Cathy Wilkes
16 April – 26 June 2011
With this exhibition Kunstverein München presents the first comprehensive show outside the UK of British artist and Turner Prize nominee Cathy Wilkes (born 1966, Belfast).
The exhibition can be seen as a personal account in which the artist looks back on her oeuvre while adding two newly commissioned works to the selection. The sculptures of Cathy Wilkes are known to have an unusual fragility, by means of the appropriated artefacts and materials she incorporates within them, such as the breakfast plates of porridge she saves of her family. These elements are more comparable to personal sketches that are both anecdotal details and historic.
The solo show of Cathy Wilkes at Kunstverein München e.V. will feature new works that are produced in collaboration with GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle in Bremen. The exhibition will be on show in Bremen from November this year.
It is not often these days that one encounters an artist who allows a level of sentimentality in their work. As it happens, pathos does not fit an image of the artist as an all-knowing aesthetic strategist – an identity that still enjoys the general approval of today’s critical evaluation. It is therefore remarkable that Glasgow-based artist Cathy Wilkes (born 1966, Belfast) has never shied away from bringing her emotions to the fore. She is not an artist who tells us how things work. Instead, she exposes vulnerability in being a creative individual. A conversation between Bart van der Heide and Cathy Wilkes.
Bart van der Heide: Cathy, please allow me to go straight to the burning question: what are your views on pathos in relation to your work?
Cathy Wilkes: I know that it’s impossible to be objective – I have concluded that over time. And being nonobjective brings all the mysteries of my mind into my work. I think these parts are very important to any artwork: not knowing why something is exactly as it is or why it’s there at all. I want to show these mysteries in an expanded way, but I am not interested in being confessional. I don’t want to share my story or something. I can see and feel that my work shows loss and sadness and I know that my work is brought about by these experiences to an extent. Awareness and openness bring suffering; the possibility of awareness – of enlightenment – is like an everpresent ghost; like a happy land; something which will never be or will never be found.
‘AS A COLLECTION OF CONSIDERATIONS ARE NOT SEARCHED OUT, SOMETHING COMES FORWARD SLOWLY IN A DIFFERENT WAY. ATTENTION, THIS KIND OF WAITING, HAS A SOFTNESS, A REGISTER OF INCOMPLETENESS LIKE A BABY CLINGING TO HER MOTHER, WHICH SEEMS TO SOFTEN EVERYTHING WHICH IS IN RELATION TO IT. ’
CATHY WILKES, 2009
Installation views: Cathy Wilkes, Kunstverein München 2011. Courtesy Kunstverein München e.V., photos: Ulrich Gebert.