Alexis Neal is a practicing artist whose work examines cultural identity, the value of history, and the complexities of human connection. Her practice looks at the duality of artefacts, exploring personal adornment alongside material culture, and renders the Māori story in contemporary materials.

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She graduated from the University of Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Postgraduate Diploma in 1999, then completed a Master's degree in fine art media at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, in 2000. In 2024 she undertook a four-week intensive lithography summer workshop at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, a division of the University of New Mexico. Alongside her art practice she has held tutoring positions in both academic and community institutions.

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Neal's studio practice is interdisciplinary, combining print, weaving in many forms, and installation, and drawing on indigenous techniques within a contemporary context. Print is the backbone of her practice, though several years of studying Māori weaving have transformed it. The combination has pushed the print medium into three dimensions, producing woven works that compile multiple layers of colour and patterning in reference to the weaves of raranga whakairo. Through this, artefacts are held as both personal adornment and remnants of material culture, and the resulting work is at once social and personal, cultural and human.

Neal has exhibited extensively in Aotearoa in both group and solo exhibitions since the mid-1990s, and internationally in London, Australia, Norway, Sweden, and the United States.

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