Quilla Constance

Quilla Constance (abbreviated QC), is the creation of English artist, lecturer and curator, Jennifer Allen, born in Birmingham 1980. Quilla Constance, aka Jennifer Allen, graduated from The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art , St John's College, University of Oxford, with a BA in Fine Art (First Class) in 2001 and earned a Masters (Distinction) in Fine Art from Goldsmith's College, University of London in 2006. Allen also studied acting at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance in 2013. It has been proposed that 'QC over-identifies with an 'exotic' militant punk persona to interrogate a category-driven capitalist network, through staging and virally inserting her artistic practice within pop culture, traversing music venues, forging protests and entering art galleries in order to emulate and interrupt the operations of these cultural zones'. Quilla Constance stages interventions across an interdisciplinary practice of paintings, lectures, photographs, live performances, costumes, art and music videos. Her live performance work has been noted for its 'unflinching physical narrative performed entirely through breath, posture and non-verbal sounds: panting like a dog, sex noises, then laughter, pure guttural anger, and back again'. Allen's video and performance works have exhibited internationally since 2001 and are represented in the art collections of Anita and Poju Zabludowicz, David Roberts' Art Foundation, and Goldsmith's College (Warden's). Quilla Constance has given performative lectures and screened her videos in galleries such as the Freud Museum, The Institute of Contemporary Arts, Camden Arts Centre (Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2001), Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, 198 Contemporary Arts, Standpoint Gallery, Nerd Nite London, Toynbee Hall, and The Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Academy Schools where she is also a visiting tutor. Allen has also taught at Middlesex University and Camberwell College of Arts (UK).