Neil Conroy and Lesley Sanderson (born in Britain and Malaysia respectively) work collaboratively as Conroy/Sanderson. They work with mixed media, photography, drawing and video, often combined in installations.
Neil Conroy and Lesley Sanderson (born in Britain and Malaysia respectively) work collaboratively as Conroy/Sanderson. They work with mixed media, photography, drawing and video, often combined in installations.
Conroy/Sanderson’s practice explores themes surrounding displacement, the transitional, the foreign, and ideas of visibility. Collaboration is used as a conceptual strategy to debate connectivity between individuals, culture, gender and ethnicity. For them, their collaborative practice challenges hierarchies within visual representation, allowing them to “blur, distort, or circumvent the perceived or imposed hierarchies associated with cultural and racial hegemonies”. iBy juxtaposing modes of representation and employing a collaborative methodology, they aim to signal the shifting nature of subjectivity and to infer hybrid perspectives.
There is a performative quality to much of their work. Although Conroy/Sanderson often use the self-portrait, their identity is frequently disguised, hidden or obscured in an exploration of agency, control and disaffection as experienced by individuals. Using themes of visibility and its denial they both offer and deny themselves as spectacle
Conroy/Sanderson
[email protected], [email protected]
EDUCATION
1981-1984 BA (Hons) Fine Art: Sculpture (Neil Conroy), Sheffield City Polytechnic
1981-1984 BA (Hons) Fine Art: Painting & Printmaking (Lesley Sanderson), Sheffield City Polytechnic
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
*2018 Here I Am, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield
*2006 Out of nowhere, The Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester
*2005 here we are PM Gallery and House, London.
*2003 Elsewhere, Crawford Museum and Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland.
*2000 7/5, Leeds Metropolitan Gallery, Leeds.
1994-5 These Colours Run. (LS) Touring one person exhibition. Wrexham Arts Centre; The Mappin; Leeds City Art Gallery; Midlands Art Centre; The Bluecoat.
1988 Trip over This, (NC) The Mappin, Sheffield.
1986 Neil Conroy. Artist in Industry, Leeds City Museum and Art Gallery , Leeds.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
*2018 Hope is Strong, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield
*2017 Public View, Bluecoat, Liverpool
*2016 Now! Now! In more than one place, Chelsea School of Art, London
*2014 The Negligent Eye, Bluecoat, Liverpool.
*2010 Negotiable Values, Manchester and 501 Artspace, Chongqing, China
*2008 East-South: Out of Sight, Guangzhou Triennial, China.
*2007 Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall, Norway.
*2006 37 Seconds, Programme Thirteen, BBC Big Screen, Liverpool.
* Cruel/Loving Bodies 2, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong
* Distance, Galerie 5020, Salzburg, Germany
*2005 Polyphony - Collaborative Practices, Part 2. Collaborative practices at the intersection between art & politics. Shedhalle, Zurich.
* Intimate Landscapes, Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China.
* Transmission: Portfolio, Haus am Luetzowplatz, Berlin, Germany
* Transmission: Portfolio, Redux, London
*2004 Cruel /Loving Bodies 1, Duolun Museum of Modern Art,Shanghai, China .
* Cruel /Loving Bodies 1, 798 Space, Dashanzi Art District, Beijing, China.
* Strangers to Ourselves, 201 St John Street, London.
* Inter ... , The Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston.
* The Biggest Draw, The Millennium Galleries, Sheffield.
* Questionmark, Wait, Error, Understood, The MK Ciurlionis State Museum, Kaunas, Lithuania.
* 2003 Strangers to Ourselves, Hastings Museum & Art Gallery, commission, touring
* 2000 EAST International, Norwich Art Gallery, Norwich.
* 7/5 , Leeds Metropolitan Gallery, Leeds.
*1998 Blink; Conroy/Sanderson; Kim Merrington, The Loading Bay, London.
*1998-9 Lines of Desire ; an International Drawing Exhibition, The Bluecoat Gallery, Oldham Art Gallery, Wrexham Arts Centre, Newlyn Arts Centre & the Pitshanger Manor Gallery.
1997-8 Transforming the Crown, The Bronx Museum and Studio Museum, New York, U.S.A.
1997 Marking Presence, Contemporary Drawings from Britain, Artsway, the New Forest.
1996 Works on Paper, National Gallery of Mongolia, Ulan Batar, Mongolia
1990 New North ; New Art from the North of Britain. The Tate Liverpool,
& toured to Laing Gallery; Tramway; Orchard Gallery; and The Mappin.
1990 The British Art Show, McClellan Galleries, Glasgow; Leeds City Art Gallery; Hayward Gallery.
1991 Four X 4; Installations by sixteen Artists in four Galleries, The Harris, Preston.
Search for Self, Ikon Gallery touring exhibition.
History and Identity, Norwich Gallery touring exhibition.
1989 North by Northwest, The B.B.K., Cologne, Germany.
1988 Black Art - Plotting the Course, Oldham Art Gallery, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Bluecoat Gallery.
1987 72 Degrees of Longitude, Yale University, Connecticut, U.S.A.
1986 New Contemporaries, The ICA, London.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Sheffield City Art Galleries, Walsall Museum and Art Galleries, Leeds City Art Galleries,
*Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai.
AWARDS/COMMISSIONS
* Making Ways commission for Here I Am exhibition. 2018
*Nominated onto the long-list for The Northern Art Prize. 2008.
*Commission for “The Biggest Draw” exhibition, The Millennium Galleries, Sheffield. 2004.
*Grants for the Arts, Grants for Individuals, Arts Council England Yorkshire. 2004
*Commission for new work for“strangers to ourselves”, Hastings and London. 2003.
Linbury Fellowship in Drawing, Wimbledon School of Art. 1995 - 97.
The Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists. Nominated i n 2000 & 2001.
*Year of the Artist, Research and Development Award. 2000.
*AFE Arts Council of Great Britain Award. 1998.
Yorkshire and Humberside Individual Artists Awards. 1994.
Arts Council Residency , Systime Computer Industries, Leeds. 1987.
CURATORIAL
2004 Inter ... , The Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston.
Co-curated with Julie Westerman. Two off-site commissions by Neville Gabie and Noble & Silver accompanied a gallery exhibition with artists David Mabb, Susan MacWilliam, Leo Fitzmaurice, Julie Westerman and Conroy/Sanderson.
CONFERENCE PAPERS/PANELS
2007 “Male Body Fatigue’, Vital Bodies International Conference, Liverpool John Moores University, UK.
2007 Chair of “Artists and Social Context”, Persistence Works, Sheffield. Speakers included David Harding OBE and Jason E Bowman.
2004 Change and Fabrication: The Body as a Site for the Feminine and Inter-cultural.
Conference at The Fudan University, Shanghai entitled “Feminism in China since The Women’s Bell”. Organised by Fudan University, China, and University of Michigan, USA.
*2004 Conroy/Sanderson. Transmission Lecture series, The Showroom, Sheffield.
2002 At Odds - An evolving Response.Paper for the conference “Chinese Contemporary Arts in the International Arena”. The British Museum, London.
2002 Transmission: Speaking and Listening. The Baltic, Gateshead.
CITATIONS IN PUBLICATIONS
Eds. Sarah Champion, Ying Kwok & David Hancock, 21; Discussions with artists of Chinese descent in the UK, (2008), published by Chinese Arts Centre. Pg 88- 93, colour illustrations pg 89 –93. ISBN 978-0-9545440-4-1.
Eds. David A. Bailey, Ian Baucom, Sonia Boyce, (2005). Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain. Duke Press.
*Eds. Dennis Atkinson & Peter Dash, (2005). Social and Critical Practices in Art Education. Trentham Press.
* Helen McDonald, (2001). Erotic Ambiguities: The Female Nude in Art, Routledge Press.
Nicola Foster and Penny Florence, (2000). Differential Aesthetics, Ashgate Press.
Eddie Chambers, (1991). Run Through the Jungle: Selected writings by Eddie Chambers. inIVA Press.
Rosemary Betterton, (1996) An Intimate Distance ; Women, Artists and the Body . Routledge Press.
Lynda Nead, (1992). The Female Nude. Art, Obscenity and Sexuality. Routledge Press.
Eds. Bonner, F, Goodman, L, Allen, R, James L, King, C. (1992). Imaging Women. Cultural Representations and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
* Collaborative practice