Bio/CV







My name is Yiwei Xu许一苇. I’m a Chinese-born, London based artist. After finishing the Drawing Year at Royal Drawing School in 2021, I start my practice journey from doing observational drawings with mixed-media. My artworks are rooted from natural forms which I could find in city gardens, river side, canals, lakes and community green fields, those places where people could escape easily from the hustle and bustle.

I have two studios, one of them is a random outdoor space. Getting outside is very healing as what I can get is not only from observing, but also triggering other sensations like hearing, touching, smelling, sense of time and space, etc. I enjoy the process of my mindset being connected and reformed by these conditions. I admire and appreciate the unsettling nature, and I celebrate the non-stop variation and movements which constantly shows off the energy of life by breaking and reshaping. Like a canal's surface reflects everything in the reality, but the reflection of what's real could be interrupted so easily just because of a moving boat, a blowing breeze, and a floating leaf. At this moment, ripples weave together, break the stillness of water, and generate a new form of imagery.

The concept of breaking and reshaping gives me an open-mind and effects the way of making artworks. The honest and genuine respect for what I see, feel, imagine is been linked up and translated as an imagery of abstraction, which allows freedom of breaking rules, and let the answer opens between likeness and inscrutability.



Contact

xyw1216@hotmail.com

Features
Booooooom


Education

1990 Born in Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China

2009-2013 Graduated from Donghua University, Shanghai, in BA Fanshion Design

2014-2016 Graduated from UAL Camberwell College of Arts London, in MA Illustration

2019-2021 Royal Drawing School, in Postgraduate Programme the Drawing Year



Exhibitions


2022 Visions of Healings, BWG presents, Cavendish venues, London

2022 Anywhere in Between, The Tub Hackney, London

2022 WEARY HAROLD, ASC Gallery, London

2021 With Love, II, Paint Talk presents, Online

2021 Drawing Year Open Studios at Space Studios, London

2021 Drawing Year End of Year Exhibition at the Royal Drawing School, London

2021 Best of the Drawing Year, Christie’s London

2021 Art Maze Mag Edition 21

2021 A Small Good Thing, Online

2020 Life on Venus, The Tub, London

2020 CSSA-Goldsmith China & Britian International Design Exhibition, Online

2020 D Dream International Illustration Invitational Exhibition, Shanghai

2019 Illustrate Lifestyle, International Visual Art and Illustration Exhibition Week, Beijing

2018 Solo Exhibition, Depth, Zzcetistar Book store, Shanghai

2016 Camberwell College of Arts Post- graduate Summer Show, London

2015 Bieastry Exhibition, Chelsea School of Art, London