Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1962 Malaysia

Year of Migration to the UK: 1973

Biography

Artist Lesley Sanderson was born to a Chinese mother and British father in Malaysia in 1962. In September 1973, she moved to the UK to go to school while her family stayed in Malaysia. Between 1981 and 1984 she was a student of Fine Art at Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University) where she was awarded a BA (Hons) in Painting and Printmaking. Since 1998, Sanderson has been regularly collaborating and exhibiting with the Sheffield-based artist Neil Conroy under the name Conroy/Sanderson. She served as a Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University for several years and also held a Linbury Teaching Fellowship in Drawing at Wimbledon School of Art from 1995 to 1997. Subsequently, she taught MA Drawing at Wimbledon School of Art from 1997 to 2005. She has taught at various other universities, including the University of Central Lancashire and the University of Central England

Her dual Chinese-British heritage is the main theme in Sanderson’s art practice. In the early stages of her career, her self-portraits were a tool for personal investigation, enabling her to explore her mixed heritage and to take control of her own identity, often participating in feminist discourse. In 1988 she participated in the group show, Along the Lines of Resistance: an Exhibition of Contemporary Feminist Art, Cooper Gallery, Barnsley. Her early works also served as a commentary on the art world’s fetishist representation and over-romanticisation of women considered foreign. By the 1990s, however, her creative practice began to shift. While still exploring her core themes of self-identity and mixed heritage, her works transitioned from being primarily canvas-based to incorporating a variety of media, thus revealing an evolving artistic versatility. Her main medium was drawing using pencil on paper; however, during the 1990s she used a wider variety of media and materials. Employing a conceptual strategy, she often fragmanted the drawings into different frames within installations.

In 1998 Sanderson began to work collaboratively, teaming up with Neil Conroy to form Conroy/Sanderson. This collaboration is now Sanderson’s principal way of working and exhibiting. This artistic duo continues to delve into the theme of identity and to illustrate the productive process of exchange and enrichment between two diverse artists, each hailing from different cultural origins (Conroy was born in England). They harmoniously intertwine their distinctive talents to examine the complex realm of identity and mixed heritage, creating work that challenges and aims to reshape prevailing understandings around cultural identity, race, nationality, gender, and selfhood. Their joint artistic efforts also explore ideas of displacement, transition, foreignness, and the concept of being seen or noticed. For Conroy/Sanderson collaboration is a strategic tool that enables them to challenge, debate and subvert the established structures within visual presentation. According to their declaration, their goal is to ‘blur, distort, or circumvent the perceived or imposed hierarchies linked with cultural and racial dominance’ (Conroy/Sanderson, 2016). They strive to showcase the fluctuating essence of personal identity and suggest mixed perspectives by placing different modes of representation side by side, and by employing a cooperative approach. Their work often has a performative quality. While they frequently produce self-portraits, their personal identities are often concealed. This serves the purpose of examining concepts of individual autonomy, control, and dissatisfaction. They play with themes of visibility and its opposite, making themselves simultaneously visible and invisible, thereby creating a dichotomy of being both a spectacle and a mystery. Employing different media, such as photography, illustration, video, and mixed-media installations, they stay firmly rooted in the theme of identity. Collaboration continues to be a central part of Conroy/Sanderson’s practice. In 2005, they further collaborated with poet, playwright and critic, Gabriel Gbadamosi, a British artist of Irish-Nigerian descent, on the publication Sun-Shine, Moonshine. This artist's book, which mixes image and text, is a meditation on identity, difference and foreignness,inspired by Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels .

Sanderson has showcased her art in many exhibitions, both solo and group iterations, either independently or in her collaborative format as Conroy/Sanderson. Her work has reached audiences across the UK in group shows such as Black Art: Plotting the Course (Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, and touring, 1988) and New North (Tate Liverpool, 1990), as well as on the international stage. Lesley Sanderson currently lives and works in Sheffield, England. Lesley Sanderson's work is held in UK public collections, including Sheffield Museums and the New Art Gallery, Walsall.

Related books

Sarah Champion, Ying Kwok and David Hancock, eds., 21 Discussions with Artists of Chinese Descent in the UK, (Manchester: Chinese Arts Centre, 2008), pp. 88-93
Neil Conroy, Gabriel GbadamosiL and Lesley Sanderson, Sun-shine, Moonshine, (London: Artwords Press, 2005)
David A. Bailey, Ian Baucom and Sonia Boyce, eds., Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005)
Dennis Atkinson and Paul Dash, Social and Critical Practices in Art Education, (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham, 2005)
Helen McDonald, Erotic Ambiguities the Female Nude in Art, (London: Routledge, 2002)
Rosemary Betterton, An Intimate Distance: Women, Artists, and the Body, (London: Routledge, 1996)

Public collections

Related organisations

Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University) (Student and Senior Lecturer)
Wimbledon School of Art (Teaching Fellow )
University of Central Lancashire (Teacher )
University of Central England (Teacher)

Selected exhibitions

Shifting Perspectives: Exploring Representations of People of African, Caribbean and Asian Heritage, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds (2022)
Here I Am, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield (2018)
Now! Now! In more than one place, Chelsea School of Art, London (2016)
Out of Nowhere, Chinese Art Centre, Manchester (2008)
East-South: Out of Sight, Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, China (2008)
Distance, Galerie 5020, Salzburg, Austria (2006)
Elsewhere, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Eire (2003)
EAST International, Norwich (2002)
Transforming the Crown, Studio Museum in Harlem, The Bronx Museum of The Arts, Caribbean Cultural Centre, New York (1997–98)
History and Identity, Norwich Gallery, Norwich, Lincolnshire College of Art and Design, Lincolnshire (1991)
The British Art Show 1990, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, McLellen Galleries, Glasgow, Hayward Gallery, London (1990)
New North, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (1990)
Black Art: Plotting the Course, The Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton, Oldham Art Gallery, Oldham (1988)
Along the Lines of Resistance: an Exhibition of Contemporary Feminist Art, Cooper Gallery, Barnsley (1988)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Lesley Sanderson]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Lesley Sanderson artist