Anna Berry British, b. 1977
Self-taught UK artist Anna Berry is best known for her grass roots interventions in non-gallery environments, as well as large scale immersive installation. However, her current focus is porcelain sculpture.
Because her work has encompassed a wide variety of processes and ideas, it can be hard to pin down, but has often involved non-archival materials, long repetitive making, and short-lived ephemeral outcomes. As such, her practise long operated at the intersection of making, performance, installation, and recording.
Her current body of work, though, is sculptural, exploring insidious elements of contemporary culture like identitarianism, authoritarianism, and cancel culture.
Her work remains responsive to place, community, and politics, and is always concerned with truth and our experiences of reality.
Selected shows include: Jerwood Art Fund Makers Open 2021, MK Calling at Milton Keynes Gallery, Tate Exchange with Shape Arts, and South Bank Centre with Unlimited.
Anna was born in Glasgow, but is currently based in Milton Keynes. She is also a musician, writer and photographer.
Exhibitions (Solo)
2021 Unlimited, Main Commission, Breathing Room, premiered at MKIF, currently touring,
shown in variety of UK locations (London Royal Docks, The South Bank, Gloucester,
Wakefield, Crewe, Liberty Fest Croydon, Attenborough Centre Leicester)
2018 The Constantly Moving Happiness Machine, Milton Keynes Library, supported by Arts
Council England
2018 Paradise Lost, MK Fringe
2018 Fake Plastic Trees, Milton Keynes
2016 The Politics is Personal, Conway Hal
Exhibitions (Group)
2023-24 Resistance and Respiration, Contemporary Calgary
2021 Jerwood Arts Makers Award, Jerwood Space, London; Newlyn Gallery, Cornwall; Aberdeen
Art Gallery, Aberdeen
2020 MK Calling, Milton Keynes Gallery
2019 BJP Portrait of Humanity
2019 Brexit Selfie, Borderzones
2018 Breathing room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank
2018 Doddington Hall
2017 MK Calling, Milton Keynes Gallery
2017 Tate Exchange, Tate Modern
2017 Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary Shortlist Exhibition
2016 Out of Borders, Venice
2016 Handmaid, We Are Sweet Art, London
2015 Art in Odd Places, Orlando
2014 Art: Language: Location, Cambridge
2013 Shortlisted to final 38 for Open Cube, White Cube
Art Residencies
2017 Art Omi, USA
2015 Fljotstunga, Iceland
2014 Guest Artist at Brush Creek Arts, Wyoming
2013 Guest Artist at The Tinshop, The Breckenridge Art District, Colorado
Publications
2016 Average Art Magazine, December Issue
2016 Articulation
2014 The State of Art: Installation and Site- Specific, Barehill Publishing
Other Experiences
2019-20 Curatorial Fellowship at MAC Birmingham
2020 Porcelain Prototype Unstable Sold at Sotheby’s
