Alison J Carr

Artist @Yorkshire Artspace

Sheffield, GB

My artwork explores the complexities within the dazzle of feminine display, through responding to archival and found materials. I make drawings, collages, texts, photographs, videos, and performances, proposing theatres as sites of self-actualisation; classic Hollywood as a location of avant-garde art; chorus girl troupes as networks of support and community, and strip clubs as spaces of transformation. I depict the visible contradictions of bodily display – between hyper-visibility and invisibility, the loud and voiceless, power and powerlessness – my work investigates the boundaries between pleasure in performance and quiet reflection, between exhibitionism and our own interior worlds.I visualise the overlooked labour and lived realities of showgirls, whom I evoke as an archetype of sexiness and glamour and a complex web of relatable traits and desires. I ask: What kind of emancipation, and what kinds of prohibition, does visibility offer? I complicate easy dismissals of femininity and sexual display in favour of deeper enquiry and rigorously researched complexity.My book, Viewing Pleasure and Being A Showgirl, was published by Routledge.

California Institute of the Arts

MFA, Photo & Media

Sheffield Hallam University

BA (Hons), Fine Art (Combined & Media Art)

Sheffield Hallam University

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Fine Art