Carl Gent is from Bexhill-on-sea, UK. The artist's recent work has sought to re-historicise and re-fictionalise the life of Cynethryth (the eighth-century Queen of Mercia). In 2019 Carl collaborated with artist Linda Stupart to produce All Us Girls Have Been Dead for So Long, a feature-length musical commissioned by the ICA as a part of their live programme for I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Kathy Acker. The musical followed the narrative structure of the 1990s video game Ecco the Dolphin by featuring a host of other protagonists including Naomi Klein's reportage of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Margaret Cavendish's 1666 proto-SciFi novel The Blazing World, Westlife's cover of Seasons in the Sun, and Kathy Acker herself.
They are currently working on a new publication expanding on their manufacture of absinthe that occurred at KELDER during 2017’s exhibition Multiplex, and a collaboration with singer and researcher Kelechi Anucha looking into the passage of English folk music into church song. This collaboration is occurring across a residency hosted by Wysing Arts Centre during 2020 and a series of interventions and performances at The Museum of English Rural Life in 2021. They will also be continuing their research into the life of Cynethryth during a research project based at Jupiter Woods in SE London throughout 2020. Carl also recently exhibited and performed at David Dale Gallery, Glasgow; ICA, London; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-sea and for Transmissions, episode 2.