Artist Talk: Emii Alrai
Talk/ Tour, Event
Join artist Emii Alrai as she discusses the ideas and processes that inform her most recent artworks and exhibitions.
Artist Talk: Emii Alrai
Join artist Emii Alrai as she discusses the ideas and processes that inform her most recent artworks and exhibitions.
£5 General
£3 Concessions (Full time Students, 18 – 25 year olds, Disability PIP/Universal Credit, Pension Credit)
Free for Blue Monkey Network Members
Towner Members
If you hold a Towner membership subscription you are eligible for a 10% discount for this event. Log in and these will be applied to your order automatically.
Join artist Emii Alrai as she discusses the ideas and processes that inform her most recent artworks and exhibitions.
Emii’s talk will be followed by questions from the audience, moderated by Noelle Collins (Exhibitions & Offsite Curator).
This event is in partnership with the Blue Monkey Network, an artist-run organization based in East Sussex.
It accompanies Emii Alrai’s exhibition at Towner Eastbourne from 26 July to 2 November 2025.
We have a budget available to make this event as accessible as possible – this can include further interpretation services or other access arrangements we can meet to enable you to participate. If you require access arrangements, please email programme@townereastbourne.org.uk two weeks before the event date so that we can book a service if needed.
Emii Alrai (b.1993, Blackpool) is an artist, writer and former museum registrar who lives and works between Leeds and London. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, Alrai’s practice explores Middle Eastern mythologies, archaeology and Western museum structures.
Alrai uses a range of materials to create ruins and artefacts reminiscent of ancient civilisations. The weather-worn texture of eroded pillars and archways that she creates resemble stonework and structures uncovered at archaeological sites such as Pompeii in Italy or Jerash in Jordan. These large-scale ruins are fabrications, built in her studio, assembled in the gallery and furnished with earthenware pots, metal arrows, hand blown glass vessels – false artefacts made by the artist.
Through this work, Alrai engages critically with a Western tradition of museum display that prioritises the object. She invites us to think about collections, the origins of excavated artefacts and their close alignment with the reach of colonial empires.
Solo exhibitions include River of Black Stone, Compton Verney, Warwickshire (2025); Lithics, Quench Gallery, Margate (2024); A Core of Scar, The Hepworth Wakefield & iniva (2022); and Reverse Defence, Workplace Foundation, Newcastle (2022). Recent group exhibitions include An Axis of Abstraction: Art in Cornwall and Yorkshire – Then and Now, Leeds Art Gallery; Drawing Attention: Emerging Artists in Dialogue, a British Museum touring exhibition (2023-2024); life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooo, CCA Glasgow (2024); A Permanent Departure for Nostalgia, A rehearsal on legacy with Zaha Hadid, Contemporary Arts Centre, Cincinnati, Ohio (2023).
Public collections include British Museum, London; Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds; Arts Council Collection, London; Government Art Collection, and The Hepworth Wakefield.