Glasgow’s Hunterian has announced a two-part exhibition of new sculpture and painting by artist Cathy Wilkes. The exhibition responds to issues of war and conflict and has been realised through the IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund, a national partnership programme of artist commissions led by Imperial War Museums. The exhibition is influenced by Wilkes’ childhood in Northern Ireland, and by histories and experiences of violence not usually given expression within official representations of war.
Cathy Wilkes (b.1966, Dundonald, Belfast) lives and works in Glasgow. She graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in 1988 and completed her MFA at the University of Ulster, Belfast in 1992. Wilkes’ consistently tough work with social realist representation has produced an outstanding and unique body of work spanning 25 years. Her sculpture, painting and installation in some ways demonstrate how we might redefine genre painting for the present day.
Wilkes represented Britain at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 and was the inaugural recipient of the Maria Lassnig Prize in 2016, which was accompanied by a solo exhibition at MoMA PS1, New York. Her work is held in numerous collections and in 2015, a touring exhibition bringing together more than a decade of her work was presented at Tate Liverpool. She 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 selected for ‘The Encyclopaedic Palace’, the 55th Venice Biennale’s central exhibition in 2013.
Alongside the exhibition of new work by Wilkes, The Hunterian will facilitate a public programme of events that considers relevant themes and will support a community engagement strand of activity within Glasgow.
Curator of Contemporary Art at The Hunterian Dominic Paterson said of the project “The Hunterian is enormously grateful for the opportunity afforded by this major commission. We wish to use it to consider how experiences of conflict and violence might be conveyed in art beyond monumental or heroic representations that valorise war. We are honoured that Cathy Wilkes has agreed to be the commissioned artist for this project. Her work encompasses both abstraction and intense social realism to convey themes of universal relevance: attachment, care, loss, separation, exposure, and revelation. In her installations, Wilkes achieves a radical form of empathy, finding analogues for experiences that are often beyond verbal expression. She is uniquely placed to think anew about what it means for human beings to be exposed to violence, and to challenge the ways in which that experience is shared in art.”
Cathy Wilkes will be exhibited at St. Aloysius Hall, Springburn, Glasgow from 11th – 22nd May and at the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow from 7th June to 29th September 2024 to coincide with Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Scotland’s biennial contemporary art festival.
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 