Annie Carpenter

Annie Carpenter’s work explores the disruption of artistic and scientific labour, drawing on amateur science experiments, hobbyist engineering projects and futile human endeavour, usually in the form of excursions and sculpture-demonstrations.

Annie Carpenter’s studio practice employs amateur labour in a haptic-driven pursuit of scientific knowledge, often in the form of mechanical sculptures. She periodically brings these DIY methods into performative ‘demonstrations’, giving the viewer an intimate, two-way encounter with the themes behind her work. Annie is the founder and co-director of ‘para-lab’, alongside Andrew Wilson, an organisation facilitating experimental methods of collaboration between artists and scientists, running in parallel to academic institutions.

In 2015, Annie was selected to participate in a research expedition to Svalbard (High Arctic) on a Barquentine Tall Ship, alongside an international group of artists and scientists, supported by Arts Council England. Outputs from the expedition include the exhibition ‘Miniature World’ at Castlefield Gallery (Manchester) for which she was commissioned to produce the piece Central Engine Maintenance Performance. This went on to be performed at two iterations of KOSMICA Festival (Arts Catalyst), in Sunderland and London. Annie is a member of the international Art and Physics Network set up by Nicola Triscott (FACT, Liverpool) and Fiona Crisp (Northumbria University) and has her work featured in the book ‘The Live Creature and Ethereal Things: Physics in Culture’. More recently, Annie has been involved in a number of residencies with Allenheads Contemporary Art in Northumberland, where she explored durational experiential experiments, which have gone on to inform methodologies employed in further workshops and field trips.

Before joining Leeds Beckett, Annie ran the fine art pathway of the Foundation Diploma at Leeds Arts University and was an Associate Lecturer at Manchester School of Art.