bexilsley.com ✴

Hello. I’m Bex and I used to be an artist, though I suppose you could say I still am, depending on how you might think about it.

I’ve made quite a few things in several ways over the years, from sculpture to different types of digital art.

Broadly, my work was about fantasy, performance, objecthood, recursion and paradox. It’s about the thing you invent as a barrier between you and the world, living one-step-removed from yourself, being your own puppeteer. I try to examine the authenticity of my own identity and of Things. What does it means to have a ‘sense of self’? Where is the line between real and virtual, self and other, artifice and sincerity?

I explored those thoughts through stuff I happen to love, like online trends and oddities, psychedelia, colour, screens and mirrors, magical girl anime, nostalgia, amorphous forms and manufactured body parts - all fragmented, sanitised, malleable, thing-like.

This site used to be a portfolio but now it’s an archive and a space for me to reflect on a time in my life that was wonderful, wild and hard.

Thanks, truly, for reading.

︎︎︎ Email
︎︎︎ Instagram
︎︎︎ Elementum
︎︎︎ Daata
bexilsley.com ✴

Hello. I’m Bex and I used to be an artist, though I suppose you could say I still am, depending on how you might think about it.

I’ve made quite a few things in several ways over the years, from sculpture to different types of digital art. 

This site used to be a portfolio but now it’s an archive and a space for me to reflect on a time in my life that was wonderful, wild and hard.

Thanks, truly, for reading.


︎︎︎ Email
︎︎︎ Instagram
︎︎︎ Elementum
︎︎︎ Daata
 

Bex Ilsley


Leamington Spa, UK



- BA (Hons) Fine Art - Manchester School of Art - 2016

- Cheong Kam Hee Prize - Woon Foundation, 2016

- Visiting Artist, Hereford College of Art, 2019
- Guest Lecturer - Future Now Symposium, Manchester School of Art, 2018
- Online Residency, wuu2, 2017
- Creative Residency for Make Liverpool, Elevator Studios, Liverpool, 2016
- Online Residency, Delta Sorority, 2016
- Visiting Artist and Guest Lecturer - Kendall College of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, 2016




Shows


2021

- There is Always Light: Art for a New Era, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, University of Warwick
- Vanity Case, Vanity Projects, New York

2020

- It Gets Lighter From Here, WMCRU, online
- CACOTOPIA 04, Annka Kultys Gallery, London

2019

- Holiday Avalanche, The Moon, Grand Rapids
- Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art 2019, The Row, Coventry
- Vivid Projects and Meter Room @ Manchester Contemporary 2019, Manchester
- We Sing The Body Electric, Gallery46, London
- SPLITS (solo), Odox, Birmingham
- Black Hole Club Launch 2019, Vivid Projects, Birmingham
- Flow My Tears (curated by Bob Bicknell-Knight for Daata Editions), Vanity Projects, Miami / New York

2018

- The Nipple Show, The Moon, Grand Rapids
- Sororidades Instagramer, Sala de Arte Joven, Madrid
- Artists' Shorts Screening Programme, NEoN Digital Arts Festival, Dundee
- boom + bust (solo), Goldtapped, The NewBridge Project, Newcastle
- Duty Free, Chelsea College of Arts, London
- INTERFACE, neo:gallery23, Bolton
- Rendered Personas, TRANSIT, Holzmarkt25, Berlin

2017

- GIF FEST 3000, 220 Prior St, Vancouver
- gal.zone as part of The Wrong Biennale 2017
- Castlefield Gallery @ The Manchester Contemporary 2017, Manchester
- Emotional Processing (solo), Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, Warrington
- Un)questionable Self, Camden Image Gallery, London
- X.perience - an exhibition in Space, Im de Ruimte, Ghent
- Responder a Tod_s, Despina, Rio de Janeiro
- Is this it?, Serf, Leeds
- The Endless and Mobile Beautiful Collapsible Labyrinth, Flux Factory, New York
- ArtSlant Prize 2016, SPRING/BREAK Art fair, 4 Times Square, New York
- ...In Dark Times, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
- The Sacred Screen, The Square Gallery, London

2016

- an evening with isthisit?, Eva's Place, Sibton Green, Saxmundham
- isthisit? AFK, 32A St Donatts Road, London
- Recent Graduates Exhibition, Affordable Art Fair, London
- Liminal Confines, The James Black Gallery, Vancouver
- After Eden, LATARKA, Budapest
- The Beautiful is Always Bizarre, Cupola Contemporary, Sheffield
- Woon Foundation Prize 2016, BALTIC 39, Newcastle
- New Creative Talents, 5plus Architects, Manchester
- IRL:URL, The James Black Gallery, Vancouver
- Paint By Number, The Brunswick, Leeds
- Oh! Tell... (for Caustic Coastal), Room 554, Britannia Hotel, Manchester

2015

- Cosmic Unicorn and Cake, The Moon, Grand Rapids
- The New Flesh as part of The Wrong Biennale 2015, VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver
- The Artificial, Safehouse 1, London

Selected Reading/Listening

- Organ Thing
- Concrete Music - Brum Radio (begins 49:35)
- London Live
- FAD
- Polyester
- YAC
- Helen Shaddock
- TRANSIT (Medium)
- Warrington Museum
- Stimulus Respond
- ArtSlant
- Dazed Digital
- A-N
- Koiqouise
- Paint by Number
- Tribe Magazine
- Seeing Neon
- Print All Over Me
- Backseat Mafia
© 2025 ✴ Bex Ilsley