Welcome to my website. It’s a sort of online scrapbook of thoughts, ideas, art practice etc. I post my news on this page, below. To see my latest blog posts, follow the links on the right. Also on the right are links to my other web presences and also my friends. To see my art, click the tab ‘Pages’ for the drop-down menu. There you will find media-specific sections like ‘Photography’ ‘Video & Sound’ etc, and also my CV. It takes some browsing to see my art projects. You can contact me at: ajc@alisonjcarr.net.
I shall submit my funded practice-led PhD in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University in April 2013. In 2009 I completed my MFA Photo & Media at the California Institute of the Arts. I got my BA (Hons) Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University in 2001. (See CV section)
I am a strayed photographer and my art practice now takes a number forms: photography, video, performance and writing. My life changed when I was at a car boot sale in August 2005. I saw a tin of cigarette cards and I leafed through all. Each depicted a pin-up photograph with a mini biography on the back. For reasons unfathomable to me, I wanted to be in the photograph. I bought all 10 photographs featuring dancers and knew immediately I wanted to re-create them all. This led to my series Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs.
My PhD research is a development of this project. In my research, How Do I Look? and I have been thinking about the showgirl figure and my female mode of viewing showgirls and putting this into a wider critical context. My research approach involves watching lots of showgirl shows, from large-scale Parisian and Vegas spectacles, burlesque cabarets, and gentlemen’s clubs (do feel free to give me complimentary tickets to your show). I also interview showgirls of all kinds. I have been thinking about glamour, agency, and what it means to be an artist, a feminist, and a dilettante showgirl.
Allie X
If you want to see new theatre photographs and my cigarette card recreations nicely framed, alongside photographs by Jessa Fairbrother and India Hobson, then sign up here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/4501165106#
It’s a one-off open to the public champagne reception in the DLA Piper offices, Sheffield on 1st November. I think it’ll be an exciting event!
I have completed the second chapter of my PhD thesis. For it, I visited 18 showgirl spectacles, cabarets and gentlemen’s clubs and considered how these shows made me feel. I’m really keen to think of this chapter as in dialogue with performers rather than about them, at a distance, and so I would love to circulate my chapter to showgirls of all stripes and other performers in order to include their footnoted responses to my text. Email me if you would like to have a read. I visited shows including Jubilee and Vegas! The Show in Las Vegas, The Moulin Rouge and Lido in Paris, Yma in Berlin, burlesque shows in London like La Reve and Bete Noir and also Spearmint Rhino. Do let me know if you’d like to take a read and I’ll email it to you. In particular, I have not been able to send to a stripper/showgirl. Thanks!
I’ve uploaded a few things if you want to see some of my recent output. Here’s the paper I delivered at the Onscenity Network’s Bodies Seminar, Tits, Teeth & Talent, The Showgirl’s Body and What She Can Do With It, which you can also access via the ‘Writing’ section.
The complete Video Letters dialogue with Kerstin Honeit, which formed the main part of our exhibition at LoBe, Berlin and SIA gallery, Sheffield, is viewable here: Vimeo Showtime.
When I delivered Tits & Teeth, at the end I presented a video of me dancing the Charleston to Lady Gaga. That was the final Video Letter in the Video Letters: Body conversation with Kerstin. If you want to view that by itself in conjunction with the paper, I’ve also uploaded it here.
My blogpost on visiting Spearmint Rhino has been published in the Brockington Review. A print version is in production, but you can access it online here.
I’m June’s Artist of the Month on Axis, the online database of artists and curators! You can read the interview I took part in for it, here.
Kerstin Honeit and I collaborate on a final goodbye ‘Video Postcard’ which will be screened at Babylon Kino, tonight, in Berlin. Press Release details here.
I will be chairing / hosting Kerstin Honeit’s talk at Transmission on Wednesday 29 February 5 to 7 p.m., at Pennine Lecture Theatre, Sheffield Hallam University. See here.
Showtime, the show that Kerstin Honeit and I put together in Berlin is coming to Sheffield! Opening event on 1st March. See here.
Here’s the performance paper I delivered at ‘Who Do We Think We Are: Representing the Human’, in March 2011 at the Royal Holloway The Showgirl Speaks! Paper
The show that I’m involved in at LoBe is finally happening! The show is opening on 16th December, come say hi if you are in Berlin. For more info, here’s a link to the press release: press_Carr_Honeit-final
| © 2010 Alison J Carr | Website: oooweb | Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha |
