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The Manufactured Body Exhibition. 17th -19th March 2023.
The Manufactured Body Exhibition is the first formal exhibition of the artist Alison Dollery and her Manufactured Body research project, ongoing since 2017 and the artist’s extensive interdisciplinary (hybrid) art practice within contemporary art.
The six-room exhibition is taking place at The Ancient Priors, Crawley, West Sussex, transforming retail and historic grade 2 listed buildings and spaces into art experiences in conjunction with Wordfest 2023.
The provocative, visceral and discursive Manufactured Body Project concerns the artist’s lived experience of extreme weight loss and what has been manufactured into our bodies’ materiality and socially. The themes address current topics on body image, disorders, objectification, posthumanism, alienation and transformation of our 21st-century bodies. The artist will be present on-site to discuss the work and the project which has been heavily informed by post 1970’s feminist performance/body artists and historic paintings of the female nude.
Artworks on display show how the artist uses the body as research and the body’s material as the medium and tool within hybrid art practices that expand the mediums and materials of drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking and performance art and its material trace. This included archival material, film, process, writings, sketchbook work, and images from the artists’ public and private collections.
The writings included in the exhibition will highlight literature informing the Manufactured Body Language and the artist’s research and writing. Through the work, the artist continually uses the body to collapse space between the artist, performer, viewer, life model, curator and lived experience and a non-performance or the material reality of our bodies. The exhibition will include local artists’ work in response to the artists’ body.
The show has parental guidance of 12+ as themes of sexuality, nudity and discussions around diets, weight loss and surgery arise in work. The artist is pioneering artwork documenting the lived experience of extreme weight loss and surgery. However, it is necessary to understand that the lived experience is a protagonist, and the work speaks to broader social issues around the body as a subject and an object. The exhibition is an experience for everyone to experience the body differently in contemporary art and promote the positivity of how our bodies matter.
Alison Dollery has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the OXO tower London, and the Hawth Theatre, with performances at the Tate Modern and photography awards in New York. Alison holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the UCA and is CIPD qualified.
Alison Dollery advocates for increasing arts within the local area in line with Crawley (Crawley is Arts Council England’s priority place for arts and culture development); therefore, entrance is free and accessible to all visitors.
The history of the building The Ancient Priors will be available at the exhibition or at Crawley Museum and online.
Additionally the foyer of the exhibition space features contemporary paintings and artworks from a group of professional artists making work on the themes of experience and memory that are suitable for all ages.
Please contact Alison Dollery for further information and events taking place at the exhibition.
Alison Dollery
Free tickets are available online: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/wordfest-crawley-6321520039
However, to promote inclusivity, entrance is available on the day. With tickets people can arrive at any time during the day. Please see www.wordfestcrawley.org/2023-events-programme for other events also taking place the same weekend.