Invisible Dust

Alice Sharp

Alice Sharp, Invisible Dust Curator and Director

Alice Sharp is the Curator and Director of Invisible Dust which she set up with Professor Peter Brimblecombe, University of East Anglia in 2009. She is based in London and has worked as a curator of artist’s projects in public spaces since 1997.

In 2010/11 Sharp was the curator of the View Tube Art programme next to the London 2012 Olympic stadium.  In addition to Faisal Abdu’Allah’s Double Pendulum, she commissioned Lisa Cheung to make a garden sculpture Summer Palace as part of a sustainable vegetable garden.   She devised Bicycle Wheel a series of artist commissions with Gavin Turk and Ben Wilson, Kobberling&Kaltwasser, Colin Priest and the Bicycle Thieves.  The artists created four person pedal powered vehicles, finishing lines for cycling races, 100 ringing bicycle bells and a play on BMX’s. Bicycle Wheel was inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel, 1913 the first ready-made; that challenges the assumptions of what is art.  It celebrated the joy of riding a bicycle whilst highlighting the need for more thoughtful, sustainable and pleasurable ways to travel in June-July 2011 as part of Create 11 festival.

In 2008 Sharp managed the Fourth Plinth programme on behalf of the Mayor of London’s Office for the CIA, managing the shortlist of Jeremy Deller, Tracey Emin, Bob & Roberta Smith, Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley and Yinka Shonibare and then planning large-scale art commissions by Antony Gormley and Yinka Shonibare for Trafalgar Square.

In June 2009 she was Chair of the workshop on ‘Culture and 2012 – London at the Centre of the World Stage’ at the Big Opportunity Conference at Sadlers Wells. Sharp was the Deputy Director of Space Studios for seven years.

Independent curator projects include:

Sharp was the co-curator of Journeys With No Return, an international touring exhibition, with artists residencies in the UK, Germany and Turkey including 16 artists and new works by Mike Nelson, Olaf Nicolai, Adam Chodzko, Asli Sungu, Zineb Sedira and Melanie Manchot reflecting Turkish Migration touring to Berlin, London and Istanbul 2009/10.

Sharp curated the Big Chill’s Art Trail from 2006-9, which included commissions by Henry Krokatsis, Claire Morgan, Francis Upritchard, Ackroyd and Harvey, Brian Eno, Gavin Turk and Deborah Curtis’s House of Fairytales and Simon Faithfull at Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire.

Nick Crowe’s Drowning of Tuvalu a tidal performance with sculpture commenting on rising sea levels due to global warming at Whitstable Biennale Whitstable, Kent in June 2008.

Sharp curated Parklight, in Clissold Park, Stoke Newington, London in 2000 with Julian Opie, Simon Faithfull, Tomoko Takahashi, Chris Grottick, Michele Griffiths and Keith Piper which was featured in the Arts Council England’s 2007 ‘open space’ publication.

She was selected by the British Council to attend Tipping Point Artist and Climate Change scientist conferences in Berlin and Oxford in 2007 and 2008 where she met Peter Brimblecombe.