Victoria Gray [Newcastle, 1982] is an artist and practice-led researcher. She has presented solo performance work nationally and internationally throughout the UK, Europe, USA and Canada. With an initial conservatoire training in dance and somatic practice (1998 - 2004), her primary medium and material is the body. Her work includes actions, interventions, time-based sculpture and video, being presented in museums, galleries and festivals in performance art, fine art and choreographic contexts. Throughout her practice, she has consistently explored auto-ethnographic themes related to her embodied experiences of (working) class, trauma, and neuroqueerness.

Presentations include; Bow Arts (London), Shape Arts (UK), Live Art Development Agency, FADO Performance Art Centre (Toronto, Canada), VIVA Art Action (Montréal, Canada), 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (Greece), The Tetley Centre for Contemporary Art (Leeds), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (Wakefield), Baltic 39 (Newcastle Upon Tyne), Royal Museums Greenwich (London), Siobhan Davies Studios (London), 8th Biennial of Photography (Poznan, Poland), Grace Exhibition Space (New York), and Centre de Cultura de Dones Francesca Bonnemaison (Barcelona).

Between 2008 and 2018, with Dr Nathan Walker, she co-founded and was co-director of Oui Performance, a performance art organisation curating performance art, action art, and poetry. Together they presented a series of performance art events in York, North Yorkshire, programming over 50 artists to produce new, often durational, site-responsive, performance works.

Since 2010, she has worked as a dramaturg & writer for award-winning choreographer Roberta Jean, on dance works including: Group Hug (2010), Brocade (2017) and Ways of Being (2023).

Her current artistic research is orientated within the field of autistic perception and sensory differences, drawing on lived experience, creative practice and philosophy. In particular, she is currently immersed in understanding sensory trauma and CPTSD within the autistic community, and autistic sensory life-writing. Key to this research is her in-conversation project, 'Autistic Joy:' a series of recorded conversations with artists, movement practitioners, performers, writers, & philosophers, at the intersection of art, philosophy and neurodivergent experience.

As well as fielding this enquiry through her artistic practice, she is a qualified neurodiversity specialist and consultant, working in the Art, Education, Health and Social Care Sectors. In the wider community, as part of York Mental Health Partnership, she is founder of the Neurodiversity and Mental Health Working Group, focussing on improving access to and quality of services for autistic adults - specifically, community-based and free at the point of access support - whether self or clinically diagnosed, pre or post diagnosis. She has a specific interest in understanding the connections between undiagnosed autism and ADHD, in relation to adults in active addiction, within the criminal justice system, and in mental health crisis services.

She holds a PhD in Fine Art, awarded by Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London (2017). This research integrated affect studies, process philosophy, political theory and somatic practices to understand affect as a kinaesthetic consciousness.

Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and edited books in the fields of performance, affect theory and choreography, including articles in; The Drama Review (MIT Press, 2015); Choreographic Practices (Intellect, 2013) and Journal of Dance & Somatic Practice (Intellect, 2012; 2017) and chapters in Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance (Routledge, 2016) and Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative & Cultural Practices (Intellect, 2012).

She has held several positions in academic institutions, including FE and HE, delivering across performance, writing, fine art and sound-based subjects. As an independent academic, she delivers on BA, MA and PhD courses by invitation.

She is an experienced mentor, and has, for over a decade, facilitated one-to-one mentoring to artists, practice-led researchers and students working within the contexts of performance art, dance, theatre, fine art, and writing.

Drawing on her lived experience of being late-diagnosed autistic, and combined with professional training, she is experienced in and particularly welcomes mentoring neurodiverse artists.