My art is largely autobiographical and motherhood has already had a huge impact on my practice. While artist is residence at Ruthin Craft Centre last year I started making a new body of work which dealt with my feelings regarding infertility and going through IVF. Making the crochet and concrete forms allowed me to deal with the stresses of the situation and communicate them with others. Now with my baby barely a month old I look forward to seeing how her presence manifests in my practice in the future.
Alana Tyson’s work attempts to make sense of the world she inhabits. As an immigrant to the UK and a natural observer, she feels highly responsive to the contradictions of everyday life.
Her uncertain questioning of diverse thematic concepts is a tactic for working through the problems she encounters, incorporating performance, sculpture and installation utilising found, altered and constructed elements.
Tyson is drawn to dualities and incongruities. A commonality between her chosen materials is their link to domesticity. Everyday items, such as suit lining or crochet cotton, become carriers of meaning and reflections upon Tyson’s deep-rooted responses. The material contrasts and tension within Tyson’s work transforms the mundane into the visceral.
more about Alana…
Significant recent exhibitions by Alana Tyson include Crafting Anatomies: Materials, Performance, Identity, Bonington Gallery, Nottingham (2015); Decision Time, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee (2014); Scythia 10 International Textiles Biennale, Kherson Ukraine (2014); Shades by the Seaside, Bathing Machine Intervention, Llawn02 Festival, Llandudno (2014).
Tyson was the recipient of the Ignac And Karla Herskovic Memorial Scholarship (2006), and has received support from the Alberta Foundation for The Arts (2006), an Artist Bursary (2013), and the Arts Council Of Wales (2013, 2014/15). In 2015 she was artist in resident at Ruthin Craft Centre in Wales . She is currently developing new work for Power In the Land, a project responding to the decommissioning of the last nuclear reactor in Wales, which will tour the UK in 2016/17. She is supported by Mark Devereux Projects.
Alana Tyson is a Welsh-Canadian artist. Born in Canada, she graduated from the Alberta College of Art And Design in 2006, with a BFA (Hons) degree in Painting. She moved to the UK In 2007 and currently lives in North Wales.
http://www.alanatyson.com/