William Lowry
Born 2001, UK
Lives and works in London and Oxford, UK
William Lowry makes drawings, prints, sculptures and installations that explore masculinity, memory and myth through the symbolic language of architecture. Figures - soldiers, athletes, workers, lovers, boys - appear caught between performance and vulnerability. They inhabit spaces suspended between the contemporary and the ancient, the intimate and the monumental: city edges, watchtowers, domes, arches and floodlights. These settings borrow from visionary and monumental architecture, from Boullée’s impossible gravity to Sant’Elia’s Futurist infrastructures, to stage the body inside larger fantasies of progress, power and ruin. He is interested in how images become carriers of internal mythologies, and how private feeling gets organised into public iconography. Alongside drawing and printmaking, he uses materials such as aluminium, plywood, resin, acetate, perspex and light, as well as processes including 3D printing, projection and sound. He is drawn to devotional objects, reliquaries and apocalyptic image traditions, where illumination and catastrophe sit side by side. His awards include the Bartolomeu dos Santos Memorial Award, awarded by the Slade School of Fine Art, the Max Werner Drawing Prize, the Euan Uglow Scholarship, the Hermione Hammond Drawing Award, the Vivien Leigh Prize, the Emery Prize and the Peter Kirk Travel Scholarship.
EDUCATION
2026 MFA, The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, UK
2023 BFA, First Class Honours, The Ruskin School of Art, Brasenose College, University of Oxford, UK
2020 UAL Level 3/4 Foundation Diploma in Art & Design, with Distinction, Abingdon and Witney College, Abingdon, UK
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2026 'London Writes Itself,' LBF Contemporary, London, UK (Group)
2026 Slade Degree Shows 2026: MA/MFA/PhD, The Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK (Group)
2026 'RBA Rising Stars 2025,' Royal Over-Seas League, London, UK (Group)
2026 'Analog,' Hypha Studios, London, UK (Group)
2025 'Ashes to Ashes,' Asylum Chapel, London, UK (Group)
2025 Private View, Shreeji Newsagents, London, UK (Group)
2025 MA/MFA Interim Showcase 2025, The Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK (Group)
2025 East Wing Biennial, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK (Group)
2025 'Fables,' Mall Galleries, London, UK (Group)
2025 New English Art Club Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London, UK (Group)
2025 'Glimpse,' Unit 2, St Leonards, UK (Group)
2025 The Koppel Project, London, UK (Group)
2024 'The Collective II,' Visionary Projects, New York, US (Group)
2024 TAPIR Kunstraum, Berlin, Germany (Solo)
2024 'Erkenntnis und Risiko,' Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany (Group)
2024 'Hor Tarã' (musical score for performance), Modern Art Oxford, UK (Group)
2024 'Terminus,' Pembroke College, Oxford, UK (Solo)
2023 'Zeitgeist,' Trinity College, Oxford, UK (Solo)
2023 Ruskin Degree Show 2023, Oxford, UK (Group)
2023 'EMPRES: The Art of Noises VIII,' Modern Art Oxford, UK (Group)
2023 'Awe + Wonder,' Bargehouse & gallery@OXO, South Bank, London, UK (Group)
2022 'Beyond the Pale,' Bodleian Library, Oxford, UK (Group)
2022 BI-BOx Art Space, Biella, Italy (Group)
2022 Dolphin Gallery, St John's College, Oxford, UK (Solo)
2022 'After Hours,' Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (Group)
2022 Amersi Foundation Lecture Theatre, Brasenose College, University of Oxford, UK (Solo)
2022 Brasenose College Chapel, University of Oxford, UK (Solo)
2022 'EMPRES: The Art of Noises VII,' Modern Art Oxford, UK (Group)