Profile
Penny Florence
July 2018
via website
I have never known what to say “I am” in disciplinary terms, any more than in my life. Professor Emerita at The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, yes, an interdisciplinary (undisciplined) maker, digital language artist, poet, filmmaker, yes, (but not “professional”), feminist, yes, profoundly, though I distrust “isms”. Everything I make or write concerns multivalency and how this works to shift boundaries and recalibrate meanings: to enable innovation. Supervising over 25 practice based, transdisciplinary PhDs on cultural practices is a highlight of my academic work precisely because it is defined by innovation.
University of York, BA (hons), D.Phil. “An Iconological Study of Mallarmé in Relation to Impressionism and Symbolism.” (cross-currents between avant-garde poetry and painting, understood structurally)
Prince Rupert School, Wilhelmshaven, Germany – preceded by others too numerous to mention.
The World As Yet Unseen Exhibition & Catalogue essays at Falmouth Art Gallery. Co-curated with Clare Cooper of Art First, London. 6 April-15 June 2019.
Vision is Out There, (Partou Zia: Visionary Art & Writing). Panel Chair, Tate Modern March 14th 2017.
Turner & Digital Writing, performance and discussion of my digital poetry translations of Mallarmé, created to draw out parallels with Turner’s aesthetic. Turner Galleries, Tate Britain, June 2013.
The View from Here. BBC World Service. An integrated, interart drama, spanning the world and linking eight international writers, visual and sound artists, broadcast 28-29 February 2009. Exhibition of all elements of the collected piece (4 videos, sound & drama) at the Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square. BBC Producer and Drama Director: Marion Nancarrow.
E and Eye. Tate Modern, 3 sell-out Digital Poetry performances in the galleries exploring art and poetry between the electronic and the visual 2006, 2008
Turner & Digital Writing, performance and discussion of my digital poetry translations of Mallarmé, created to draw out parallels with Turner’s aesthetic. Turner Galleries, Tate Britain, June 2013.
Poem and essay in The Ekphrasis Project, 2019 & 2020, an international online resource.
Feminist Flix. 4 Webinars, Commissioned by The Hypatia Trust. July 2020
NSA Group Exhibitions 2018, 2019, 2020.
Apart from the usual academic grants & studentships (including the F.R. Leavis Award at the University of York) I’ve benefitted from a number of Major Production awards from Yorkshire Arts Board (to 1987) and South West Arts between 1988-1994. My films have been screened at the Independent Film and Video Festival, the Celtic International, Tyneside and London Film Festivals and on Channel 4 TV. My first film, with Noe Mendelle, was nominated for the Grierson Award (British Documentary Film).
“Thinking the Sculpture Garden. (Art, Plant, Landscape).” Routledge: 2020.
“Mallarmé, Manet & Redon. (Visual and Aural Signs and the Generation of Meaning).” Cambridge University Press: 2009 (1986).
“Sexed Universals in Contemporary Art.” Allworth/New York School of Visual Art: 2003.
“Mallarmé on CD-ROM” Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000.
“Differential Aesthetics: Art Practices, Philosophy & Feminist Understandings.” (Ed with Nicola Foster). Ashgate: 2000; reissued Routledge: 2017)
“Feminist Subjects, Multi-Media.” (Ed, with Dee Reynolds). Manchester University Press: 1995.
Numerous published papers and chapters in edited collections on transdisciplinary art and theory, including film, painting, sculpture, digital art and poetry.
