Associate Lecturer
Veronika Neukirch is an Associate Lecturer at UCA, teaching since 2019 across all BA Fine Art year groups. Her art practice focuses on sculpture and installation, employing diverse media and techniques. She also has experience as an Art Writer, Freelance Curator, Art Dealer, and Art Handler, bringing a wide range of skills and industry knowledge to her teaching.
Bio
Originally from Germany, Veronika Neukirch has been based in London since 2005. Graduating from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Sculpture in 2019, Veronika was the recipient of the Gilbert Bayes Trust Sculpture Award and went on to become a lecturer at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham. She completed her BA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins (2013) and briefly studied at University of the Arts UdK in Berlin (2012).
In 2023, her work was shown at the Royal Society of Sculptors (London), The Art House (Wakefield) and she performed at Nottingham Contemporary. She has exhibited, completed artist residencies and scholarships in the UK, Europe and Southeast Asia, including the Zsuzsi Robozs Scholarship 2022 with solo presentation at Morley Gallery (London), the Solo Residency at Unit 1 Gallery, London (2021), the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award Graduate Residency at Standpoint Gallery, London (2020) and Rimbun Dahan Residency in Malaysia with a book launch at Ilham Contemporary, Kuala Lumput (2017), which were kindly supported by the Goethe Institute.
Research outputs
Veronika’s most recent research centered on the phenomenology, physics, utilisation of- and ‘spiritual experiences’ induced by translucent matter; and the evolution of the eye, which culminated in the artist publication and solo exhibition ‘Art is only for Beginners’.
Previous projects:
- ‘Touch Me’ (curatorial project/research group)
– Investigated touch within relational aesthetics between artist and artwork, resulting in a performative sculpture exhibition in three parts. - ‘An octopus walks into a furniture shop’ (essay)
– Examined perceived hierarchies between Fine Art and Design, the handmade and mass production as well as art's odd role as commodity within our consumerist society. - ‘Void-scaping’ (solo exhibition)
– Juxtaposed space responsive installation with the romantic notion of infinite internal spaces. - ‘Look into my Eyes’ (dissertation)
– looked into the artist’s gesture of adding eyes to inanimate objects or abstract shapes throughout contemporary art. It traced symptoms of new materialism; surreal animism; the commodity’s and the cute’s power over consumers; capitalism’s phantasmagoric shifts of subject, object and commodity; the subject’s inclusive empathy with objects in the context of the Anthropocene; a reversal of the exhibition paradigm: ‘the artwork looks back’ and subsequently the ongoing production of self via seeing and being seen.
- MRSS - Royal Society of Sculptors
- Contemporary Glass Society
- 2022 – Gilbert Bayes Mentorship Prize, Royal Society of Sculptors
- 2021 – Eaton Prize (solo exhibition, Unit1 Gallery|Workshop, London)
- 2020 – Mark Tanner Graduate Residency, Standpoint, London
- 2019 – Gilbert Bayes Prize (RCA degree show)
- 2017 – Goethe Institute funded residency and artist book
- 2012 – DAAD Funded Exchange Prize