ALEXIS SOUL-GRAY

Appropriation and detournement of paper ephemera and found objects are central to Soul-Gray’s process, becoming reference materials that are first gathered and then – gently, or at times forcefully - unmade, defaced, recreated. The artworks that emerge are a manifestation of a shattering personal trauma, but also an attempt to speak of the universal experience of loss and nostalgic longing.

Specific to the artist’s unique style is a varying visual vocabulary across her oeuvre, as each artwork is partly conditioned by the found material(s) employed as a starting point, and the subjective, emotional element conjured during its development. Both the conscious and the subconscious are present, and memory, with its many facets, an active participant.

Soul-Gray will graduate from the prestigious MA Painting programme at the world-leading Royal College of Art, London, in 2022. She holds an MA from the Royal Drawing School, London (2007) and a BA from the Camberwell College of Art, London (2003). She was the overall winner of the Delphian Open in 2021, and recipient of The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in 2021 and 2022. She was invited for an important residency at The Artist House Kadenowka, Rabka, Poland (Studio Paulina Olowska) in the summer of 2022. Soul-Gray’s work is in collections across the world.

Text courtesy Wetterling Gallery