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Rosanna Dean is a multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in London. She is artist associate at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies where she is developing and sharing ideas around Shaktism with Professors and Researchers from Oxford University and academics from around the world which the Hindu Centre bring together. Since 2021 she has been a tutor and lecturer at The Essential School of Painting in North London.

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She graduated from the Royal College of Art (2019), BA (Hons) Painting Camberwell College of Art (2013) and studied Old Master painting at the Angel Academy Florence. She has spoken on spiritual practice in contemporary art at the Courtauld Institute of Art and following a year residency at the Florence Trust received EU funding to develop her work exploring and converging different ways of representing the divine. 

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She recently returned from India, researching ritual practices such as Tantra and Theyyam and on her return began learning Sanskrit with a particular focus on sound and the body. She has been practicing yoga for 12 years and is also a qualified Ashtanga Yoga teacher recently completing a cod course in therapeutic touch and alignment. 

 

Her artwork addresses conflicting ideologies surrounding representations of the divine; seeking to establish connections between the ways in which societies have depicted religious belief over time, she combines features of divergent practices to create work with a contemporary spiritualism. 

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Dean is fascinated with the grotesque, and beauty and repulsion intermingle in her canvases. The figures become decontextualized, ambiguous, anonymous forms that hover in space. The body stripped of its individual identity becomes a vehicle for exploring shared fears and experiences. The common site where different perspectives, viewpoints and histories collide. Dean creates an open discourse in deciphering the objects on her canvas and installations, to probe our contemporary beliefs, and question what the body means to her viewer.

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Having taken religious painting of the past as her starting point, Dean has spent time deeply researching how its transformative effects are achieved. Her research has led her to employ centuries old techniques of layers and glazing to achieve the desired luminosity and lifelikeness with her oils. Her most recent works re tell stories through installations and performance that ask her viewer to consider their relationship to materials and dependency on rapidly disappearing eco-systems.

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She worked with Rashad Salim developing the Iraqi Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale (2021) and Gregory Ryan alongside environmental organisations (2009-12) and with artist and activist. 

Rosanna Dean artist portrait

WRITING:

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The Poetic Grotesque | The Grotesque as a vehicle for progress | On Painting
Hannah Hoch | Whitechapel Gallery Review | Avenir Issue 2

 CV

 

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

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2024         Resistance, Limbo Gallery, Margate

2024.        Kink, Maximillian Wolfgang Gallery, London

2024.        Sadness is But a Wall Between Two Gardens, Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London

2023         Bootstrap Charity Group Show, Print House Gallery, London

2022         Group Show, The Maffioli Art Group, Scalpel Building, London

2021          Economy of Errors, Ohsh Projects, 106 New Oxford Street

2020         FBA Futures, Mall Galleries, London

2019          Kupala Festival Lunar Edition, Phytology, London

2019          Hoovering: Enter the Vacuum, Red Lion's Boys Club, London

2019          Critical Matter, The Dyson Gallery, London

2018          East Wing Biennial 13, Surge, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London

2018          Thumbnails, Hockney Gallery, London

2017           Unshowable/Unthrowable, Hockney Gallery, London

2017           SPACE LCN Showcase 2nd Edition, SPACE, London

2016           Paper Cuts, Transition Gallery, London

2016           Drive Thru, Cavendish Square Q Park, London

2016           Summer Exhibition, Lubomirov / Angus-Hughes, London

2016           Summer Exhibition, Florence Trust, London

2016           Winter OpenFlorence Trust, London

2015           Yantra: Beyond Our Bodies, Lane Crawford, Hong Kong

2015           Command of NatureLes Nuits Anthologie, Paris

2014           Winter Salon, Kids of Dada, Pembridge Place, London

2014           Curious Duke Secret Art Prize, Curious Duke Gallery, London

2014           Turn on, Tune in, Drop out, La Bellvilliose, Paris

2014           Society Beyond Borders, TedX Oval Space, London

2013           Someshta's Garden, Vibe Place Gallery, London

2013           BFI Film Festival, The Welsh Chapel, London

2013           BA Graduate Show, Camberwell, University of the Arts London

2012           BA-SEShoreditch Townhall Basement, London

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AWARDS & RESIDENCIES

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2023-24.   Artist Associate, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

2022 -23   Artist in Residence, Oxford University's Centre for Hindu Studies

2020          Joya: AirAlmeria, Spain (postponed)

2020          La Wayaka Chile, Panama (postponed)

2019           LADA (Live Art Development Agency) Residency with Lauren Barri Holstein, Hastings/London UK

2019           Trelex Esp'Asse, Nyon, Switzerland

2017            London Creative Network, SPACE, London

2015-16      Florence Trust Residency, The Florence Trust, London

2015            Listed for Winsor and Newton Painting PrizeGriffin Art Gallery

2014            Curious Duke Secret Art Prize for Painting (2nd prize), Curious Duke Gallery London

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EDUCATION

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2019           MA Painting Royal College of Art, London

2015           Image and imagination in Medieval EuropeThe Courtauld Institute of Art, London

2014           Old Masters Techniques & Painting from the BodyAngel Academy, Florence

2013           BA (Hons) Fine Art Painting, Camberwell, University of the Arts London

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PRESS

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2023         ARTIQ asks artists (PDF)

2022         Country and Town House, An Artist's Eye, July/August

2022         Independent Interview July (PDF)

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