Quilla Constance


Jennifer Allen, known professionally as Quilla Constance, is a British contemporary artist, lecturer and curator, born in Birmingham 1980.

Education

Quilla Constance graduated from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, St John's College, University of Oxford, with a BA Fine Art in 2001 and earned an MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2006. Constance later studied acting at Rose Bruford College

Style

It has been proposed that 'QC over-identifies with an 'exotic' militant punk persona to interrogate category-driven capitalist networks, 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 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'.

Career

Allen's video and performance works have exhibited internationally since 2003 and are held in the art collections of Anita and Poju Zabludowicz, David Roberts' Art Foundation, and Goldsmith's College.
In 2003 Allen was awarded British and Arts Council funding for her solo exhibition and artist's residency at BizArt Center, Shanghai, China through the ARTLINKART International Residency Programme.
In 2007 Allen guest curated a video screening at 176 London, Zabludowicz Collection. The event featured Allen's 2006 video work 'Happy Christmas Mom & Dad', a piece that sees Allen allegedly perform a seductive dance as a gift for her parents on Christmas Day. The piece was subsequently reviewed by curator Jane Neal for Saatchi Online and Dr Alexandra Kokoli at Van Abbemuseum for the conference 'Conceptualism - Intersectional Readings, International Framings - Situating Black Artists and Modernism in Europe.The screening at Zabludowicz Collection also included video works by Artists, Pipilotti Rist, Gilbert & George, and Carolee Schneemann.
Shortly after completing her master's degree at Goldsmiths, Allen created her Quilla Constance persona as an extension of the exoticised, androgynous punk-carnival aesthetic and malevolent demeanour explored in her earlier video and performance works and 'to locate a point of agency within a hegemonic framework of white phallocentric order'. Allen subsequently began staging performances in clubs, theatres, music venues and the street.
In 2011 she was spotted by 80s pioneers of synth-pop and New Romanticism, Rusty Egan and Steve Strange, who invited her to perform at a reunion in the former Soho Blitz Club. Later that year she performed at Fierce! Festival, Birmingham alongside Cakes da Killa.
Quilla constance has given performative lectures, exhibited paintings, costumes and screened her videos in galleries such as Tate Modern, Tate Exchange, Van Abbemuseum, Jerwood Arts Jerwood Space, The Institute of Contemporary Arts, Camden Arts Centre, Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Standpoint Gallery, Nerd Nite London. Toynbee Hall, The Museum of Contemporary Art London / MOCA, London, The Kendrew Barn St John's College, Oxford
Autograph ABP and The Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Academy Schools where she is also a visiting tutor Allen has also taught at Middlesex University and is an Associate Lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts UAL
In 2010, Allen staged a 'militant punk protest performance' outside the former Punk Soho nightclub in order to challenge the venue for cancelling a Quilla Constance punk performance in favour of a corporate booking. She later successfully prosecuted the club's promoter through Equity.
In 2015, 2017 and 2019 Allen was awarded funding from Arts Council England in support of a series of solo projects and exhibitions: 'Teasing Out Contingencies: Quilla Constance Open Studio' at Tate Modern, Tate Exchange 'Transcending The Signified' at The Museum of Contemporary Art/ MOCA, London, which toured to The Old Fire Station Gallery, Oxford/ OFS Studio; '#QC' at The Kendrew Barn, St John's College, Oxford and 'PUKIJAM' at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, curated by Maria Kheirkhah. PUKIJAM received additional support from The Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation ; and Diversity Arts Forum In December 2017 Allen's artworks were a subject for academic discussion and new research at Van Abbemuseum Netherlands as part of the conference 'Black Artists and Modernism: Conceptualism - Intersectional Readings, International Framings' Guest speakers included Dr Alexandra Kokoli, Prof Sonia Boyce, Prof Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes.
In February 2018 Allen was selected by Bedford Creative Arts and live art organisation Artichoke to lead women's art workshops in Bedford, and commissioned to produce a banner artwork with women of Bedfordshire to honour the suffragettes and the suffragists, and celebrate the centenary of women's right to vote. The banner featured in a major London procession PROCESSIONS held on 10 June 2018. In a statement to The New York Times, Constance said of the Suffragettes "They were really quite anarchic...They had to really fight. And we still have to fight...I think they're here today in spirit, and we're giving them high fives"
198 Contemporary Arts and Learning was the first gallery to screen Allen's arts council-commissioned video piece, PUKIJAM, which sees Allen 'perform a dystopian golliwog cakewalk, accompanied and interrupted by a montage of erotic media images, figurative objects and her mutant, sub-linguistic scat vocal set against a relentless electronic throb'. The exhibition also featured vibrant 'exotic' costumes adorning large, acrylic paint on canvas abstractions. 'These conspired with video works, inviting the viewer into a dialogue through which notions of cultural authenticity and the production of meaning were visibly contested'.
In July 2015 Constance was invited to screen her performance art video, PUKIJAM in the Kendrew Barn Gallery, St John's College, Oxford
for The 2000 Women Big Party. The event was held in celebration of the matriculation of the 2000th female to read for a degree at St John's College Oxford, and the appointment of Margaret Snowling, the first female president of the college in 450 years. St John's College, Oxford was an all-male college until 1979.
Allen has written articles for Transition Gallery and The Rebel. She also writes a quarterly punk-art gossip column, 'Quilla's Constant Catch-Up' for La Bouche Zine.

Artworks