Catherine Elwes (born 1952) is a British artist, curator and critic working predominantly in the field of

video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. V ...

and a significant figure in the British

feminist art The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce feminist art, art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of co ...

movement.

Early life

She was born in

St Maixent Saint-Maixent () is a commune in the Sarthe department, in the region of Pays de la Loire, northwestern France. See also *Communes of the Sarthe department The following is a list of the 352 communes of the Sarthe department of France. Th ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. She studied at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

and later graduated with an MA in Environmental Media from the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

Career

Elwes began working with video in the late 1970s. In 1979 she performed ''Menstruation II,'' a three-day performance at

the Slade The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

which lasted for the duration of a menstrual period. She co-curated the exhibitions ''Women’s Images of Men'' (with

Jacqueline Morreau Jacqueline Morreau (18 October 1929 – 13 July 2016) was an American artist. Life She was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was the daughter of Eugene Segall, a furniture dealer, and his wife, Jennie (née Horo ...

) and ''About Time'' (with Rose Garrard and

Sandy Nairne Alexander Robert Nairne (born 8 June 1953) is a British art historian and curator. From 2002 until February 2015 he was the director of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Life and career Nairne was responsible for the successful recovery o ...

) at the ICA in 1980. She was the director of the biennial ''UK/Canadian Film & Video Exchange'' (1998-2006) at the

South London Gallery The South London Gallery, founded 1891, is a public-funded gallery of contemporary art in Camberwell, London. Until 1992, it was known as the South London Art Gallery, and nowadays the acronym SLG is often used. Margot Heller became its direct ...

and co-curator of ''Figuring Landscapes'' (2008-2010), an international screening exhibition on themes of landscape. Elwes has written extensively about feminist art, performance, installation, landscape and the moving image and is author of ''Video Loupe'' (K.T. Press, 2000), ''Video Art, a guided tour'' (I.B. Tauris, 2005), ''Installation and the Moving Image'' (Wallflower/Columbia University Press, 2015) and ''Landscape and the Moving Image'' (Intellect Books, 2022). Elwes is Founding Editor of the '' Moving Image Review & Art Journal'' (''MIRAJ'', Intellect Books) and has contributed to numerous anthologies, journals, exhibition catalogues and periodicals including ''Art Monthly'', ''Third Text'', ''MIRAJ'', the ''Millennium Film Journal'', ''Time Out'', ''Independent Media'', ''Performance Magazine'', ''Variant'', ''Filmwaves'' (of which she was an editor), ''Vertigo'' and ''Contemporary Magazine''. Elwes’ video practice is archived at

LUX The lux (symbol: lx) is the unit of illuminance, or luminous flux per unit area, in the International System of Units (SI). It is equal to one lumen per square metre. In photometry, this is used as a measure of the irradiance, as perceived by ...

online and

REWIND Rewind may refer to: General uses * Rewind, the process of winding magnetic tape inside a cassette or a microfilm reel backwards to a previous point on the reel ** Rewind symbol, a media control symbol indicating tape rewind or analogous operatio ...

. Elwes taught art for many years and was director of the early Digital Editing Research Programme at

Camberwell College of Art Camberwell College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art and design university in London, England. The college offers further and higher education programmes, including postgraduate and PhD awards. ...

in London. She retired as Professor of Moving Image Art from

Chelsea College of Art Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art and design university in London, England. It offers further and higher education courses in fine art, graphic design, interior design, produ ...

in 2017. She now lives in Oxford.

Notable artworks

* Menstruation II (1979), Slade College of Art * Kensington Gore (1982) * The critic's informed viewing (1982) * First House (1986) * Post-card (1986)

External links

Catherine Elwes at LUX Online

Catherine Elwes at REWIND

References

Living people 1952 births British women video artists British women curators British video artists British curators Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Alumni of the Royal College of Art 20th-century British artists 20th-century British women artists 21st-century British artists 21st-century British women artists {{UK-artist-stub