Charlie Betts
Charlie Betts is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, performance, video and installation. With an interest in collaborative practice Charlie has worked in a number of artist’s collectives and collaborations. Charlie holds an MA in Fine Art with Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, and graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London with a BA Hons degree in Fine Art. Charlie has a studio in the Surrey Hills and has exhibited widely in London and nationally. Charlie’s practice connects bodily gesture, drawing and painting, to a time-based sense of bodily presence. In her works, she is interested in ideas of subjectivity, embodiment and identity as a process of becoming. Charlie’s work is imbued with a sense of the passing of time and often weaves in elements of sound, spoken word or text.
As a woman, artist and mother she is interested in the traces and transience of becoming, often exploring life’s cycles and transitions into new stages such as motherhood. In collaborative practice Charlie has worked with artists including Anna Garrett - in their collaborative residency at The Watts Gallery, the artists worked together to explore and respond to the natural surroundings and historical context of the site. In particular, researching Mary Watts and Gertrude Jekyll, their work and involvement in the women’s suffrage movement and activism. The artists responded with drawings, paintings and prints made in the landscape and created a sound piece installed in the woodland.
Charlie also works in the collaborative group [NAME] – a collaboration of four artists producing multi-media work. [NAME]’s performances and installations include film, video and drawings, characterised by a sense of framing and reframing, through both the camera and screen. [NAME] has held residencies at Harts Lane, Platform One and most recently exhibited at A.P.T. Gallery, London. A cross disciplinary collaboration with dancers allowed Charlie to choreograph a dance piece exploring liminality and her experience of becoming a mother which was performed to an audience in Surrey. As a qualified University teacher Charlie has fellowship status of the Higher Education Academy, and has worked as an Educational Developer at Goldsmiths, University of London and Kingston University, and as a lecturer for the University of Surrey. She has extensive teaching experience with children, young people and adults in a wide range of settings including schools, universities and community groups. She currently works in Learning and Engagement at The Watts Gallery and teaches as a freelance artist educator. Exhibitions include A.P.T. Gallery, The Watts Gallery, The Empire Gallery, Stanley Picker Gallery, Canary Wharf Cabot Place Gallery, The Menier Gallery and The Lewis Elton Gallery.
