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Exhibition: SHE - a celebration of international women’s day

Chris Avis

During the 1980s and early 1990s Chris Avis was a successful London based designer maker working in porcelain, glass and mixed media. In 1994 she gained a First-Class Honours BA in Fine Arts which was followed in 1996 with an MA ‘Art in Architecture’, both at the University of East London. After twelve years of employment as a senior manager Chris returned to her studio in 2009. Since then she has exhibited widely in London and parts of Europe.

Throughout 2016 her work was focused on exploring the relationship between mothers and daughters using sound recordings and photography. This collection of works will celebrate International Women’s Week 2017 in her second solo exhibition at the Park Theatre.

As an older artist herself, Chris Avis worked on elements of the ageing process over several years. In 2015 a solo exhibition at the Park Theatre exhibited a range of prints, photographs and collages covering a body of her work on older women.  A selection of this work was used as a sequence of layered photographs overlaid with dialogue and a soundscape to produce her first video, ‘Third Age: a personal response’. This was screened at ‘Power of Women’ Thanet in 2016, ‘Schlachten’ an International Contemporary Arts Fair held just outside Berlin and at Rich Mix London, both in June/July 2015.

Much of her success in 2015/16 can be traced back to 2013 when she received a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship to spend six weeks researching the attitudes of the arts communities in the cities of Berlin, Copenhagen and Amsterdam towards older artists.

This was followed in 2014 with a very productive Barbican Guildhall Open Lab when Chris brought together eleven older visual and performing arts professionals from across Europe to investigate the prejudices and preconceptions linked to age and creativity through their own disciplines. 

Didi Hopkins - Guest Speaker

Didi Hopkins is an actress, theatre director, commedia specialist and founding member of Beryl & The Perils, theatre by women, about women and for all. Didi spends half her time in theatre, and the other half skirting the boards, working with women in leadership, in business, worldwide, as she is passionate about women taking centre stage.