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Associate Professor Paula Chambers is Senior Lecturer on the BA (Hons) Fine Art course. She teaches predominately at level 5, leads the sculpture studio teaching and lectures on the critical studies element of the Fine Art course.
Paula studied under Professor Griselda Pollock at the University of Leeds for the MA in Feminist History, Theory, Criticism and Practice in the Visual Arts, an experience that had a profound and lasting impact on the direction and development of Paula’s practice and academic interests. She has a practice-led PhD from Middlesex University and is a Fellow of The Higher Education Academy.
Working primarily with found furniture, Paula’s practice is sculptural, object based, and deals with concepts around feminism and the contemporary domestic. Paula has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally; with a back catalogue of solo shows, including most recently “Now You See Her, Now You Don’t”, at Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre and “Still. Stray. Stowaway.” at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University. She has presented at national and international conferences and symposia on subjects including feminism, contemporary art and the domestic. She is co-editor of Going Feral: Speculative Approaches to Animism in the Arts, and Wearable Objects and Curative Things: Materialist Approaches to the Intersections of Fashion, Art, Health and Medicine. She has chapters included in Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms, Feminist Visual Activism and the Body, and in An Artist and a Mother. Also journal articles published in the journal of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, and in Performance/Research Journal (special issue On The Maternal).
Articles
Chambers, P. (2025) Feral Interventions: Objects and Artworks on the Periphery, Parse, Issue 20, Spring 2025, special issue Feminist Art: Practices of Co-Existences
Chambers, P. (2021) The Lost and the Found: Stories for the After-Life (of Objects) for Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, special issue Trauma and Repair in the Museum.
Chambers, P. (2017) ‘The Nightdress I Wore to Give Birth in: Performative Materialities and Maternal Intersubjectivities’, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 22 (4), pp. 18-27.
Chambers, P. (2016) ‘Transcendental Housework’, JourMS: The Journal of Mother Studies, 1.
Book Sections
Chambers, P. (2021) An Encounter with Maternal Materiality: Cathy Wilkes and the Green Dress, Chapter for Artist Mother book, Demeter press.
Chambers, P. (2020) Folding Chair for the Feminist Resistance: Activating Feral Materiality in Feminist Visual Activism and the Body, ed. Basia Sliwinska, (2020) Routledge. pgs. 121-135
Chambers, P. (2020) Materialising dissent: Pussy Riot’s balaclavas, material culture and feminist agency. In: K. Deepwell, ed., Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms. Valiz.
Exhibitions
Chambers, P (2026) Fugitive Forms, Birley Studios, Preston. Jan-Feb 2026
Chambers, P (2025) Strays and Stowaways, Artifex Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania. Nov 2025
Chambers, P. (2025-26) Now You See Her, Now You Don’t, Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre. Sept 2025-March 2026
Chambers, P. (2025) Still. Stray. Stowaway. Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University. May-Sept 2025
Chambers, P. (2024) Not My Voice, Not My Hair, Stone Space Gallery, London (Nov 2024)
Chambers, P. (2023) Inconvenient Bodies, Hošek Contemporary, Berlin, Germany (April 2023)
Chambers, P. (2023) Material Nomads: A feral artist intervention, for Momentum 12 the Nordic Biennial, Moss, Norway (June 2023)
Chambers, P. (2022) Working Girls. The Whitaker, Rawtenstall. April-June 2022.
Chambers, P. (2022) Not at Home. The Art House, Wakefield. Jan-March 2022.
Chambers, P. (2020) Shoplifting in Woolworths: And other acts of material disobedience. The Civic Barnsley. 25 January – 7 March 2020.
Chambers, P. (2018) Home (dis)Comforts. Dye House Gallery, Carlton St., Bradford. 16 April – 4 May 2018.
Chambers, P. (2018) Home Strike. L’étrangère, London. 8 March – 21 April 2018.
Chambers, P. (2016) Transcendental Housework. Stockport Art Gallery, Stockport. 16 January – 27 February 2016.