Biography

Alex Monteith is a new media artist and academic whose work incorporates sound, performance, photography, film, video, kinetic and network components, while her practice explores the politics, freedoms and limits of consumer technology. Her large-scale works involve collaboration with specialists from outside the art-world including sheep-dog triallists and New Zealand racing motor-cyclists.

Born in Belfast, Alex grew up in Northern Ireland before moving to New Zealand in the late 1980s. She majored in photography at Elam School of Fine Arts (Auckland) for her Bachelor of Fine Arts, in Intermedia and the time-based arts for her Master of Fine Arts, and researched experimental film, video and performance for her Doctorate in Fine Arts.

Since 2000 Alex has taught in a new media/timebased or sculptural context at tertiary level and she currently lectures at the Elam Schoolof Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. Over this time she has also regularly exhibited in art galleries, and film festivals, and been on television and radio both nationally and internationally.

Described as one of New Zealand’s most prolific experimental filmmakers, Alex’s technically sophisticated installations have been shown in galleries throughout New Zealand, including the Auckland Art Gallery Toi oTamaki, Artspace, St Paul St Gallery, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Physics Room. Her screen-based works have been programmed into new media shows, touring programmes and international film festivals including: Recontres Internationales, Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Raindance film festival, London, and Multimedia Art Asia Pacific in Brisbane. Her work was included in Scratching the Surface: Experiments in New Zealand Animation after Len Lye, which toured venues including the Anthology Film Archives, New York, and Los Angeles Film Forum.

Her work The Definitive Quantifier won a silver award for experimental animation at the Worldfest Houston 2000 and in 2004 Pause the Rising Tide won the overall festival prize at the International Surrealist Film Festival in Connecticut, New York. 

She received an Arts Foundation New Generation Award in 2008.  The Award enabled the purchase of key equipment contributing to a lot of the work Alex now does.

Her short films, of which there are many, owe something to Bunuel, the early Surrealist film-makers and to Len Lye, while at the same time engaging with the history of animation and the new possibilities offered by digital media. As well as making shorter experimental films, she has also produced a 90 minute experimental documentary in the film essay genre on the transitional period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Recent projects involve collaborative performance events for projections using multiple screens in public gallery spaces.

Alex is also a competitive surfer. She was the Irish National Women’s champ in 2001, competed in both the New Zealand national circuit and the European championships in 2001, and the world championships in Durban in 2002.

In 2010 Alex exhibited in Unnerved: The New Zealand Project at the Modern Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia;   the 4^th Auckland Triennial and she has a major survey exhibition Accelerated Geographies planned, which takes over the entire Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (25 September). 

Alex is a finalist in the 2010 Walters Prize.

Alex lives in Auckland where she is a Lecturer at Elam School of Fine Arts, Aucland University.