Influenced by linguistics and performance theory, Roy Claire Potter is an artist who performs, publishes and exhibits. They often collaborate with musicians and sound artists for radio broadcast and music festivals. Across the wide range of their work that includes drawing, installation, experimental art writing, vocal performance and moving image, Roy tells stories built from fragmented, intense images that depict moving bodies or domestic scenes and architectural settings.
Roy’s interest in communication constraints, subtext and narrative sequencing is felt in the way they use fast-paced talking or reading speeds and restricted or partial views of space. Complicated social or group dynamics and the aftermath of violent events are common themes in Roy’s work, and are usually treated with a dark, sometimes wilful humour.
They have have recently presented work with Book Works, Serpentine, Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (2024), PRIMARY (2022/3), BBC Radio 3 (2020), Tate Britain and Tate Publishing (2019). Roy has published two books of experimental art writing, Round That Way (Ma Bibliotheque, 2017) and Mental Furniture (VerySmallKitchen 2014) and recently a novel, The Wastes (Book Works, 2024) commissioned by artist Katrina Palmer for Arrhythmia, a series of artist books that explore ideas of being out of joint with the predominant social order. Shorter works are published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Hotel Partisan, Tate Publishing, and CCA Derry-Londonderry.
Live and studio recorded audio works are released by Cafe OTO’s OTOROKU and TAKUROKO labels, London (2022/2019); Sub Rosa, Belgium (2019); Chocolate Monk, Brighton (2017/ reissued 2018); and Fort Evil Fruit, Dublin (2015).
Roy has been a mentor for artists through CCA Derry-Londonderry, Tate Liverpool, Spike Island and DYCP, and is a writing tutor at the Arvon Foundation. They are a Senior Lecturer of Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores University where they programme MA Fine Art, and are represented by A plus A gallery, Venice.
