Untitled

Cathy Wilkes (1966 - )

egg tempera on linen

2020
  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Government Art Collection

    Painting, October 2020

    on fine (ordinary) cotton

    alot of layers starting with unprimed cotton

    starting with the most basic thing

    adding pigment and gum arabic to make the simplest paint

    so the painting just comes out of its own form, repeatedly concentrating on

    the same thing

    mist and rain and cloud passing,

    time passing, transparent and has only the layers visible - everything open

    and visible in this rather than so many layers

    quietness and light changing

    there is no subject or object, we are part of the same.

    Also I think about the paintings of flowers in the installation in Venice. how

    they witness grief and suffering, how they hang on the wall or are painted

    on a plate and see one's whole life passing. how the manner of painting and

    the experience of painting and looking seems to hold everything that's necessary

    to me I feel like a flower is my mother, I reach out and try to return to her.

    Cathy Wilkes, 2020

  • About the artist
    Born and raised in Belfast, Cathy Wilkes trained at Glasgow School of Art and is part of the generation of artists who emerged in the mid-1990s. Wilkes is primarily known for her large-scale installations of seemingly disparate objects, many of which are distressed, damaged, altered or adapted. Her works explore the multiplicity of meanings, both personal and universal, that objects are capable of evoking, or representing. Also a painter, Wilkes’ predominantly abstract works on canvas tend to mirror the intensive labour that goes into her installations – the canvases are worked on, set aside, scraped clean and worked on again. Wilkes presently lives and works in Glasgow. She represented Great Britain at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 after having represented Scotland in 2005. She also participated in the International Exhibition of the Biennale in 2013 and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2008 and awarded the inaugural Maria Lassnig Prize in 2017. Wilkes’s work was the subject of a touring exhibition that began at Tate Liverpool (2015) and travelled to LENTOS Kunstmuseum, Linz and the Museum Abteiberg, Moenchengladbach (2015–2016). Other solo exhibitions include MoMA PS1, New York (fall 2017); Tramway, Glasgow (2014) and The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (2012).
  • Explore
    Places
    Subjects
    Materials & Techniques
    linen, paint, tempera, egg tempera, tempera painting
  • Details
    Title
    Untitled
    Date
    2020
    Medium
    egg tempera on linen
    Dimensions
    height: 61.0 cm; width: 71.1 cm; depth: 1.6 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from The Modern Institute as part of the Northern Ireland Centenary, March 2021
    Provenance
    The Modern Institute; from who purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 31 March 2021
    GAC number
    18959