Penny Florence

Poetry, painting and film morph into each other in my thinking, yet they don’t merge; motion and difference underpin my practice and theory (I also make everything I write about).

I have worked as an artist, filmmaker and academic; now I’m Professor Emeritus at The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. My work has always been interdisciplinary and experimental, deploying practice and practice-related methodologies to explore visuality in and through language, an area in which I’ve supervised over 20 PhDs. Publications include a number of books and articles on issues related to art, poetry and cultural theory, including the digital and its prehistory. I’m also a published poet. The French poet Stéphane Mallarmé is a sustained interest, as is feminism.

I’ve worked with John Cayley on a number of collaborations, including sell-out events at Tate Modern and Tate Britain in London and other presentations. Most recently, these have focused on The Readers Project, making poems embodying and exploring elements of translation and critique. I have called these inextrinsic because their energies direct the reader in and out at the same time.

- P.F. Oct 2015