Sue Williams

Sue Williams is a prominent international artist based in Wales, with a body of work spanning solo and group exhibitions across five continents. Her powerful multi-disciplinary practice plays between the physical and the virtual, the private and the public — drawing the viewer into a world of provocative sexual and emotional politics that exposes the resurgence of inequality, invisibility and restriction. Her autoethnographic practice in drawing and text articulates the complexities of human relationships within a contemporary cultural context, demonstrating a vulnerability that elicits a powerful affective response.

Williams' work is rooted in drawing, from which installation, painting, film, sound and collaborative work emerge. Since 2009 she has worked with choreographers, composers, poets and musicians, extending her practice across disciplines and into live contexts. Her work has driven major drawing events at the National Museum of Wales and in Zimbabwe, supported by the Arts Council of Wales and CARTOON. She is committed to developing creative networks and dynamic strategies that sustain contemporary art practice and build productive cultural communities.

Born in Redruth, Cornwall, Williams graduated from Cardiff College of Art in the 1970s and has maintained a practice as both artist and academic ever since. She is Professor and Course Director of Fine Art at UWTSD Swansea.

Williams is a Gold Medal winner at the National Eisteddfod (Denbigh, 2001) and was selected as the sole British artist for the Artes Mundi Prize (2006) by Deepak Ananth, art historian, critic and independent curator based in Paris, and Ivo Mesquita, curator, critic and art writer, São Paulo. Her work has been shown at the Avesta Biennale, Sweden, and Site-ations, New York, and is held in collections including the Welsh Government, the National Museum of Wales, and the Contemporary Arts Society.