Loren Beven grew up in South Africa, has an MA in Fine Art with distinction from the University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury. As well as painting, Beven works in screenprint, often combining the two. In reworking iconic images to create contemporary narratives, she reconnects history to the present, and specifically to place.
After returning to London, Loren joined artists’ collective Studio Voltaire in a disused tram shed on Voltaire Road in Clapham. In 1999 she was integral in moving the organisation to its current premises and instigating the vision of Studio Voltaire as one of the UK’s leading independent arts organisations with a pioneering public programmes of exhibitions, participation projects, live events and offsite commissions.
Loren studied screen printing at London College of Printmaking. In 2004 she was awarded an Arts Council England (ACE) residency in the printmaking department at London Metropolitan University whilst also reading for an MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths.
Living between London and South East Asia, she spent a significant amount of time in Nepal where she was artist-in-residence and later print making tutor in the Fine Art department at Kathmandu University. She had a large solo exhibition at Kathmandu’s prestigious Siddhartha Gallery.
In 2012 she was awarded an ACE residency at University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury where she later completed an MA with distinction in Fine Art in 2014. The MA and Studio Voltaire’s participation programmes formed a foundation for Loren’s continuing interest in collaborative practice.
Exploring the role of culture in relation to place, her collaborative projects connect communities and artists, generating responses to social and cultural issues, developing a closer relationship between the artist, the production of work and an active and engaged audience.
Loren’s current projects continue to be site responsive, engaging with relevant issues through the memory of the people and events of the past that haunt our lives and shape the space around us.
