Biography

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Working with Gesture, Drawing, Painting and Collage

 

Some current/recent subjects explored:

​Holding and abandon, in the creative process

The written word as abstract and literal mark

Ordinary ritual

The experience of time

 

Media

Collaborative urban mural and stencil projects, performative activation, video-performance, video-dance, drawing, collage, painting, objects.

 

Some past subjects explored:

The Symbolic of the Circle

The Grid Form and the Dissolution of the Grid Form​

 

Working in the above media, June Allen explores an alternance between holding and abandon in the creative process, with a play between gesture and the visual object.

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2015 finalist for the Art Luxembourg Prize, she works, and shows work in Europe and in the USA.

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She is currently completing a major writing project, in connection with her art research; a PhD about Abandon and Holding in an Art-Making Process.

 

She was a resident of Grands Voisins 1, supported by Paris City Hall, from its inception in novembre 2015, until December 2017, where she developed several exhibits, installations, and art projects, and participated in others ; following a residence in Pixérécourt, Curry Vavart in 2014. 

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In 2016, she developed a participative mural and installation at La Linière migrant Camp at Grande Synthe, and another, participatory mural at Grands Voisins, Paris, with ideas, words and gestures from the residents and workers at these places.

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She is a member of EsPAS research team, part of ACTE institute led by the Sorbonne-Pantheon and permanent member of the Laboratoire du Geste. 

 

She wrote Abandon and Holding appearing in Art in Motion: Current Research in Screendance, (M. Hayes, F. Boulegue, Cambridge Scholar's Publishing) published in 2015.

 

In addition to creation and writing, she regularly translates peer-reviewed articles and other documents from French to English, for artists, art philosophers and architects, and has organised and spoken in symposiums, conferences and round tables.

 

She is currently a permanent teacher at the Ecole de Beaux Arts de Paris and the Paris Belleville Architecture School and also a teacher at the Val de Seine Architecture School, where she is also a coordinator and a member of the international commission, involved in developing and selecting international partnerships.

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She was born in the country-suburbs of Boston, got her BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) at Pratt Institute in New York, majoring in Drawing, minoring in Art Education, lived in Kenya for one year,  Quebec City for two years, before settling in France, where she has been based for over 20 years. She has an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) from the Sorbonne, where she continues to collaborate.

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