Alice Channer

Alice Channer is a Lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she teaches within the Department of Art. An established contemporary artist, her work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Venice Biennale, Liverpool Biennale, and numerous solo exhibitions across Europe and the United States.

Channer received her academic qualifications from prestigious institutions: MA Sculpture with Distinction from the Royal College of Art, London (2008); BA Fine Art (Studio Practice and Contemporary Critical Studies) with First Class honors from Goldsmiths College, London (2006); and BA English Literature with First Class honors from the University of Sussex (1999).

Alice Channer's artistic practice centers on sculpture, exploring the complex relationships between industrial and natural processes. Her method is both experimental and precise, involving deep immersion in organic and synthetic materials to develop polyphonic sculptural works. She collaborates with machines, materials, and people to create forms that simultaneously reveal and transform their production processes. Channer's work consistently challenges conventional distinctions between the natural and artificial, the organic and industrial, often incorporating elements such as fossilized materials, industrial byproducts, and processed organic matter. Her sculptures frequently incorporate marks of their making that would typically be removed in conventional practice, deliberately destabilizing predictable affects and values.

Her recent publications and exhibitions demonstrate a sustained investigation into material transformation and process. The comprehensive monograph 'Heavy Metals / Silk Cut' (2023) accompanying her solo exhibition at Kunstmuseum and Kunsthalle Appenzell represents a significant overview of her work over twelve years. Her writing, such as 'Sand in the Vaseline: On 21st Century Process Art' (2022), contributes to critical discourse on contemporary sculptural practice. Her work often engages with themes of de-anthropocentrism, material violence, and the complex relationships between human and non-human processes, presenting a form of realism that confronts difficult material realities of contemporary industrial processes.

Channer has been actively involved in teaching at Goldsmiths while maintaining a robust exhibition schedule. Her studio practice involves extensive collaboration with industrial facilities and processes, from chroming factories to specialized manufacturing sites. She has created numerous public commissions, including 'Rockpool' for High Desert Test Sites (2022), 'Nanowires' for the University of the West of England (2021), and 'Lethality and Vulnerability' for Artangel (2021). Her work often requires transforming domestic spaces into temporary production sites, as seen in her mussel shell processing for 'Linear Bivalves.'

Her studio practice operates at the intersection of artistic creation and industrial production, frequently collaborating with specialized industrial facilities including chroming factories and metal coating operations. She documents these processes extensively, as seen in the photographic sequences of ammonite casts moving through industrial coating tanks. Channer's work represents a distinctive bridge between fine art practice and industrial manufacturing processes, revealing the often-invisible systems that shape our material world while challenging conventional sculptural aesthetics and values.