Untitled

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

Williams observes the world with a sharp eye and wry humour, drawing on personal narratives and family histories – to reflect on rural life, loss, memory and the folly of ambition. In this painting and in another similarly untitled painting also in the Collection from the same body of work, he satirises codes of behaviour, gestures, affectations, and objects that he associates with the ‘art world’ and its players. In this painting a figure is somewhat comically obscured by the white canvas he is holding. The action takes place in a room devoid of any objects signifying perhaps the deliberately minimal, some might say sterile, white cube of a gallery space. Here Williams presents the idea of white paintings on similarly painted white walls in a nod to some of the extremes of abstraction the art world has been witness to, that are often met with bafflement by those on the ‘outside’.

Bedwyr Williams was born in St Asaph, North Wales, and grew up in Colwyn Bay. He completed a BA in Fine Art at Central St Martins in 1997 and an MA at Ateliers, Arnhem. After a period in London, he returned to Wales to live and work in Caernarfon. He received the Derek Williams Trust Purchase Award in association with Artes Mundi in 2017 and represented Wales at the Venice Biennale in 2013. Solo shows include Do the Little Things, Ancient Connections, Ferns, County Wexford and St Davids Cathedral, Pembrokeshire, UK (2022); THE SEE WALL, East Quay, Watchet, UK (2022); Milquetoast, Southwark Park Galleries, London, touring to Ty? Pawb, Wrexham, Wales and KARST, Plymouth (2021); Hypercaust / Y Tyrrau Mawr (The Big Towers), Southard Reid, London, UK (2019); ECHT, Tramway, Glasgow International, Scotland (2014) and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2017). His work has been included in many institutional group shows including at Goldsmiths CCA, London, UK (2022); Somerset House, London (2021 - 22); South London Gallery, London (2018); Hayward Gallery touring to Concrete, Dubai (2018); ICA Singapore (2017); and The British Art Show 8 .

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

Artist

Bedwyr Williams (1974 - )

Title

Untitled

Date

2021

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 60 cm; width: 60 cm; depth: 2 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Southard Reid, February 2023

Provenance

Purchased from Southard Reid, February 2023

GAC number

19138