Alice Instone’s work spans phantasmagorical paintings, oracular temples, immersive games, films, music, giant bird-women, collages on ancestry and gardens, a huge cat head you can sit inside, a magic caravan, hand-made books, washing lines of to-do lists, portraits of real and imagined women, and explorations of personal objects. Her visual language is instantly recognisable: jagged shapes, feathery or mist-like marks, and layered surfaces create imagery that is familiar yet uncanny. Stratified paint, glazes, glitter, gold leaf, collage, and even studio sweepings lend a palimpsest quality, while saturated color, chiaroscuro, and exaggerated form imbue her paintings, sculptures, and films with a luminous, dreamlike quality. Over two decades, she has collaborated with institutions including the United Nations, Oxfam, EY, Chanel, Tate Modern, the British Houses of Parliament, and Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont. Across these diverse forms and collaborations, her work consistently probes the human condition.

At its heart, Instone’s work is portraiture: exploring inner and outer worlds, and the ways people connect to these and to each other. She began by painting women who have shaped the world, from scientists and lawmakers to musicians, businesswomen, and writers, where their stories are as integral to the work as the finished image (21 21st Century Women, 2008; The House of Fallen Women, 2010; She Should Have Known Better, 2013). These projects addressed the absence of women in art history, and challenged gendered histories. She has since explored narratives through everyday objects such as shoes (Interview With a Shoe, 2009). Discarded to-do lists (The Pram in the Hall, 2016; Spell, 2022) highlight hidden domestic labour and reveal what real lives are made of, rather than what we might project. She has also collected inner voices, from self-criticism (The Book of Self-Loathing, 2022–24) to memories of ancestors (The Book of Grandmothers, 2018–23). These participant-driven works draw audiences in a shared reservoir of personal, intergenerational and collective voices. Her films Oracle (2021), winner of Best Fantasy at Cannes Short Film Festival, and Seeker (2025) extend her engagement with collective storytelling. Instone invites viewers to encounter art as both mirror and doorway: an invitation to recognise ourselves in one another.

Games and interactive frameworks such as The Motherhouse (2022) are central to her practice. Hope, fear, and the shadow side are embraced to bring about transformation, using ritual, play and reflection as catalysts. Card readings (Playing Cards With My Grandmother, 2018; A Visit to the Oracle, 2023) provide reassurance and connection, while snakes-and-ladders boards (Magic Carpet Fly, 2026) echo life’s unpredictability. Each encounter activates and shapes the work, turning it into a living, evolving experience. Instone has revisited the head repeatedly in paint and sculpture, human and animal form, and in the masks used in her films. The head becomes a site to explore multiplicity: the manifold, contradictory selves we carry. Both object and subject, it is a mine of emotion and consciousness. Across paint, paper, film, shoes, or games, the question remains: who are we beneath the masks?