Since graduating from postgraduate study in Fine Art Media at The Slade, UCL (1992), Gillian has exhibited internationally, including most recently with Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden, and at the Baltic for GIFT (Gateshead International Festival of Theatre).

Her performance work has been described as clever, honest, and strange and is often commissioned to respond to specific sites or contexts.

‘[T]he curiosity and effrontery was tangible … a challenging work at many levels … an essential work to include in the program - not only for the subject and the questions it opens …’ - Mike Stubbs, Creative Director of Doncaster Creates, former Director of FACT Liverpool

Gillian writes, performs, teaches, mentors, creates, curates, collaborates with different people in different places.

‘I see teaching, facilitation, curating, performing, making – all of this as ‘the practice’. I don’t know how to separate them because to me, the creative cultural statement comes from dialogue, from knowledge exchange. I might be a ‘solo artist’, but I am part of a community with people who are both directly in contact with me and others that link through wider histories and geographies.’

‘Gillian is an extremely impressive and inspiring teacher … [she is] highly motivated and focussed consistently insightful…thought provoking and creatively diverse’. - Dr Kate Craddock, Northumbria University/ GIFT Festival

Gillian has worked in higher and further education for over 30 years. She has led, designed, taught, and assessed under and post-graduate courses in art & design and theatre & performance.

Gillian can support the development of academic and practice skills through actor training, visual and live art devising, dramaturgy, scenography and installation design.

She is currently supervising PhD researchers looking at photography as a socially engaged practice, applied theatre strategies for people seeking sanctuary, and sculptural performance which examines gender and industrial history.

Previously, she was Head of Learning with Arc Architecture Centre, designing and delivering informal and accredited learning in design and the environment for a range of participants, from primary school children to local authority elected members.

Gillian has delivered creative engagement and learning projects for members of communities and specific social contexts.

Performance and Art
Feminism
Gender
The Body
Class
Aging
Menopause
Work and Labour
Breath
Water
The Everyday
The Home and the Domestic
Objects and Things
Dirt
The Uncanny and Freudian psychoanalysis
Site and Place

Dr Gillian Dyson’s academic research intersects with her creative practice. She was awarded a PhD by University of Glasgow (2020) for her thesis: The ‘Feminine Un-canny’: A Strategy for the Deconstruction of the Homely in Contemporary, Solo Feminist Performance Art.

She is currently carrying out new practice-research on the experience of the aging body which explores the sense of (in)visibility, softness and hardness in the body, and time passing.

Publication and Presentations include:

‘Taking the Table around the block’ (March 2021) Video article for Spaces of Stigma; Spaces of Privilege, 2021. Research publication website, Leeds Beckett University.

‘A Body Speaking for Itself’ was written for Pushing Butter (2022) is an online publication to accompany the performance work by Victoria Firth. Including sketch drawings from the performance.

Doctoral Supervision: if you are interested in Gillian Dyson being part of your PhD Supervision team please contact her at LBU: g.dyson@leedsbeckett.ac.uk

Gillian was the Acting Chair on the Board of Centre for Live Art Yorkshire (CLAY) until 2024 and Trustee to the Gypsyville, Gypsy Traveller photographic archive project.

Previously, she was a lead member of New Work Yorkshire and on the Board of New Work Network. She was a key member and project manager/ curator of the historic, artist-led organisation Hull Time Based Arts (HTBA).

She has also been an artist mentor, advisor to other practitioners, including on behalf of East Street Arts, and Dance4.

Her curatorship and project management includes the production of ensemble performance for Latitude Festival and Light Night Leeds, and Gillian most recently co-curated ReROOTed and for Humber Street Gallery, Hull 2017 UK City of Culture.

It’s all research: watching performance, preparing food, watching TV, drawing, writing, talking with friends, caring for my rabbits, working out at the gym or scuba diving in the north sea…

Gillian is also a very experienced technical, extended range scuba-diver, regularly exploring international oceans and British waters on closed and open-circuit equipment. She is a boat handler and first-aid response trained and has a keen interest in shipwrecks and war relics, lost ceramics and marine conservation.