Selected Biography

Education

  • 1979-81 MA Fine Art Goldsmiths College
  • 1973-77 BA (Hons) Fine Art at Reading University

Solo Exhibitions

  • 2020 for CHOHW’s (Come Hell or High Water) Holding the Foreshore, The Thames foreshore, Limehouse, London.
  • 2011 BACK to FRONT (installation) Woolwich, a Cafe Gallery Projects (CGPLondon) Offsite Project www.youtube.com
  • 2005-06 'Collecting Time: the Living and the Dead': (live house installation) at Woolwich: a CGPLondon Offsite Project.
  • 2003-04 (live house installation) at Woolwich: CGPLondon Offsite Project.
  • 2001 'View' (installation) Dilston Grove, CGPLondon
  • 2001 (live house installation) at Woolwich: a CGPLondon Offsite Project.

Group Exhibitions

  • 2023 'Generations of Women in Sculpture in Britain 1960-2022' The Hepworth, Wakefield.
  • 2016 Cold Storage with Liz Harrison, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich
  • 2014 de Nada (performance) Gallery SoTo Do’s 17th Congress of Performance Art curated by Theodor Ricco and Annabelle Widmann, Babylon Beach, Santa Eularia, Ibiza
  • 2013-14 Contemporary Art Society: Damn braces: Bless relaxes (documentation) Whitechapel Art Gallery, London and mima, Middlesbrough (documentation) curated by Helen Kaplinsky
  • 2013 Little Shadow (performance) for Quare with Kristina Page, Spitalfields City Farm, London
  • 2013 the calm/crowd project (performance) LUPA17 London
  • 2013 when I get home I hope (simultaneous screening) South London Gallery, with Liz Harrison, Jefford Horrigan and Susan Trangmar
  • 2011 5 minutes with 5 years (dogs) (installation) in PROJECT-ion APT Gallery, London
  • 2011 Still Live (exhibition) part of CONCRETE GEOMETRIES and PREVIEW (2010) Architectural Association, London
  • 2010 The Clearing (discussion event) for ‘This is Not a Gateway Festival’ with Julie Bacon, John Newling , Victoria Lane and James Geurts, London
  • 2009 Hairdressers (performance) and cab drivers (video) in ‘Congress for Performance Art’, Sacramento, USA.
  • 2009 5 minutes with 5 years (dogs) (performance) in INTERRUPTED CORRESPONDENCE/ VICE-VERSA: FRAGMENTS for Five Years JamesTaylor Gallery London. www.fiveyears.org.uk
  • 2008 Said, Camberwell Space, Camberwell College of Arts/South London Gallery
  • 2008 Second Sex Dinner (performance), Chelsea College of Art, London
  • 2008 ‘Deptford X 10th Anniversary exhibition’, APT Gallery, London

Commissions

  • 2017 (live installation) Woolwich, an offsite project for Raven Row’s: '56 Artillery Lane', curated by Amy Budd and Naomi Pearce.
  • 2016 Intervention with Marianne Mueller for the Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground, Chelsea College of Art, London.
  • 2011 Installation/intervention in Concrete Geometries, Architectural Association, London, curators: Marianne Mueller and Olaf Kneer. www.concrete-geometries.net
  • 2008 Gold Balls (installation) in ‘GHOST TRADE and the Spectre of Change’, Deptford X, curated by Julia Alvarez

Artist’s Presentations and Projects

  • 2015 House Projects: lecture for (Dis)identifications curated by Alexandra Kokoli and Catherine Dormor, ICA London
  • 2014 House Projects: lecture for 17th Congress of Performance Art, Babylon Beach, Ibiza
  • 2014 House Projects: lecture and crit for AA Berlin laboratory, Udk, Berlin
  • 2014 presented ‘level’ for Architecture in Effect with Marianne Mueller, Research Symposium at Chalmers, Sweden
  • 2014 contributed to Landscapes: from the Romantic to the Digital Age symposium at the Whitechapel Art Gallery
  • 2013 panel member at Beaconsfield, Art and Feminism, London
  • 2013 Devised and facilitated preparatory workshops with Jean Campbell, Michele Fuirer and Lucy Wilson with Suzanne Lacy for her ‘Silver Action’ project for Tate Modern
  • 2013 Presentation Concrete Geometries-Spatial Form and Social Behaviour with Marianne Mueller ‘Rethinking the Social in Architecture’: at Umea School of Architecture, Sweden
  • 2013 Panel member at Beaconsfield, ‘Art and Feminism’, London
  • 2010 Presentation for Concrete Geometries Symposium at the Architectural Association, London
  • 2008 Curator of ‘Concrete Dreams: Art, Architecture and Social Space’ with Liz Harrison for APT gallery/openhouse, London
  • 2001- Senior Lecturer at Camberwell College of the Arts, CCW, UAL

Writing by Fran Cottell

  • 2024 for 'Artists at Home: Studios, Practices and Identities'. Eds:Jill Journeaux and Imogen Racz, Bloomsbury
  • 2021 KTPress.
  • 2020 Book chapter with Marianne Mueller for ‘Bentham and the Arts’ publisher: UCL
  • 2020 for 'Salon For A Speculative Future' Edited by Monika Oechsler with Sharon Kivland, MA BIBLIOTHEQUE
  • 2013 ‘Concrete Geometries-Spatial Form and Social Behaviour’ with Marianne Mueller, Rethinking the Social in Architecture: The Reader (Sweden: Architecture in Effect)
  • 2013 ‘Fran Cottell’, Mo Throp (ed), The Performance Dinners, p.30
  • 2012 House: From Display to BACK to FRONT, Ebook, KT press

Writing About Fran Cottell

Sections in books

  • 2021 by Katy Deepwell: in ‘Fran Cottell: The House Projects’ KTPress.
  • 2014 H. Kaplinsky ‘Own or Be Owned’ The Best Is Not Too Good For You: New Approaches to Public Collections in England (The Contemporary Art Society and Whitechapel Art Gallery)
  • 2013 N. Pearce, ‘Context III: Fran Cottell, Ron Henocq and Mike Nelson’ extracts from interviews and photographs Michael Heilgemeir, The Nomadic Studio, pp.45-50
  • 2013 Critical Writing in Art and Design, Royal College of Art, After Butlers Wharf: Essays on a Working Building, photographs pp.60,61,65,109
  • 2012 ‘M. Mueller and O.Kneer Concrete Geometries’, Projects Review (London: AA publications), image no.25
  • 2012 M. Mueller and O.Kneer ‘Concrete Geometries’, AA 2011 Yearbook, pp.300, 301, 303, 357, 358

Articles in journals

  • 2012 Marianne Mueller ‘The Exhibition as Social Ground’, OASE 88 Journal for Architecture, ‘Exhibitions. Showing and Producing Architecture’, pp.90-94
  • 2007 Katy Deepwell ‘Social Feminism and the Question of Difference, Fran Cottell’, n.paradoxa international feminist art Journal, Vol.19 ‘IN/difference’, pp.90-93

Reviews/documentation

  • 2014 Image from A Meeting Outside of Time www.dazeddigital.com
  • 2011 Kat Austen ‘CultureLab: Experimenting with people and space’, New Scientist (review of Concrete Geometries), May 2011
  • 2011 Victoria Rance ‘Fran Cottell: BACK to FRONT: An offsite project with CGP London, London, 8 - 9 October 2011’, review in Artists’ Newsletter www.an-n.co.uk
  • 2010 Fran Cottell’s Gold Balls feature in photographs of Michael Landy’s ‘Art Bin’ South London Gallery exhibition; see Michael Landy 'Perfecting the Art of Self-destruction' BBC news online www.bbc.co.uk and 'Eyewitness' The Guardian (London) www.guardian.co.uk, also shown on ‘The Culture Show’ episode 22 (BBC2), 29 October 2010
  • 2008 Reviews of Gold Balls as part of Deptford X online, include: http://transpont.blogspot.co.uk (5 Oct 2008); ‘Deptford Ball in Creek Mystery’ http://thedeptfordgirl.blogspot.co.uk, Tuesday, 21 October 2008
  • 2007 Rebecca Weeks ‘Women’s Work: a BAIT debate at Hayle Town Hall’ Review: www.artcornwall.org

Contact

f.cottell@btinternet.com


E-book

An e-book on Fran Cottell is available from KT Press.


Full CV

Download Fran Cottell’s full CV as a Word document.