Press
EDUCATION
2012-14 MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London.
2009-11 BA (Hons) Fine Art (First), Hereford College of Art.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS/ PERFORMANCES
2024 Bus Shelter Residency poster displayed on Bus Shelter, Jewellery Quarter, Stryx Gallery.
2024 Triple Goddess, Knockangorrach, Feast Festival and other UK venues.
2023 An Audience with the Worm, Blundabus, Edinburgh Festival.
2022 The Lady Doctors, Night-bus to Nowhere, Edinburgh Festival and Malvern Cube.
2021 Soiled and Wagazzled, Feast Festival.
2016 The Oath of The Great Order of Emancipists. Birmingham University.
2013 Empty Chairs, The Institute of Art and Ideas- Hay Festival, Hay on Wye.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024
Conversation Not Spectacle, The Women's Art Collection, Cambridge.
2023
Parent/Artist, Air Gallery, Manchester.
ReProduce, Air Gallery, Manchester.
2022
Manchester Contemporary curated by Meter Room.
Myth Making and Self Fashioning, The Women’s Art Collection- Guest Museum at the London Art Fair.
A Woman’s Place is Everywhere, Boa Swindler and Infinity Bunce, Cello Factory, London.
2021
‘Underground’- performance and film installation, Feast Festival, Malvern Cube.
Studio Voltaire diversions, online performance- Victoria BC, Canada.
2020
Everything Happening, All at Once, 404space, Worcester.
Emily Warner, FLAP- Experiments in Togetherness Through Listening.
2019
Emily Warner, FLAP- Experiments in Togetherness Through Listening, Birmingham.
Division of Labour at Paradise Works, Salford.
2018
M(others) Art Tour, New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge University.
2017
New voices, New conversations, Recent acquisitions of the New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge University.
Storyboard, Lubmirov/ Angus Hughes Gallery, London.
Nasty Women, Cambridge Literary Festival, curated by Eliza Gluckman.
Real Lives, Painted Pictures, The Cut, Halesworth.
2016
Working From Home, AMP Gallery, London.
On the Shore Alone at Night, Chalton Gallery, London.
Art Car Boot Fair (with Huguenot Editions), London.
Real Lives, Painted Pictures, Crypt Gallery, London.
Oriel Davis Open, Newtown, Wales.
2015
Random Selection, Division of Labour, London and Manchester Contemporary.
Salon, Waterhall Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Sluice (Day and Gluckman) London.
Material Tension, Collyer and Bristow Gallery, London.
2014
A Union of Voices. Horatio Junior Gallery, London.
Beryl, Neat 14- Theatre Royal, Nottingham.
The Twelve Apostles as Babies, RCA Degree show, London.
2013
Pntg Nov, Henry Moore Gallery, London.
REACT, Dilston Grove Gallery, London.
Diseased Brethre,n Art Licks- at Asylum, London.
2012
Candid arts, Universitat der Kunste, Berlin.
Ludlow Open, Ludlow.
AWARDS AND PRIZES
2020-2021
Elmley Foundation grant for personal research.
2018-19
Recipient of a personal research and development grant from the Arts Council, England.
2015
Catlin Art Prize (panel- Justin Hammond, Aaron Cezar, Charlotte Schepke, George Vasey).
2014
Saatchi New Sensations- nominated
John Moores painting prize- shortlisted (panel- Chantal Joffe, Tom Benson, Zeng Fanzhi, Tim Marlow and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye).
Jerwood drawing prize- shortlisted (panel- Gavin Delahunty, Dr Janet McKenzie and Alison Wilding).
Exeter Contemporary Open- Public Choice award, Pheonix Arts Centre (panel- Matt Burrows, Ceri Hand, David Shrigley).
2013
New Contemporaries- shortlisted, ICA (panel- Ryan Gander, Chantal Joffe and Nathaniel Mellors).
Anthology 2013, Charlie Smith Gallery, London (panel- Ian Davenport, Zavier Ellis, Hélène Guérin, Ceri Hand, Max Presneill). W-ca Open- highly commended, Worcester Art Gallery (panel- Juneau projects, Meadow Arts, Nada Prija and Gavin Wade).
Derwent Drawing Prize, Mall Galleries, London (panel- Yvonne Crossley, Fisun Güner and Stephen Farthing).
2012
Windsor and Newton scholarship, RCA.
Elmley Foundation Award to study at the RCA.
Hereford Open- overall winner (panel- Andrea McLean and Clare Woods).
CURATION
2023
Clown Choir (with Lucy Hopkins) Various happenings across the UK, including Edinburgh Fringe
2022
The lady Doctors, Comedy cabaret community event. Malvern Cube and Edinburgh Fringe.
2018
In The Middle of Somewhere. Canwood Gallery, Herefordshire (with Tom Nash)
FILMS / SELECTED PUBLICATIONS ABOUT PRACTICE
2024 The Women’s Art Collection, Cambridge University- Short film about practice with interview
2018 Women Can’t Paint: Gender, the Glass Ceiling and Values in Contemporary Art by Dr Helen Gorill. I.B. Tauris
2017 Real Lives, Painted Pictures - Book accompanying exhibition of same title
2016 Spears Magazine
2016 Birmingham Mail- 21 Leading Young artists in the West Midlands
2015 Studio International filmed interview- https://vimeo.com/128992151
2015 Apollo Magazine
2015 Wall Street International
2015 3rd Dimension magazine
2015 Huffington Post
2015 A-N magazine
2015 The Catlin Art Guide
2014 The State of Art, Barehill Publishing
2014 Jerwood Drawing Prize
2014 John Moores Painting Prize
2014 ARTUPDATE
2013 ARC magazine 17.2
2011 Roves and Roames, issue III
PERFORMANCES/ SCREENINGS/ WRITING
2023
Lady Doctors- The Human Fountain of Milk. Feast Festival.
An Audience with the Worm, Blundabus, Edinburgh Festival.
Clown Choir (with Lucy Hopkins) Various happenings across the UK, including Edinburgh Fringe.
2022
The Lady Doctors - Art Caberet performances, Night-bus to Nowhere at Edinburgh Fringe Festival and at Malvern Cube.
2021
‘Underground’,performance and film installation, Feast Festival, Malvern Cube.
2021
Studio Voltaire diversions, Victoria BC, Canada
2017
Summer Salon, Lubmirov/ Angus Hughes Gallery, London
2017
Domino Open Film Screening, The Shoe Factory Social Club, Norwich
2016
Ghost Sheet Interviews, AMP Gallery, London
Jamboree, Plymouth Arts centre
2014
CINARS Performing Arts Bienniale, Montreal
2014
Neat 14. Verbatim performances. Nottingham
2013
Womens Werk, Division of Labour. Worcester Art Gallery
LECTURING/ WRITING
2023 Coventry University, Fine Art BA. Visiting lecturer
2014 to Present- Hereford College of Art, Fine Art BA. Visiting tutor/ lecturer and Staff tutor- short courses
2016 Eastside Projects, Birmingham. Presentation on outcomes of Radical Sabbatical
2016 University of Birmingham. Symposium talk to School of Government and Social policy
2016 University of Northumbria. Verbatim conference, provocation on the politics of verbatim practice
2015 University of Worcester. Film Production, lecture and workshop on art practice
2015 Eastside Projects, Birmingham. Presentation on practice
2015 Review of British Art Show
http://tpwm.squarespace.com/artist-development-events/2015/11/17/british-art-show-8-lexi-strauss.html
2014 Jerwood Space, London. Presentation on practice
2014 John Moores, Walker Gallery, Liverpool. Presentation on art practice
2014 University of Gloucester, Fine Art. Presentation and tutorials on art practice
2014 Wolverhampton University, Fine Art. Presentation and tutorials on art practice
RESIDENCIES AND OTHER PROJECTS
2024
Bus Shelter residency, Stryx Gallery
2021
Bait Magazine Panel Talk, in association with New Hall Gallery, Cambridge University.
2020
Peep residency at Stryx, Stryx Gallery Online.
2019
Co-organiser- 'A Male Artist is a Contradiction in Terms"- Panel discussion chaired by Eliza Gluckman at Eastside projects
2018-19
Development member of The Ultras, an all-female artists incentive, with Eastside Projects.
2016
Radical Sabbatical, University of Birmingham and Eastside Projects
COLLECTIONS
The Women’s Art Collection, University of Cambridge.
Various private collections.
RELATED ACTIVITIES
I have an intensive training in clown, fool and other trickster performance processes.
I occasionally work as an activist and humanitarian clown with organisations such as Clowns Without Borders, which allows me to share skills diversely and experience the extraordinary metamorphic power of the trickster archetype.
I have a Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills.
PRIOR TO FINE ART TRAINING
Member of various theatre collectives including Signal to Noise (working outside the 4th wall) and Non- Fiction Theatre (pioneering UK verbatim collective in the early 2000’s).
WEBSITE AND EMAIL
www.lexistrauss.com
lexistrauss@hotmail.com
STATEMENT
I explore the complexity of our interactions with belief systems and processes of individuation. Combining paintings, performance and other media with specious, fluid, personal fictions derived both from interviews and imagination, my work tracks the escapism and paradoxical self-segregation that come from a distorted desire to belong, and seeks answers to heal it.
Touching upon themes of contemporary education and parenting, 'The Twelve Apostles as Babies' , '1000 Foundlings Find Their Mothers', and 'The Vulnerable Party' are three such imaginary narratives.
The Vulnerable Party concerns the search for a supremely divine clown leader– humane, genuine and open, with strengths and weaknesses exposed. It’s also a personal journey, a process of individuation, which will ultimately atomise the political party, or movement (since individuation is incompatible with the ‘party political’ concept), thus reducing it to a one-person campaign, without cabinet or voters.
1000 Foundlings Find Their Mothers were- ‘A well documented, influential, post-industrial, pre-enlightenment movement, led by scores of the socially abandoned who took laughter as their mother’.
The Twelve Apostles as Babies recounts the infant’s arrival for the second coming without Christ. Dressing up as Ghandi, Johnny Rotten and others, they learn the good deeds of those who came both after and before them, eventually spreading their good news through various careers.
If the highest truth is one and the same with the absurd, as Jung claims, then I often try to reverse engineer such truths from nonsense. Subjects within the paintings might appear clownish - a rigid facade coupled with a vulnerable persona. But these figures may hold insightful keys to the extended significance of our everyday attitudes and interactions. As Schopenhauer once said, a sense of humour is the only divine quality of man.
In addition to my core painting practice, I perform recorded conversations with interesting people, facilitating a deep engagement with them through the use of a ‘verbatim’ acting process that allows me to recreate their voices breath for breath as I’m listening to them.
Some of the paintings are also ventriloquised with light and sound to narrate stories. At their most ambitious they become extended assemblies of connected and contrasted imagery to allow objects or subjects within paintings to interact, breath and sing collectively or as individuals- a playful, collaborative, musical apparatus that can convey concepts beyond language or imagery.
Clown/ trickster performance aspects have now enabled deeper development of these narrative elements, whilst simultaneously promoting our innate playful natures over ‘The (too often rarified) Arts’.
I feel honoured to work directly with the profundity of laughter, experiencing the in-person delivery role of Freud’s ‘Die Witzige Einkleidung’- the joke as envelope that conceals psychic messages. For me, this expands opportunities for activist and potant metamorphosis of diverse space, with a wider audience, beyond art-world contexts.