I don’t recommend you turn to writers of fiction for such information. It’s none of their business. All they’re trying to do is tell you what they’re like, and what you’re like - what’s going on - what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes: listen, listen... All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard in their time in this world, a third spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent telling lies.

 

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

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Courtney Askey (b. 1995, Leicester) is a cross-disciplinary artist, musician and writer. Her research-based practice is currently centred on investigating how labour and the body co-exist within and inform the art making process. With this, she explores fiction, identity, technology as power and gender through an anti-capitalist and post-cyberfeminist lens. Her work questions what labour means in both a wider sense, and in the making of her own work; the politics of labour are not absent from the creation of her artwork and its position in the greater landscape of the art institution.

 

Her practice is about making; what she has made, what she will make, why she makes, how she sees herself during making, how she sees herself in relation to how others will see her after making. In approaching this through an analytical and curatorial perspective, the work goes through a number of filtration processes. When her artwork is situated within the gallery it exists within the pre-existing context of the space, and these conditions contribute directly to the fabric of her work.

 

Courtney's most recent solo exhibition The Total Rebrand Retreat (May 2023) took place on Governors Island in New York after a three month residency with Residency Unlimited in Brooklyn (supported by Arts Council England funding). Previous solo shows include Certum Quod Factum (March 2022) and The Exposition - Introducing Hercy B, virtual exhibition (January 2021). She has exhibited in a number of group shows and completed commissions in collaboration with local organisations and institutions.

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