Untitled

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Cabinet Office, 70 Whitehall

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

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).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

Artist

Cathy Wilkes (1966 - )

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