Fran Norton is an artist and MA Fine Art Course Leader. Her diverse creative practice ranges from traditional mark-making on paper to collecting, documenting, sorting and re-presenting everyday textual archives. The ‘drawings’ that result try to articulate the embodied experiences of today’s artist-woman as shaped by shifting socio-political spaces and dialogues.
practice
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texts
50,000 text messages downloaded from my phone and sorted alphabetically to resemble soundwaves became a raw material for articulating home as a social space of expectation that anchors our feelings of self and belonging.
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mapping
I often equated my drawing practice with mapping as a methodical gathering and sorting of spatial information. All maps are to some extent subjective distillations of information, inherently inaccurate and constantly in need of revision.
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dialogue
the difficulty of finding time and space to draw means that interruption and dialogue often become the drawn
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printdrawings
Relief prints of cow and sheep tongues drawn into with ink and a bradawl.
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drawing
Natural repetitive characteristics, obsessive impulses and orderly tendencies are amplified when limiting myself to the most basic process and product, drawing and line. Pared down to a surface and a sharp instrument I become a gestural recording instrument for my body and the space around it, combining a sense of centering and escapology simultaneously.
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installation
Drawing gained its centrality for me when creating large-scale installations using things found on city streets to construct pseudo-natural environments. The sculptural objects were interconnected by lines gouged into old layers of paint on the walls and floors.
exhibition
Home, Belonging and Boundary, Lighthouse Arts Centre, Poole, 2025
Non-Fluid Body, spudWORKS, Sway, 2023
Interwoven, spudWORKS, Sway, 2022
Mechanical Human Matter, The Gallery, Arts University Bournemouth, 2019
Drawing Strength, Monstalvat, Melbourne, Australia, 2018
The Home I Carry with Me: Documentation, BUMF Gallery, AUB, 2017
The Home I Carry with Me, Centre for Drawing, Wimbledon College of Art, 2015
Drawn 2015, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, 2015
Consider the Lilies, 27 Cork Street, London, 2015
Drawn 2013, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, 2013
160 Autumn Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, 2013
In The Making, Allsop Gallery, Bridport Arts Centre, Bridport, 2012
MA & Other Postgraduates 2012, Atkinson Gallery, Millfield, 2012
Unbound, David West Gallery, Lyme Regis, 2011
Shaping Light, The Gallery, The Arts University College at Bournemouth, 2011
Walking Through the Veil, Grant Bradley Gallery, Bristol, 2011
Shift, The Arts University College at Bournemouth, 2011
Dorchester Arts Open 2011, Dorchester Arts Centre Gallery, Dorchester, 2011
You Can Do It With Plastics, Museum of Design in Plastics, Bournemouth, 2011
ABC: Artists Books and Chairs, The Allsop Gallery, Bridport Arts Centre, 2010
Postgraduate, Byam Shaw School of Art, London, 2008
Binocular Kingsgate Gallery, West Hampstead, London, 2008
The Third Bicycle, The Long Gallery, Lauderdale House, Highgate, London, 2008
Concerning the Great Staircase of Black Marble, Byam Shaw, London, 2008
The Concourse Show, Byam Shaw School of Art, London, 2007
The Honeymoon Phase, The Long Gallery, Lauderdale House, London, 2007
Love Me, Love Me Not, Onefourone Gallery, Vauxhall Bridge Rd, London, 2007
Real Art for Real People, Coningsby Gallery, Tottenham St, London, 2005
collaboration
non fluid body
This experimental project with Lisa Richardson emerged though talking, laughing, drawing, making and lecturing alongside one another. Current debates around gender fluidity, biology and sexuality are complex and require sensitivity. Older women have long been under-represented artistically, politically, philosophically, academically and culturally. Both menopausal women-artists, we wished to celebrate this potentially liberating phase of life as a rich arena for transformative experience and artistic enquiry.
interwoven
The premise of Interwoven was to explore ways of making and being through creative and social weavings where objects, materials, conversations or bodies may become combined. From a relativistic perspective, in the world we inhabit, every thing is identified and defined by relative positions and qualities. As a result, we are woven into a dualistic narrative of me and you, Self and other, good and bad. Alternatively, is there an absolute dimension of reality, in which each and everything is part of a seamless whole; where we are processes not things? Do we weave through interdependence, where each thing is defined by its relationships to other things, and by differentiation, with what it is not? Or do we weave through independence, where each thing has absolute value and its unique place within the seamless whole? (Clare Baskerville and Simón Granell).
methodology
As an educator I try to create methodologies for practice that others can reuse
research
PhD Thesis
Interior restoration of a beloved space for artistic expression.
about
qualifications
PhD Fine Art, AUB/UAL, 2019MA Fine Art (Distinction), AUB, 2011
PGCert Creative Arts Education, UCA, 2020
PgDip Fine Art (Distinction), Byam Shaw, UAL, 2008
BA (Hons) Design: AV & Photography, N.Staffs, 1989
academic posts
Course Leader MA Fine Art, AUB, 2024-present
Senior Lecturer MA Fine Art / MA llustration, AUB, 2019-2024
Associate Lecturer BA Drawing, Camberwell, UAL, 2019-2022
Senior Lecturer, MA Drawing, Wimbledon, UAL, 2019
Visiting Tutor, BA Drawing, AUB, 2018-2019
Acting Course Leader, MA Drawing, Wimbledon, UAL, 2017
Associate Lecturer, MA Drawing, Wimbledon, UAL, 2015-2018
Visiting Tutor, MA Fine Art / MA Illustration, AUB, 2011-2019
Visiting Tutor, BA Fine Art, AUB, 2011-2014
Visiting Tutor, BA Illustration, AUB, 2011-2013
other employment
Royalty Administrator, Freelance, 2011-present
Company Director, Wright Pugson Chain Ltd, 2007-2022
Manager, Nortone Recording Studio, 2011-2017
Studio/Project Assistant, Tania Kovats, 2016
Accounts Assistant, Bednest Ltd, 2014-2016
Music Manager/Agent 140dB Management,1992-2000
Film Production Coordinator, Rapsodi Ltd, 1991-1992
Assistant Casting Agent, Premier Personalities, 1991
Charity Events Assistant, Sadler’s Wells, 1990-1991
Studio Manager, Felix Films, 1989-1990
Studio Assistant, Brindley’s Photography, 1987-1989
reviews
Artist Review: Fiona Robinson Article published in Evolver Magazine, Issue: July – August 2017, 2020
Vivienne Kennedy reviews Drawn and Drawing On, Royal West of England Academy, March 2015. Guide2Bristol.
Artist in Focus: Fran Norton by Fiona Robinson. Evolver Magazine. May 2012.
Exhibition Review by Judith Jones. of Unbound solo exhibition a-n, INTERFACE, Dec 2011.
academic practice
Validation Panel Member for validation the MA in Contemporary Art Practice course at East Sussex College, University of East Anglia, 2026
PhD Supervision and training (UAL Supervising Research Degrees: A-), 2025
Validation Panel Member for validating the MA Innovation and Creative Entrepreneurship course at Arts University Bournemouth, 2025
Co-Curator of Home, Belonging and Boundary exhibition at Lighthouse Arts Centre, Poole, 2025
Invited Selector, DVA Prize, 2019
Invited Selector, Evolver Prize, Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton, 2019
Guest Speaker, Introduction to PhD Study Event, Arts University Bournemouth, 2019
Guest Lecturer, Archiving, Documenting and Re-presenting the Everyday as Method for Practice, Postgraduate Lecture Series, Wimbledon College of Arts, CCW, UAL, 2019
Guest Speaker, DRAW Event: In conversation with Anita Taylor, 2018
Conference Paper The Visual Discourse of 'home' through the Ideological divide between Liberalism and Communism by Nicola Foster & Fran Norton for Narrating Home in the Visual Arts through and East West Divide conference at The Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University,in collaboration with Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Guest Lecturer of Collecting, Classifying & the Museological a Postgraduate Lecture Series at Wimbledon College of Arts, UAL, 2017
Reserve Speaker of Exile and the Politics of Belonging talk at Association of Art Historians Annual Conference 2017: Drawing in the Age of Artist as Networker, 2017
Seminar Series of Theory Fundamentals: Materials, Methods & Contexts devised and delivered for AUB, 2015-2017
Workshop Series of Research Methods and Methodologies of Practice-based Research devised and delivered for AUB, 2015-2017
Artist Residency, The Centre for Drawing, Wimbledon College of Arts, UAL, 2015
Panel Member, Jerwood Drawing Prize 2012, Preview and Formal Exhibition Panel Discussion on “Drawing Speaks”, 2013
publication
Might autobiography be useful in addressing the problems of gendered assessment? - Paper published in Journal for Useful Investigations in Creative Arts Education (JUICE), 2020
Within and Between: Women, Bodies, Generations - Essay contribution to the catalogue for an exhibition by artists Clair Chinnery, Janice Howard and Lisa Richardon at The Glass Tank Gallery at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, 2019
The visual discourse of 'home' through the ideological divide between liberalism and communism - Work published in Swedish literary magazine Tydningen to follow Narrating home in visual arts through an east west divide conference at Södertörn University and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden , 2019
Recipe Book Project - artist book involving 60 invited artists who demonstrate the importance and function of a recipe as a practical, social or theoretical form of communication, a way to instruct, help or guide, 2018
Artworks published in Baltic Worlds academic journal Narrating Home in the Visual Arts through and East West Divide. Baltic Worlds is published quarterly with international distribution by the Centre for Baltic & East European Studies (CBEES) at Södertörn University, 2018