lili Spain is an artist currently based in Folkestone, Kent.
Starting from a sculptural sensibility, her artwork encompasses a diverse range of media including installation, film and performance. She uses found objects, detritus and text to develop imagined, mythical histories of objects that are obsessively collected and re-worked to form hybrid art pieces. She often uses objects that have been discarded or neglected, breathing new life into them; creating mythologies developed through storytelling traditions, exploration of ritual and psychoanalytic processes, which question interpretation and truth.
She draws reference from mythology, ecology, personal history and psychoanalysis.
After studying Fine Art at Central St.Martins, lili explored the realms of avant garde theatre. She previously co-directed The Red Velvet Curtain Cult, with artist Sarah Grainger-Jones – a series of performative events at venues including the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Milton Keynes Gallery and De La Warr Pavilion. She is the out-going Programmes Director at The Freud Museum London, where she worked for 13 years.
She has also performed alongside Sarah Grainger-Jones as ‘Folie a Trois’, is a member of Parlour Collective and S.A.G (Single Activity Group).
She is currently working on two projects. The first spans a seven year period, where she collected multiples; primarily yarn, string and paper from the homes of people with hoarding disorders; who had sadly past away without relatives to mourn them, with which she is creating memorial artworks. The working title for the series is ‘Remembering the Unknown’.
The second is a series of micro-performances to camera, titled ‘Seen/Unseen’. Interacting site specifically with landscape and the environment, the underlying message is one of the unseen mental distress of those we pass on the street, particularly of woman of a certain age, who often feel invisible.
PUBLICATIONS/PRESS
‘The Uncanny: a Centenary’, London City Nights Review.
‘The Uncanny: a Centenary’, exhibition catalogue.
Garageland Magazine. Witches edition. Review of ‘The Witching Hour’, 2018.
‘Solitary Pleasures’, Dazed Digital
‘Solitary Pleasures’, The Art Newspaper
LUPA 18, London City Nights review
Garageland Magazine. Issue 6 Supernatural May 2008, review by Rachel Potts.
Review of ‘Archive of Abandonment’, by Eamonn Everall.
Get in touch
Selected Exhibitions and performances
Forthcoming:
‘Sick of It’ Fourth Wall Gallery, part of of Open Art Folke 24 – September
‘The Garden Shed’ part of Open Art Folke 24 – September.
2024: ‘Olympians’, Citadel Arts Gallery, Dover – July.
‘Witch Marks’ The Minories, Colchester. Part of Transistion Projects and Sluice Venicular, Curated by Cathy Lomax – June.
Seen/Unseen’ a series of micro-performances to camera – Ongoing series nos. 32-49.
‘A Silent Scream (for Humanity and the Sea)’ Tangalle, Sri Lanka, January.
‘The Return (Sweet Sorrow)’ Tangalle, Sri Lanka, January.
2023: ‘Seen/Unseen’ a series of micro-performances to camera – Ongoing series nos. 1-31.
2019: ‘The Uncanny: A Centenary’, Freud Museum London. October 2019-February 2020.
2018: ‘The Witching Hour’, with Sarah Grainger-Jones, Studio 1.1 Gallery, Shoreditch, London – October-November
‘Solitary Pleasures’, Freud Museum London – April – May
2014: Dublin Live Art Festival: ‘What is the Body For?’ MART, Dublin.
Dublin Live Art Festival: Street Art Programme, with Katherine Nolan
S.A.G (Single Activity Group) Winns Gallery, London
Androgynous Mind, Ace Hotel Shoreditch, for IWD.
2013: ‘Emergency’ Word of Warning, Manchester
‘Totemic Festival’, Freud Museum, London – 5-7 July
‘Totemic Smoke’, filmed performances to camera, various locations, Egypt.
S.A.G (Single Activity Group) Vitrine Gallery, London
LUPA 18 (Lock Up Performance Art), Bethnal Green, London
LUPA Colony, The London Art Fair
2012: ‘Cabaret Melancholique’ St Marks Church Hall, Dalston, London – 14 December
‘Parlour Souterrain’ Thames Tunnel Shaft, Brunel Museum, London – 27 October
‘Parlour Jardin’ Oxford University Botanic Gardens – 8 September
‘Floraphilia’ Vestry House Museum, London – 1 September
The Art is Falling Apart’ Terrace Gallery, London
2011: ’25th Anniversary Art Auction’ Freud Museum London
‘Objects of Desire’ Freud Museum London
2010: Korean Experimental Arts Festival 2010, Seoul, South Korea
‘Parlour Praxis’ Christ Church Spitalfields, London
‘I Believe (Tales from the Edge of Everything)’ De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea
‘Cultlet’ Milton Keynes Gallery
‘Hysterical Women’ WALLS OF AUTHORITY, Old Police Station, Deptford, London
‘Join’ Floor Ten Gallery, London
2009: ‘Voyeur’ Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
‘Storm’ Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
‘People Show 120’ Bethnal Green, London
‘Parlour Chirurgie’ The Old Operating Theatre, London
‘Kill no more Pigeons than you can Eat’ Benjamin Franklin House, London
2008: ‘Lust & Luxuria’ Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
‘Lunacy (on the Leap Year)’ Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
‘Metamorphosis’ Homerton, London – 9 August
‘Lies (and truth)’ Bethnal Green Working Mens Club, London – 19 June
2007: ‘Littlest Birds’ The Poetry Café, London – 27 March and 26 November
‘Prestalgia’ Melange Social Club, London – 8 September
‘The Red Velvet Curtain Cult 0001’ Shoreditch, London
‘Terra Incognita’ 491 Gallery, London – 31 March
‘Dark Nights of the Soul’ IV & V, Foolish People, Horse Hospital, London
‘Archive of Abandonment’ 491 Gallery, London.
lili Spain 