June – October 2017
Dagenham- UK
Alice Theobald’s practice draws upon a mixture of pop cultural references to develop multifaceted installations that incorporate sculpture, music, performance, and video. During her residency at The White House, Alice will be drawing on her long-term research into how certain stereotypes and cliché function in relationship to popular culture and the spectrum of acting and performance present in our everyday lives to create a new artwork.
How have overlooked and accepted conventions, representations and an increasing demand for “authentic” display, as depicted through media and popular culture, affected our experience of living truthfully? In what ways can we, the public, re-gain agency over what moves us (both physically and emotionally) and how we feel, behave and subsequently lead our lives by better understanding the tools of mass-communication? How do we judge what constitutes genuine behaviour and why is it important to be discussing this now?
To untangle some of these ideas, Alice will be talking to a variety of local groups from different generations in the borough as well as using the 1961 Standards in the Arts quote from Dagenham’s Local Arts Council conference “Making good things popular and popular things good” as a starting point.
Alice Theobald (b.1985 Leicester) lives and works in Huntingdon and graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2014. Recent performances, exhibitions, and film screenings include: Weddings and Babies, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2017); The Next Step, Two Queens, Leicester (2016); Alice Theobald and Atomik Architecture, BALTIC Ryder Commission, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2016); You’ve got my back and I’m on your side, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims (2016); NEO-PAGAN BITCH-WITCH!, Evelyn Yard, London (2016); The Boys The Girls The Political, Lisson Gallery, London (2015); The Fifth Artist, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2015); Scene Four: Home, Flat Time House, London (2015); Open Source, Gillett Square, London (2015); Dear Luxembourg (yours, bucktoothed girl), Nosbaum Reding Projects, Luxembourg (2015); Marmalade Me, South London Gallery, London (2014); I’ve said yes now, that’s it., Outpost, Norwich (2014); I’ve said yes now, that’s it., Chisenhale Gallery, London (2014); AFTER/HOURS/DROP/BOX, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2013), Spike Island, Bristol (2014); Young London, V22, London (2013); They Keep Putting Words In My Mouth! An Operetta of Sorts, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2013); Situation|Event, Gasworks, London (2013); 6th Tropical Lab, ICA, Singapore (2012). She is currently working on an opera as a member of Ravioli Me Away ( w/ Siân Dorrer and Rosie Ridgway) at Wysing Arts Centre, touring to Nottingham Contemporary and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in 2018.Supported by London Borough of Barking & Dagenham, Arts Council England and Genesis Foundation.