When The Storm Came Collage

Award winning artist Alexandra Gallagher was born 1980, Manchester, England Award winning artist Alexandra Gallagher is a British multidisciplinary artist, who's work takes the form of collage, street art, prints, photography and painting. Gallagher’s work celebrates the surreal and sublime. ­Between the realms of memory, dreams and experience, her work looks beyond our subjective limits and often tells a story of inner imagination and thought.Often working within a series, each piece is visceral and organic, the artist never knowing how each piece will transform. Exhibiting and selling both across the country and internationally, she has been nominated for a number of awards. Shortlisted for the Zealous X, she was awarded the Saatchi Showdown Surrealism Second Place Winner and the Secret Art Prize Runner Up Winner 2016. Her recent achievements include being a London Contemporary Art Prize 2018 Finalist and being shortlisted for the Rise Art Prize. "If New York’s Lower East Side went Rococo, it’d manifest as Alexandra Gallagher’s sleek, trippy, succulent collages. The British artist wields Photoshop like a technicolor sword, slashing up images of flora and fauna into compositions framing subjects sylvan as Kate Moss with backgrounds evoking equal parts zodiac and mod design. Flamingos worthy of Miami gardens cavort alongside landscapes worthy of Kurt Vonnegut, but both share Gallagher’s common touch of the metallic, the lucid, and the unabashedly chic. It’s Leda and the Swan meets punk rock, which is perhaps why Gallagher lists Artemisia Gentileschi as an influence, despite the seeming gap between their works. “The inspiration behind my work is our experiences as women in western society ... but I didn’t want to put something out there that’s obvious or brutal, I wanted to create something beautiful out of something ugly, but still give a voice,” Gallagher says. Her myriad layers of symbolism, feathers and faded limbs produce a synesthesia of both synthesizers and harpsichords worthy of Artemisia’s admiration - from one woman who wielded formidable swords to another" (Written by Lauren Amalia Redding)