Alex Roberts is a painter who focuses upon how we perceive identity, change, and encounters.  Testing the sliding scales of figuration and abstraction, her language travels between observation and material play.  She engages with paint and translucence, addressing paintings’ surface, layers, and spatial depth by effecting colour and immediacy of marks. 

Alex’s interests in exploring the spectacle and non-reveal of identity, frequently by capturing moments in the lives of others, invites the viewer to question their own perceptions and recollected encounters.  Examining the expansive aspects of body language, hints of narrative, performativity and embodiment that equate with painting.  Charged by these series of studio relationships frequently the candid paintings’, sensitive installations implicate or stage the viewer as protagonist. 

Predominantly working with female subjects (via varying surfaces, scale) the work probes and exposes the un-fixedness of witnessed, projected, and speculated portraits and empathetic gestures.  Exploring painted unease between what is public and what is private: how, in today’s digital world, appearance often contrasts with reality and sociability belies intimacy.

Alex exhibits internationally, recent inclusions: Once Guarded, KHBStudios Berlin Art Week (2022); With Love II, Paint Talk; TORN TEN, TORN Contemporary (2021); Wells Art Contemporary 2020 UK; Happy Hour, Kristin Hjellegjerde - London Bridge (2019); PaintLounge BERLIN; The Performativity of Painting, The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Greenwich University Galleries (2018); Control to Collapse, Blyth Gallery; St. Paul’s Cathedral; What Hat am I Wearing Today? Paul Abbott and Alex Roberts, MOCA London; Connect: Katowice, Rondo Gallery Katowice, Poland (2017). 

Awards, Contemporary Art Collectors Book Volume I - featured artist (2023); The Waverton Art Prize - long-listed; Ever Emerging, The Berlin Edition - featured artist (2022); Wells Art Contemporary 2020 - short-listed, exhibiting artist; listed for Jackson’s Open Painting Prize (2019); AA2A residency - Bucks New University (2018); Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust; The Eaton Fund (2017); Arts Council England & British Council Grant - The Artists' International Development Fund; HIX Award finalist; short-listed for The Red Mansion Art Prize (all 2016) and Contemporary Visions VI, Beers London (2015).  

Alex intermittently curates art exhibitions. Her research develops as a two-fold method: personal, studio practice centred around the relationships of painting.  Often extending to public, collaborative platforms of exchange which seek to examine how painting beholds the viewer.  Recent e.g., The Performativity of Painting at The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich.

Alex completed her MAFA at Chelsea College of Arts after previous study at the University of Arts London: 2D Digital Design for Communication, following a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from The University of Reading.   Alex works as the Lecturer in Drawing at Duncan Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, and as a Lecturer at Bauhaus Summer School, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Alongside supporting the Freies Zeichnen students at Mediadesign Hochschule Berlin, and Drawing Projects UK as a visiting Artist/ Lecturer. Alex lives and works between Berlin and Dundee.