Bill Aitchison is a British artist and performance maker based in China. His performances and exhibitions have been presented in major museums, galleries, theatres and festivals in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Australia and China. His artworks are held in both private collections and museums. His output is as prolific as it is diverse with projects taking an extremely wide range of forms such as videos, monologues, group events, online encounters, guided tours, photography, installation and audio art. Despite this, his work as a whole is recognisable for its formal clarity, ambition of intent, dry humour and innovative use of site and frame.
Aitchison has lived and worked within several distinct contexts such as London Live Art, New York’s downtown experimental theatre, German post-dramatic theatre, European conceptual dance, Balkan site-specific performance and Chinese performance art. His work draws upon all of these and puts them together in a unique way.
He completed a three year full-time diploma in mime at Ecole de Mime Corporel Dramatique. He has a practice-as-research PhD from Goldsmiths College in the field of performance art and movement discipline. He has taught and lectured at graduate and post-graduate level and presented his research at conferences worldwide. He is curator of Last Minute Live Art, a Chinese performance platform that he co-founded in Nanjing.
He is an associate professor in the School of Culture and Creativity BNBU Zhuhai.