News from British Pavilion

Untitled, 2012. Installation view of Cathy Wilkes, on view at MoMA PS1, 22 October 2017 – 11 March 2018

Image courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo by Pablo Enriquez.Gift of the Speyer Family Foundation and Mrs. Saidie A. May (by exchange). 

Courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

British Council commission Cathy Wilkes for the British Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia

Cathy Wilkes will present a solo exhibition in the British Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice from 11 May 2019 – 24 November 2019.

Wilkes’ exhibition is made entirely of new work, including sculptural installations, object arrangements, paintings and prints, flowing from room to room.

Through the measured process of creating her works, Wilkes experiments with all kinds of media and materials, and collects treasures and ingredients. Production - or what we see in the end - is the accumulation of all of these constituent parts. Her work recalls inchoate visions of interiors and places of loss, and meditates on the nature of love and the coexistence of life and death.

Her work also shows the disappearance and dematerialisation of life and the absence and anonymity of the author. Her works, which are all Untitled, render us all non-initiates; together we have equal capacity.

Dr Zoe Whitley, Curator, Tate Modern and Curator of the British Pavilion at Biennale Arte 2019 said:

“We are excited to present a completely new body of work by Cathy Wilkes. Her inventiveness, curiosity and unique thinking have produced something as ambitious as it is captivating.

“Wilkes creates space for us to experience the full emotive potential of her materials and invites us to share in her unmistakable aesthetic.”

Cathy Wilkes is the twenty-second artist to be selected for a solo presentation. The British Council has commissioned artists to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale since 1938, celebrating the best of emerging and established British art.

Emma Dexter, British Council Director Visual Arts, Commissioner of the British Pavilion said:

“This year’s Pavilion, commissioned by the British Council, gives us an unparalleled opportunity to showcase the creativity of the UK on a global platform.

“The importance of staying connected - with all of our audiences - through original and stimulating artistic programming is more relevant than ever in these particular times. I am very much looking forward to seeing the exhibition in place.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication containing new texts by Cathy Wilkes and Dr Zoe Whitley. It is designed by Yvonne Quirmbach and published by Heni.

Biography and selected exhibitions

Cathy Wilkes (b. 1966, Dundonald Belfast, lives and works in Glasgow, UK) graduated with a BA from The Glasgow School of Art in 1988, and completed her MFA at the University of Ulster, Belfast in 1992.

Wilkes has produced an outstanding and unique body of work spanning 25 years, she is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential artists working in the UK today. She will represent Britain at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2019.

In 2016, she was the inaugural recipient of the Maria Lassnig Prize and presented the largest solo exhibition of her work to date at MoMA PS1, New York (2017-2018).

Selected solo exhibitions include: Yale Union, Portland (2018); MoMA PS1, New York (2017- 2018); Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (2017); The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2016); Tate Liverpool, touring to LENTOS Kunstmuseum, Linz and Museum Abteiberg, Möenchengladbach (2015 - 2016); Tramway, Glasgow (2014); Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (2013); The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2012); ‘I Give You All My Money’, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago (2012); Gesellschaft Für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (2011); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2011); Kunstverein München e.V., Munich (2011); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2011); and ‘Mummy’s Here’, Studio Voltaire, London (2009).

Wilkes was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2008. She represented Scotland in the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 as part of the exhibition ‘Selective Memory’, and was featured in ‘The Encyclopedic Palace’, the 55th Venice Biennale’s central exhibition in 2013.

Selected group exhibitions include: ‘A Slight Ache’, Chapter, Cardiff (2018); ‘FOOD - Ecologies of the Everyday’, the 13th Fellbach Triennial of Small-Scale Sculpture, Fellbach (2016); ‘Mommy’, Yale Union, Portland (2015); ‘The Great Mother’ (curated by Massimiliano Gioni) Palazzo Reale, Milan (2015); ‘The Human Factor’, The Hayward Gallery, London (2014); ‘The Encyclopedic Palace’, 55th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2013); ‘Studio 58: Women Artists in Glasgow Since WWII’, Mackintosh Museum, The Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow (2012); ‘Abstract Resistance’, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis (2010); ‘Selective Memory’, Scotland + Venice, 51st International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2005); ‘Selective Memory’ was subsequently exhibited at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2005).

About Dr Zoe Whitley

Dr Zoe Whitley is Senior Curator, Hayward Gallery - formerly Curator, International Art at Tate Modern. She recently co-curated the acclaimed exhibition Soul of a Nation. Prior to Tate, she was a Curator at the V&A, having also curated exhibitions in the USA and South Africa.

Acknowledgements

Sponsored by

Therme Group

With thanks to

Outset x MAZZOLENI Art Fund

Donald Porteous

Henry Moore Foundation

Exhibition Supporters’ Circle

British Pavilion Patrons

British Pavilion Fellowship Supporters

Commissioned by the British Council for the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 2019. This presentation has been made possible through close collaboration with The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow.

Cathy Wilkes per la Gran Bretagna

Il British Council ha comunicato che sarà Cathy Wilkes a partecipare alla prossima edizione della Biennale di Venezia del 2019


CS

The British Council is delighted to announce that Cathy Wilkes has been selected to represent Great Britain at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, presenting a major solo exhibition of new work opening on 11 May 2019 and running till 24 November 2019. 

Since the late 1990s, Glasgow-based Cathy Wilkes (b. 1966, Dundonald, Belfast) has built a considerable reputation for sculptural installations of profound and mysterious intensity, which often evoke interiors and places of loss. Cathy Wilkes insists on the private life of the artist, and questions how art can relate to human experience. Cathy Wilkes’s work is tender, intimate, autobiographical – yet universal, inspiring the writer Laura McLean-Ferris to describe Wilkes’s recent survey at MoMA PS1 in New York earlier this year as “this magnificent exhibition”. 

The fierce integrity of her work is widely acknowledged, and, in 2016, she was awarded the inaugural Maria Lassnig Prize – a prestigious honour to recognise the achievements of mid-career artists.

To widen access to international working for UK visual arts professionals, the British Council has for the first time, created an opportunity for a UK-based mid-career curator to curate the British Pavilion. The British Council is delighted to announce that, following an open call selection process, Dr Zoe Whitley, Curator International Art, Tate, has been appointed to this position.

Emma Dexter, British Council Director Visual Arts, Commissioner of the British Pavilion and Chair of the British Pavilion Selection Committee, said: “The British Council is delighted that Cathy Wilkes has been selected to represent the UK at the Biennale Arte 2019. Cathy Wilkes’s distinctive and highly personal sculptural installations, evoking the rituals of daily life while alluding to existential questions at the core of human existence, will trigger complex new meanings and atmospherics within the grand domestic architecture of the British Pavilion. I am in no doubt that her exhibition will be a unique and powerful contribution to the Biennale Arte 2019. We are also really excited that Dr Zoe Whitley will be working alongside both the British Council and the artist to help bring this fascinating artist’s work to the global audience for La Biennale di Venezia.”

Hugh Mulholland, Senior Curator at The Mac, Belfast and member of the British Pavilion Selection Committee, said: “Cathy Wilkes is a deeply thoughtful artist; central to her practice is a desire to give voice to an inner world, to understand the human condition and to address an emotional deficit at the core of society, a preoccupation which could not be more apt for the current world order. Her presence at the Biennale Arte 2019 is a fitting acknowledgement of her considerable achievements to date.”

Fiona Bradley, Director of The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and member of the British Pavilion Selection Committee, said: “I am pleased to have been part of this year’s Selection Committee and for Cathy Wilkes to be the selected artist. Cathy Wilkes’s work is eloquent and engaging, with an uncompromising visual intelligence that will reach across national borders to appeal to the many and diverse audiences for the Biennale Arte 2019.”

Dr Zoe Whitley, Curator at Tate Modern and Curator of the British Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2019 said: “It’s a privilege and the most wonderful responsibility to be entrusted with curating the British Pavilion. I'm thrilled to collaborate with Cathy Wilkes and the British Council in such a unique capacity; to consider, to learn from and to convey the work of such a significant artist is an exciting challenge.”

Amanda Catto, Head of Visual Arts, Creative Scotland, said: “The Scotland + Venice partners – Creative Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland and British Council Scotland – are delighted to hear that Cathy Wilkes has been selected to represent Great Britain at the Biennale Arte 2019. Cathy Wilkes is a remarkable artist, making complex and emotionally powerful work.  This is a tremendous accolade for Cathy Wilkes and an affirmation of the exceptional quality of art making that is taking place in Scotland today.”

Suzanne Lyle, Head of Visual Arts, Arts Council of Northern Ireland said: “It is so delightful to have an artist of Cathy’s calibre, with a Northern Ireland connection, representing the UK at the Biennale Arte 2019. Her work and her role in Venice will be an inspiration to the rich seam of visual artists from these shores. The British Council’s selection of Cathy Wilkes’s work is recognition of her artistic excellence; it is well-deserved and we send her our heartfelt congratulations.”

The 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, which is the foremost global presentation of visual art, will run from 11 May 2019 to 24 November 2019. 

The British Council has been responsible for the British Pavilion in Venice since 1937, showcasing the best of the UK's artists, architects, designers and curators. In 2014 the British Council created the Venice Fellowships programme to offer students, artists and architects the opportunity to spend a month at the Biennale conducting research alongside the exhibition.