work include physics and
life sciences (and the fringe or pseudo-sciences that exist in the mainstream’s shadow), science fiction, traditional and contemporary folklore, little-known aspects of history, and the esoterica and Forteana of Britain, Europe and Asia.

Recent works have extensively researched and documented factual backgrounds, using scientific or academic forms and research methods either earnestly or satirically.

I have been artist in residence for New Media Scotland, the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at the University of Edinburgh (2006-2007) and Contemporary Art Terminal, He Xiangning Art Museum Shenzhen, China, 2007), among others. In 2004-2005 I was awarded an Arts Council England / English Heritage Berwick Gymnasium Artist Fellowship.

I’m the author of many short stories, reviews, critical texts and two published novels (‘Their Heads Are Anonymous’ and ‘Monkey Boys’). ‘Uncanny Valley: Collected Short Stories’ was published in 2008. ‘Career Suicide’— a non-fiction book about the practicalities of working as an artist— was published in October 2010. Future works include another novel.

- Alistair Gentry, 2010

http://www.artsway.org.uk