Neal White is a London based artist who has been working at the forefront of research-led practice since 2001. Drawing on a wide range of sources and contexts, from socially engaged and post-conceptual art, to arts interaction with ecological and environmental science, he situates the role of the artist as an investigator, as a visual thinker and as a connector - of people and ideas. His works operates in and beyond the studio, through fieldwork, experimental systems, curating and contextual inquiry inside institutions or through residencies and in collaborations with others. Artworks take a variety of forms, from drawing and digital media, through to digital imaging, artist publications, installations and para-institutional structures.
He has worked solely and in collaboration on projects commissioned Internationally, including at Kochi Muzaris Biennale (India, 2023), Kunsthalle Trondheim (Norway, 2022), Venice Biennale (Central Pavilion 2021), Portikus, Germany (2014) and across the UK - including; Whitechapel Gallery, FACT - Liverpool, John Hansard Gallery - Southampton, Natural History Museum, Barbican Gallery and Lux Gallery, amongst others.
Biography
Following his residency as an artist at The Human Genome Mapping Project (1998), and a suprise BAFTA whilst Creative Director of artist-led collective Soda in 2001, Neal White’s early artwork (2001-10) developed his research-led approach through an array of projects exploring anomalous subjects. From an exploration of the historical anatomy of time, and the book form, in ‘Otts Sneeze’ - (New Writing Commission with author Lawrence Norfolk, published by Bookworks, 2002), through to a campaign to restore the destroyed public sculptures of Jacob Epstein in London, in The Third Campaign (Commission for The Henry Moore Institute, 2004), to testing the ethical limits of scientific self-experimentation (The Void, Barbican Gallery and various locations, 2005), his work explored subjects that connected moral and ethical positions on aesthetics with questions of how and where knowledge as power is accumulated and accessed.
Expanding into a collaborative approach, he was commisioned by Arts Catalyst to work on a proposal to build a full scale Space Station at Camden Roundhouse with the group N55 (2004-6) - an early experiment at the intersection of art and environmental politics. The project in turn led to him found the para-instituton; Office of Experiments, which later archived the laboratory landscapes of the UK as shaped by post-industrial / techno-scientific complex. As a methodological innovation, White formed the Overt Research Project (with Steve Rowell / Lisa Haskel), that led to The Mike Kenner Archive (Dark Places at John Hansard Gallery, 2008/9) with Office of Experiments, that laid out the role of secrecy and where science happens, in contemporary debates around access to knowledge in the techno/scientific complex. The project emerged from a three year period of research by White working in desert locations of Utah with influential marginal institution, the ‘undisciplined’ US based Center for Land Use Interpretation (as funded by The Henry Moore Foundation- see Museum of the Void, Chelsea Space, 2010).
Neal White also shifted his thinking about the artist role in society in this period, after engaging with John Latham and Barbara Steveni, the founders of APG (Artist Placement Group). Their ideas of the artists place in society, as well as conceptual work on temporality, organisational aesthetics and the incidental, led White to reshape his research as an autonomous approach, independent from, but connected to academic methods and researchers inside knowledge led institutions - an incidental practice. After becoming a Director of O+I in 2007 (APG succeessor - 1989-2009) , White exhibited new work that embodied this approach with Office of Experiments in The Incidental Person at Apexart in NYC (The Redactor - see Print, 2010). He was asked to present aspects of his research-led practice in a two-handed exhibition with John Latham at Portikus (God is Great 10-19) in Frankfurt (2014).
His retrospective a year later, “Sites of Extraction and Construction’ at Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp, in 2015, captured aspects of his anomalous investigations (Curated by Antony Hudek) and in 2016, led to work with Tina O’Connell on the exhibition 9Events at Royal College of Art, of which one event - ‘An Incidental Meeting’ organised with Barbara Steveni led to the establishment of the Incidental Unit, now recognised as the successor to APG.
From 2010, Neal White’s work on many projects has been with his partner and long-time collaborator, Tina O’Connell. From exploring data landscapes to curent work on anthropogenic noise – that is the impact of human pollution and environmental justice on artistic forms of engagement, these projects bring together their entangled and shared interests and positions on art, sculpture, visual studies as well as socially engaged practices from a UK / Irish perspective.
In 2016, Neal White was appointed as an Interdisciplinary Professor of Art at University of Westminster and since 2017 he has co-led the high profile research centre, CREAM. In this role, he is now also engaged supporting colleagues, as well as teaching on the new MA in Global Contemporary Art, whilst coordinating / organising larger scale projects. He supervise PhD’s and coordinated The Deep Field Project (formerly with Diann Bauer and Jol Thoms, 2022). He has also been developing ecological projects, from solo commissions (such as Tiny Love Songs - All our futures are scalable), to data driven climate installation work with Office of Experiments / Monsoon Assemblages (at Venice Biennale of Architecture, 2021), to co-curation of the Soil Assembly at the Kochi Muzaris Biennale (2023) and more recently working closely with Westminster colleague Radha D’Souza to help realise the London edition of the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes, conceived by Jonas Staal with Radha, and exhibited with Serpentine Gallery at CREAMS exhibition space; Ambika P3, London (2025). He continues to works with Ecological Futurisms exploring these areas in reation to global contemporary art practices.
Neal White is currently a member of the Board of Trustees for SPACE Studios, London. Selected works are in the collection of The Henry Moore Institute and Leeds Gallery Sculpture Collection.
Selected recent project / exhibition history includes;
Glazen Huis, Amstelpark, Amsterdam (2022), Central Pavillion of Venice Biennale of Architecture, Italy (Collaboration with Monsoon Assembages 2021), Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway (Collaboration with Diann Bauer, Jols Thoms of Deep Field Project 2020), Fargfabriken, Stockholm, Sweden (Collaboration with Tina O’Connell 2017), Henry Moore Institute, UK (2005, 2016), Royal College of Art, UK (Collaboration with Tina O’Connell 2016), Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp, Belgium (2015), Portikus, Stadehlschule, Frankfurt, Germany (2014-15), Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2014), TULCA, Galway, Ireland (Collaboration with Tina O’Connell 2013), Chelsea Space, London, UK (2010), John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK (2008-9), Camden Roundhouse, London, UK (2006), Natural History Museum, London, UK (2003), Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (With Soda 1999) Lux Galllery, London, UK (With Soda 1998), Gasworks, London, UK (With Soda 1998).
Funded by amongst others;
Biennale de Venezia (IT), Mondriaan Fund (NL), Arts Council of England, Henry Moore Institute and Henry Moore Foundation, The Wellcome Trust (all UK) and Center for Land Use Interpretation (USA), amongst many others in Europe. Selected works are in the collection of the The Henry Moore Insitute and Leeds Gallery Sculpture Collection.
Contact ︎contact form
Links to academic publications, talks etc. are accessible via Neal White’s profile at CREAM.
Full Exhibition list and artist CV available on request - please use contact form.
Teaching on MA Global Contemporary Art
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Notes from the Field - Front Page
Space on Earth Station 2004-6
Camden Roundhouse, 2006. A project developed in collaboration with Danish architects N55, this space station was conceived as an exploratory platform to investigate our own planet and our impact on it. Using forms developed by Peter Jon Pearce (Structure in nature is a strategy for design) and with a critical view of the attempts to escape Earth and reach Mars, putting space over and above planetary health, we experimented with micro-economies, ecologies and low impact living. The space ‘on earth’ station included units for humans, birds, bees and plants, and hosted projects by artists across UK / Europe selected from an open call. It was produced in London and Copenhagen, and was open to the public for 6 days in September 2006. Supported by Arts Catalyst, London.
In the depths of Star City, Moscow 2005.In 2005, Neal White was asked to join a trip being led by Arts Catalyst to the training centre for Cosmonauts. “Whilst all of the others on this trip were intent on a zero gravity flight, I was tagging along as I was researching the possibility of remaking a scene cut from Kubricks classic 2001 AD (of an art class). Whilst inside the closed military facility of Star City, I had an unexpected encounter. Whilst others in the group were undergoing training - learning how to put on a parachute in case the parabolic flight they were all going on failed, I was left alone in a corridor. A small round light suddenly illuminated, followed by others. When I approach one of these lights, I discovered it was a porthole window, and far below me in the centre of the building, in what turned out to be a vast and very deep swimming pool, was a full scale model of the MIR space station. Soon after, at the same levels as I was standing, divers entered the pool wearing neutral bouyancy kit. A vast space was recvelaled for rehearsing a gravity free environment, and a moment more surreal than 2001 AD emerged in front of my eyes.”
Asymmetic Power Protest (Unauthorised access). Dugway Proving Grounds / UTT- a documented protest using a nomadic structure on the edges of the largest US Military Bombing Range. (UTT) - Utah. 2007. The custom made mobile structure (F-Utility Vehicle) and placards with equations (machine decipherable) used in war games, and military planning that address zero-sum scenarios are elements of a work that address the asymmeties of power in democracies. Undertaken whilst in residence; Center for Land Use Interpretation, Wendover, Utah, funded by Henry Moore Foundation.