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 The University of Reading is a public research university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as the University Extension College, Reading, an extension college of Christchurch College, Oxford, and became University College, ...

under Sir Terry Frost and Rita Donagh. In the early 1970s she had a studio in

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

where she associated with some of the key figures in the

Situationist International The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

, including philosopher and filmmaker

Guy Debord Guy-Ernest Debord (; ; 28 December 1931 – 30 November 1994) was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, critic of work, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situat ...

, the writer

Gianfranco Sanguinetti Gianfranco Sanguinetti (born 16 July 1948, Pully, Switzerland) is a writer who was a member of the Situationist International (SI), a political art movement. He is Teresa Mattei's son. Biography Sanguinetti was deported from France in 1971 and ...

and, later, the novelist and critic

Michèle Bernstein Michèle Bernstein (born 28 April 1932) is a French novelist and critic, most often remembered as a member of the Situationist International from its foundation in 1957 until 1967, and as the first wife of its most prominent member, Guy Debord. ...

. She presented some of her recollections of that time to an audience in Rio de Janeiro in 2015.

Artistic career

Dunhill is primarily a landscape painter and has also explored more abstract and semi-sculptural forms, including

mixed media In visual art, mixed media describes work of art, artwork in which more than one Art medium, medium or material has been employed. Assemblages, collages, and sculpture are three common examples of art using different List of art media, media. M ...

artworks inspired by the

surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

ideas of chance and the

found object A found object (a calque from the French ''objet trouvé''), or found art, is art created from undisguised, but often modified, items or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already hav ...

. For much of her artistic career Dunhill maintained studios in London but she now lives and works in

King's Lynn King's Lynn, known until 1537 as Bishop's Lynn and colloquially as Lynn, is a port and market town in the borough of King's Lynn and West Norfolk in the county of Norfolk, England. It is north-east of Peterborough, north-north-east of Cambridg ...

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

. 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. One of her

drawings Drawing is a visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, sometimes in com ...

selected from the Women Artists Slide Library was reproduced in ''The Women Artists Diary 1989''. Three of her paintings, and a discussion of the techniques she used to create them from her own original photographs, were reproduced in Diana Constance's book on painting from photographs published in 1995. In 2015 she was awarded a residency at Largo das Artes (now Despina), a contemporary art institute in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

, Brazil. For a solo show in London in 2019 she created a range of textured collages and three-dimensional constructions using recycled materials and found objects; and the same year created hanging "clouds" of ''Wondermesh'' as site-specific installations with cusp at the Undercroft Gallery in

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

. In her 2021 'Lockdown Landscape' exhibition, Dunhill presented some 20 new canvases of varying sizes, painted in acrylics without brushes, as her response to the changed and changing world of the

COVID-19 lockdown During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of non-pharmaceutical interventions, particularly lockdowns (encompassing stay-at-home orders, curfews, quarantines, and similar societal restrictions), were implemented in numero ...

. Her account of the effect of the lockdown on her art practice is published in ''Now This: Reflections on Our Arts and Cultures''.

Selected exhibitions

* 1984 - Kingsgate Gallery, London * 1990 - Piers Feetham Gallery, London * 1992 -

Hampstead Theatre Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in South Hampstead, in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. History The original ''Hampstead Theatre Clu ...

Gallery, London * 1994 - Piers Feetham Gallery, London * 1995 -

Gallery, London * 1998 -

Incomes Data Services Incomes Data Services (IDS) was a British research organisation dedicated to employment-related areas. Acquired by Thomson Reuters in September 2005, it was dedicated to providing original research, analysis and training on pay benchmarking, pay ...

, London * 2003 - 'Segments', Gallery 47, London * 2007 - Neptune Gallery, Hunstanton * 2012 - 'Tall & Thin', Greyfriars Art Space, King's Lynn * 2013 - '47 New Works', Flow Films, London * 2015 - Largo das Artes, Rio de Janeiro * 2018 - 'Plaster, Parquet & Pillars', Fermoy Gallery, King's Lynn * 2019 - 'Upscape', A/side-B/side Gallery, London * 2021 - 'Lockdown Landscape', Fermoy Gallery, King's Lynn * 2023 - 'Landscapes', Brick Lane Gallery, London ''(Selected from exhibition list on artist's website)''

Art historian

As an art historian, Dunhill completed an MPhil dissertation at the

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public university, public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, it is one of the original plate glass university, plate glass universities. The university comprises three camp ...

on the modernist American photographer Francesca Woodman. This thesis provides a detailed analysis of six photographic

artist's books Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that engage with and transform the form of a book. Some are mass-produced with multiple editions, some are published in small editions, while others are produced as one-of-a-kind o ...

that Woodman compiled in her lifetime, and examines them in the context of

surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

which, Dunhill argues, was a significant influence on Woodman. Her study of Woodman's book ''Some Disordered Interior Geometries'' was published in ''re•bus'' in 2008. Dunhill has presented papers on Woodman at academic conferences and gallery talks at the Douglas Hyde Gallery at

Trinity College Dublin Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Unive ...

and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. She contributed a memoir to a 2010 Paris exhibition catalogue of the artist and psychogeographer, and sometime Situationist,

Ralph Rumney Ralph Rumney (5 June 1934 – 6 March 2002) was an English artist, born in Newcastle upon Tyne, where his father was an Anglican vicar. In 1957 lifelong conscientious objector Rumney—he evaded National Service by going on the run in continen ...

, whom she had befriended in the latter years of his life; and her published reviews include an assessment of Claudia Herstatt's ''Women Gallerists'' for Tate Etc. She also reviewed Anna Anderson's ''Childhood Rituals'' exhibition at the Freud Museum in Hampstead in 2011 for ''Cassone: The International Online Magazine of Art and Art Books''. Following the publication in 2023 of a fine, complete facsimile edition of all Woodman's artist's books, Dunhill has made her thesis publicly available as an electronic book.

Poetry

Dunhill's early poetry collection, ''Gig Soup Scoop'', published in 1972 by a small alternative press, is now a rarity. She was an Arvon Foundation mentee in 1991, leading to publication in ''Joe Soap's Canoe''. Two of her prose poems were long-listed for the Fish Publishing

Flash Fiction Flash fiction is a brief fictional narrative that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by word count, include the For sale: baby shoes, never worn, six-word story; the 280-character story (also kn ...

Prize 2020. Also in that year two of her poems were published in the international online surrealist poetry '' SurVision Magazine''. Two further poems of hers were included in the ''Fenland Poetry Journal''; the cover art of this issue reproduces one of Dunhill's artworks. Her poetry pamphlet ''As Pure as Coal Dust'', a winner of the James Tate International Poetry Prize, was published by SurVision Books in June 2021. Her poems have appeared in two recent international anthologies; and in the online literary magazine ''Propel''. More recently, she has published several poems in response to Francesca Woodman's photographic images.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dunhill, Alison 1950 births Living people 20th-century English painters 21st-century English painters 20th-century English women writers 21st-century English women writers Alumni of the University of Essex Alumni of the University of Reading Artists from London British abstract artists English women historians English art historians English landscape painters British women art historians 20th-century English women painters 21st-century English women painters