Alice Finbow is an artist and art teacher in a secondary school in London. She studied at Royal College of Art, has work in private collections and has exhibited her work internationally. Having trained as a contemporary dancer, movement is important in much of her work.
Finbow works in a range of media, photography, film and drawing. Finbow’s work often has an underlying thread of humour, playing on words, physicality and relationships between people and place.
At the core of Finbow’s lens-based work lies the implication that we contain the traces of our experience. Starting from the home, she investigates the place we hold in our family, genetics, and on to the wider world; the people we meet, the cultures we learn and have insight into. All these impact upon how we move and who we are.
Her photographic outcomes are direct responses to the spaces and locations where the images are taken. Using her body to “fit in”, to tell a story and perform, there is a playfulness in her approach to making that brings a lightness to her work. In contrast to this, some of her photographs have a melancholic atmosphere to them.
Finbow is particularly interested in small gestures and movements that people make, both consciously and unconsciously. She draws attention to what is often overlooked. Through her video work, she choreographs ‘tasks’ to reveal these physical minutiae. She often work’s with two subjects as this can provide a visual comparison of the movement or action she is attempting to highlight and utilises the device of ‘mirroring’. This is the primary Lacanian stage of learning, whilst the action's intent is mostly one of esteem it can also promote discomfort. Subsequently, the accidental is not only an integral element of the work, but an informative one through which humour and pathos occur.
Finbow’s drawings are often concept led, using lists and restrictions to inform her outcomes. The drawings have an illustrative quality to them that suggest a narrative, create curiosity and add character.