Catherine ELWES

Biography

Catherine Elwes studied Fine Art at the Slade School of Art, and graduated with an MA in Environmental Media from the Royal College of Art, London in 1983. In the late 1970s she was a member of the Women Artists' Collective and Women's Art Alliance. She co-curated two landmark feminist exhibitions, 'Women's Images of Men' and 'About Time', both held at the ICA in London in 1980. From the early 1980s onwards she began specialising in video and time-based media works, exploring representation and the body, gender and identity. She has participated in multiple international festivals, recently including the 'British Art Show' in Australia; 'Video Brazil' in Sao Paulo, Brazil; 'Recent British Video' in New York, USA; and 'Video In/Out' in Vancouver, Canada.

An internationally established artist, critic and expert in early moving image culture, Elwes' diverse practice includes video, performance and installation, writing, curating and teaching. She is the author of Video Art - A guided Tour (I.B. Tauris, 2005),  Installation and the Moving Image (Wallflower Press, 2015), and regularly writes for publications such as Filmwaves & Vertigo, and contributed to numerous publications and exhibition catalogues, including Third Text, Contemporary Magazine, and Art Monthly. In 2012, Elwes founded  the international journal Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ) in collaboration with Intellect Books. From 1998 until 2003, she was Director of the UK/Canadian Video Exchange, a biennial festival that featured video from across Canada and the UK and in 2006, she co-curated Analogue, an international exhibition of early video art from the UK, Canada and Poland, which was held at several international venues including Tate Britain and Tate Modern during 2006 - 2007.