Alison Dollery is an award-winning Visual Artist, Writer, Researcher and Curator who employs the materiality of her own body as both the medium and canvas (Body as a Canvas) for her work, engaging in a diverse array of artistic forms, expanding practices of drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, performance/body art, and writing and using her body as research.
These forms are all unified around the lived experience of her body, which she refers to as having a "Manufactured Body". Her interdisciplinary art practice and research have been deeply influenced by her long-term health conditions, stigmatisation of the body and her journey of drastic weight loss and body transformation. Using her body as a canvas and research, she is able to assert ownership over her embodied experiences.
Alison holds an MFA in Art and Humanities from the Royal College of Art and a 1st Class BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the UCA. She is currently studying for a PhD in Art and Design at Sunderland University, with an awarded fully funded studentship from the Northern Bridge Consortium and support from the Helen McArdle Nursing and Care Research Institute.
Key moments include her 2025 artist talk at the Royal Academy of Arts, the publishing of her artist Interview in Matter Journal (May 2025), performance art at the Tate Modern (2019_ and being a featured artist with Haus a Rest, Women in Art Prize, among many others.
Alison was awarded full funding for her first solo show in 2023, in collaboration with Arts Development and Levelling Up government funds, for her first solo show, the Manufactured Body and again in 2024 as project lead and co-curated show Finding Place 2024 and The Summer Exhibition 2024, where she exhibited over 200 artists, including her own work.
"Her peers describe her as making groundbreaking work". (RA, 2025)
Alison is believed to be the first British artist to use their body to show a body that has been medically transformed and manipulated through surgical interventions in contemporary society (Bariatric Surgery). A body that has been every dress size from a size 8 to a size 26. Her work on body image is thought-provoking and changes perceptions of what a body can be and the future of our bodies.
*funding awarded by the UK government, Levelling Up/ Arts Council Priority Place.
