Alison Dollery  is a Visual Artist, Writer, researcher and Curator of the Manufactured Body Project (Archives), who employs the materiality of her own body as both the medium and canvas for her work, engaging in a diverse array of artistic forms, expanding practices of drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, performance art, and writing. 

These forms are all unified around the lived experience of her body, which she refers to as having a "Manufactured Body". Her art practice and research have been deeply influenced by her journey of drastic weight loss and body transformation, allowing her to assert ownership over her embodied experiences.

"I use my body because it's the material I know the best; it's malleable, transformable, ethical and honest"...

"We (our bodies/ourselves) are just material constructed by language, knowledge and experience"

(Dollery, 2020-2024)

Education

Alison holds a 1st Class BA (Hons) In Fine Art from the UCA and is currently studying for her MFA in Arts and Humanities at the Royal College of Art, London with electives in curatorial practices. Her recent academic accomplishments build on her CIPD professional qualifications in Learning and Development and fifteen years of creative industry experience. 

Awards and Significant Exhibitions. 

Her performance practice includes the Selfie Adaptive Performance at the Tate Modern in 2019 and Manufactured Body Live at the Hawth Theatre in 2023. She has showcased her work nationally and internationally. Her exhibitions include multiple group shows; the most significant include the Oxo Tower 2018, Finding Space in 2023 and exhibiting digitally in Times Square New York in 2023. She was longlisted for the VAO artist and professional awards in 2022 and 2023, alongside honourable mentions at the NYPC4PA Human Body Exhibition in 2022. Alison has held multiple artist's talks, radio interviews and workshops around her practice alongside magazine publications and interviews. 

I have exhibited work nationally and internationally, including the Oxo Tower in 2018,  Visual Arts Open in 2022 and 2023 Longlist,  and honourable mention @NYPC4PA Human Body Exhibition 2022. So far in 2023, I have been longlisted for the VAA professional award 2023—alongside holding a five-room solo show in 2023, The Manufactured Body Exhibition, performing at the Hawth Theatre and exhibiting digitally in Times Square and Artist Talk Magazine.  This is alongside multiple group shows, artists' talks, magazine articles  and workshops. 

Curatorial Approach

Alison’s curatorial approach follows curating previous group shows Finding Place, Summer Exhibition 2024 and her solo show, The Manufactured Body Exhibition, in 2022 five room solo show in 2023. The 2023 solo show refocused her practice on transforming discussed spaces into art exhibitions and installations for community engagement and advocating for access to contemporary art. 

Alison is the current curator and artist for the POP Up Culture Levelling up programme in Crawley, West Sussex. 

She additionally continues to produce her Manufactured Body Archives as a curatorial practice that focuses around the body in art practice, humanities and social sciences. 

The Manufactured Body Project (2017-ongoing).

The Manufactured Body Project and Archive is the practice research project I have  been working on since 2017. 

I am interested in our bodies' transformative, visceral nature and using the artist's body as research. Using the artist's body this way changes our perceptions and hopefully provokes a conversation about how we manufacture our future bodies differently. 

My approach collapses the space between the artist and the life model and pushes what drawing, painting and photography can be when using the body to reimagine our bodies differently. It transcends and transforms all traditional interpretations of the body.