Ruth Beale

Ruth Beale is an artist whose socially engaged practice seeks to trouble societal structures, reframe knowledge hierarchies and advocate for collective approaches.

Committed to the radical possibilities of working collectively and collaboratively, they use dialogue and exchange to rethink the ways we share resources and ideas about the future.Using popular and everyday forms of art and material culture, such as political cartoons, banners, flyers and badges, their work often reveals the complex and sophisticated ways in which distribute media operate in terms of knowledge production and political effects. Exhibitions include In the Open, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna (2023), Editorial Tables: Reciprocal Hospitalities, The Showroom, London (2023), Divination from a Night Sky Partly Covered by Clouds: The Role of Photography in the Post-Media Age, Prague City Gallery, Czechia (2022), and The World is a Work in Progress, Attenbrough Arts Centre, University of Leicester, (2022). Recent publications include Drawing Risky Play with Turf Projects, London (2023). 

In 2012 Ruth co-founded The Alternative School of Economics, a collaboration with artist Amy Feneck which uses creative processes to explore economic and political issues. Working closely with communities, they connect global political issues to the complexity of lived experience, and use feminist organising and alternative economics as forms of resistance. Projects include The Neoliberal Imagination in Economics the Blockbuster: It’s not business as usual at Whitworth, University of Manchester (2023) and Tree Time, a research project exploring time and climate crisis, with TACO!, London (2023-ongoing).

Ruth also collaborates with Simon Elvins on All the Libraries in London, publishing two books that catalogue and celebrate London’s publicly accessible libraries.