Matt Lee is an artist, illustrator and educator from London. 

Matt’s work engages with processes for constructing, framing and manipulating visual messages and explores themes of presence/ absence and sense/ nonsense. He is interested in the language of illustration within an expanded field and his research interests include drawing as process and the rhetoric of framing.

His work has exhibited extensively, including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), Alliance Française (Delhi), the Mall Galleries (London), Roman Susan Art Foundation (Chicago), Fringe Arts Bath Festival (Bath), 51zero Moving Image and Contemporary Art Festival (Canterbury) and The Wrong Epicentre (Valencia). In 2022 Matt was awarded a grant from Art Council England to create a body of work with artist Smriti Mehra for the ‘Being Brent’ exhibition at Brent Museum and Archives. In 2023 he was shortlisted for the 6th John Ruskin Prize.

As an illustrator, Matt has been commissioned by The Guardian, BBC, FT Weekend, The Independent, Time Out, British Airways and HSBC. His work has been included in surveys of contemporary illustration by Gestalten, Bloomsbury Publishing and The Association of Illustrators. In 2022 he received Merit awards from the Hiii Illustration and 3x3 International Illustration awards for his work in Beneficial Shock! magazine. In 2024 he contributed a vinyl sleeve design to the Secret 7" exhibition and auction in support of War Child.

At present, Matt is an Associate Lecturer at University of the Arts London, University of Westminster and Arts University Bournemouth. Between 2007 and 2017 he held the position of senior lecturer teaching across the departments of Visual Communication and Contemporary Art Practice at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design, and Technology in Bengaluru, India, where he founded the Storybook Lab and led projects in partnership with Pratham Books, ANET and the Department of Education in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

He holds a BA (Hons) in Design: Illustration from Plymouth University and an MA in Visual Arts: Digital Arts from Camberwell College of Arts, for which he received a distinction and a Professional Preparation Masters Award from the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

Curriculum Vitae

Academic/ Teaching Portfolio 


Photo Credit: Issy Reynolds-Logue



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