Allison Spence

Allison Spence
Tallahassee, Florida, USA

STATEMENT

A consistent theme in my work has been the classification of monstrosity, and the idea that the monster exists to preserve and enforce the myth of the baseline human. How we categorize corporeal, verbal, or formal bodies is central to my work. Most traditional media have bodies of a kind, resulting in objects with widely accepted but often stifling anatomies. So, I make paintings that might contain zero paint, or just pictures of paint. My work could be partially textile, somewhat-a-photo, or multilayered and three-dimensional. Mish-mashed, crumpled, mutant, or hybrid—most of my work is some type of collage. Most recently they’ve begun standing on their own, on or off the wall, containing something like an interior and exterior, though like most crushed things, they’re both interior and exterior at once. My subject matter frequently branches into different fields, such as biology, horror, technology, and ecology. My current series, “Untitled Frankenstein”, is inspired by my recent discovery of and surgery to remove a teratoma (“monstrous tumor”) from my body, after ten years of referencing that medical anomaly in my work.

BIO

Allison Spence is an artist working with painting, sculpture, collage, and writing to make interdisciplinary objects about states of hybridity within nature and culture. She focuses on creating work that exists in-between distinctions of media. Spence received a MFA at University of California, San Diego and a BA in Art History at University of Florida. Her work has been in publications such as The Washington Post and New American Paintings. She was the recipient of the Mid Atlantic Arts Fellowship (2016) and the Hamiltonian Fellowship (2014-16) and her work has been included in the collection of District of Columbia’s public library. Spence has exhibited both internationally and nationally, including South Korea, Southern California, Washington D.C., and Miami, Florida. Spence is currently living and working in Tallahassee, Florida and is an Assistant Professor of Art at Florida State University.

ARTIST CONTACT

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allison-spence.com

IMAGES