Biography

I am currently Senior Lecturer, part-time, on the BA Fine Art Course at Chelsea College of Art & Design, and External Examiner for BA ad MA Painting at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin. I studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London 1976 – 1980. My work has been exhibited internationally since the mid 1980s, including regular shows at Salvatore Ala in Milan and New York from 1984 to 1993, a solo show at Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1986 and New Voices, an exhibition of new contemporary British artists that toured worldwide 1991-7. My work has also appeared three times in the John Moores Exhibition of British Painting at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and featured in the British Art Show 3, 1990.

My paintings are in the collections of:

• the Arts Council of England
• the British Council
• the British Standards Institution
• the Department of Trade & Industry
• Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris
• Leeds Art Gallery
• New School, New York City
• the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
• Swindon Museum & Art Gallery
• The Tate
• Unilever plc

Research Statement

My work is rooted in the daily experience of the city: how people move around, inhabit spaces and make sense of their daily routines. Of particular relevance to this and to the structure of my paintings are the ideas of proximity, contiguity and adjacency: these terms express the abrupt collisions of style and taste evident in urban architecture, the habits nurtured by travellers and inhabitants to protect personal space and the interrupted narratives of encounters and conversations. The paintings themselves provide a fluid, mutable net to hold narrative fragments and connective elements in place; a landscape corresponding to the fragmentary mental maps which people construct in order to give their existence some measure of meaning.

[Image: Jeffrey Dennis 'Two or Three Things She knew about Him' 2011, oil on linen 81.5 x 12cm]

Selected Solo Exhibitions

• 2008: Art Space Gallery, London (24 Oct - 22 Nov)
• 2006: Art Space Gallery, London (5 May - 3 Jun)
• 2003: Art Space Gallery, London (4 Jul - 2 Aug)

Selected Group Exhibitions

• 2011: 243th Summer Exhibition: Royal Academy of Arts, London (7 Jun — 15 Aug)
• 2010-11: Jerwood Drawing Prize Exhibition: Jerwood Space, London  (29 Sep - 7 Nov); Summerfield Gallery, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham (11 - 22 Nov); South Hill Park, Bracknell  (27 Nov 10 – 23 Jan 11); Oriel Myrddin Gallery, Carmarthen (5 Mar - 16 Apr 11); DLI Museum & Durham Art Gallery, Durham (7 May  - 12 Jun 11)
• 2010: the Lynn Painter Stainers Prize Exhibition, Painters’ Hall, London 15 Nov - 26 Nov; W. H. Patterson Gallery, London 29 Nov - 3 Dec.
• 2010: Misfits: 7 British Painters abroad: GalerieDS, Heusden-Zolder, Belgium (8 - 30 May)
• 2010: A Thousand Yard Stare: Art Space Gallery, London (12 Feb - 13 Mar)
• 2009: Gli anni Ottanta, Il trionfo della pittura, De Schifano a Basquiat: Arrengario and Serrone della Villa Reale, Monza, Italy (17 Oct 09 - 14 Feb 10)
• 2009: The Northern Print Biennale, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle (4 Jul - 4 Oct)
• 2008: Precious Things: High Lanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland (26 Sep - 12 Nov)
• 2008: 240th Summer Exhibition: Royal Academy of Arts, London (9 Jun - 17 Aug)
• 2008: same as it ever was, Painting at Chelsea 1990 – 2007, The Arts Gallery (24 Jan - 2 Feb) & The Triangle Space, Chelsea College of Art & Design, London (17 Jan - 2 Feb)
• 2007: Eastinternational 2007: Norwich Gallery/Norwich School of Art & Design (14 Jul - 18 Aug)
• 2006:  Drawing from Turner, Tate Britain (6 Nov 06 - 20 May 07)
• 2006: Winter Journey: 2006 at Art Space Gallery, London, (1 Dec 06 - 20 Jan 07)
• 2005: Short Stories about Painting: Art Space Gallery, London (9 Sep - 15 Oct), with Simon Callery, Louise Cattrell, Merlin James, Tim Renshaw, Virginia Verran

Selected Curatorial Projects

• 2005: Short Stories about Painting: A project initiated with Art Space Gallery, London, including an exhibition, book (ISBN 0-9549623-2-X), symposium (Chelsea College of Art & Design, London 14 Oct 2005) and DVD featuring interviews, conversations and stories by/with artists and writers about how painters use their studios.

Selected Publications

• 2008: Jeffrey Dennis – Extracts from the Log: pub. Art Space Gallery; text by David Ben White & Jeffrey Dennis, ISBN 978-0-9558723-2-7
• 2003:  Jeffrey Dennis - A Crisis of Connections: pub. Art Space Gallery; essay by Martin Holman, foreword by Michael Richardson   ISBN 0-9528502-4-9

Selected Essays and Articles

• The Unbearable Lightness of Painting about the paintings of René Daniëls and René Magritte, co-authored with artist David Ben White, published in Turps Banana # 10 ISSN 1749-3994
• No Place like Home on the work of Karin Mamma Andersson, published by Camden Arts Centre, London, to accompany her exhibition, 28 Sept - 25 Nov 2007

Selected Presentations to Conferences

Panel discussion with Phyllida Barlow and Eric Bainbridge at the Pino Pascali exhibition, Camden Arts Centre, London, 13th March 2011

Panel discussion on at the Jerwood Space, London, to accompany the Jerwood Drawing Prize Exhibition  18 Oct 2010

How Art Thinks: a one day symposium on The Processes of Painting: June 26th 2009, at the Swedenborg Society Hall, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, WC1