About the work

The Lost Gestures drawing series started in 2018, and is made from the repetitive sign-making of crayon on paper, using various computer keyboard symbols such as the hashtag, double slash, and parentheses. 

The obsessive repetition of the digital signs drawn by Anderson generate an audible and visual rhythm; it is drawn at an increasing speed, which in time causes the gesture to be ‘lost’. 

Whenever the gesture is ‘lost’ (when an error occurs and produces a different motif), Anderson signifies this change by adding a new colour. The rhythmic sound of the crayon repeatedly striking the surface of the paper initiates a response performed by dancers who improvise on the sound of Anderson’s drawing. The finished drawing exists both as a visual record of the performance, and an artwork of layered and interwoven gestures. The correlated inaccurate gestures, which AI algorithms would have identified as errors, have generated the creation of patterns. 

Date and country of birth

1972, GB

About the artist

Born in 1972 in London, Alice Anderson lives and works in London.

Her oeuvre hybridises the worlds of technology and ancestral cultures as a way of finding spirituality through developing technologies.

In a world where machine learning and algorithms govern the fate of humanity, the artist examines what we can learn from our body in its relationship with the universe. Anderson’s approach underscores the urgency of the human dimension in a contemporary world driven by technology. The artist gives substance to the immaterial through ritual-like performances which generate sculptures, drawings and paintings. She paints with colour and weaves copper wire, symbolising cerebral and technological connections of the dawn of the internet.

These dazzling or meditative dances transport her to a level of consciousness which our modern world has all but forgotten, but which Joseph Beuys or Anna Halprin also explored in their time.

Her work is held public collections including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Espoo Museum; Wellcome Collection, London; Fond National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; and Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris.

Selected solo exhibitions include Hyperlinks, König, London (2021); Prix Marcel Duchamp, Nominees (solo project) Pompidou Centre, Paris (2020); The Ritual of the Shapes, Fluxus Art Projects, London (2020); Sculptures, Performances, Paintings, Atelier Calder, Saché (2019); Heatwaves, Bozar, Brussels (2019); Body Itineraries, La Patinoire Royale, Brussels (2018); Connexions, DenFrie Centre of Contemporary Art, Denmark (2018); Thoughts, In Vivo, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017); Saatchi Gallery, London (2016); Alice Anderson: Data Space, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris (2015); Alice Anderson: Memory Movement Memory Objects, Wellcome Collection, London (2015); Collective Books, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2012); and Alice Anderson’s Rituals, Freud Museum, London (2011).