Anya Gallaccio

Last updated

Anya Gallaccio
Born1963 (age 60–61)
Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland
Education Kingston Polytechnic and Goldsmiths College
Movement Young British Artists
Father George Gallaccio

Anya Gallaccio (born 1963) [1] is a Scottish [2] artist, who creates site-specific, minimalist installations and often works with organic matter (including chocolate, sugar, flowers and ice).

Contents

Her use of organic materials results in natural processes of transformation and decay, meaning that Gallaccio is unable to predict the result of her installations. [3] Something which at the start of an exhibition may be pleasurable, such as the scent of flowers or chocolate, would inevitably become increasingly unpleasant over time. [4] The timely and site-specific nature of her work makes it notoriously difficult to document. Her work therefore challenges the traditional notion that an art object or sculpture should essentially be a monument within a museum or gallery. Instead her work often lives through the memory of those that saw and experienced it – or the concept of the artwork itself. [5]

Early life

Born in Paisley, Scotland, to TV producer George Gallaccio and actress Maureen Morris. She grew up in south west London, England [6] and studied at Kingston Polytechnic (1984–85) and Goldsmiths College (1985–88). In 1988 Gallaccio exhibited in the Damien Hirst-curated Freeze exhibition, and in 1990 the Henry Bond and Sarah Lucas organised East Country Yard shows, which brought together many of the Young British Artists. Gallaccio is a professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). [7]

Works

Gallaccio is known for producing site-specific works that inhale the prescribed climate and space. She often collaborates closely with nature when selecting materials, exploring life cycles through the passage of time, memory, and loss. [8] Much of her work uses organic materials, with fruit, vegetables and flowers all featuring in her work. Sometimes these materials undergo a change during the course of being exhibited. [9]

In Red on Green (1992), her first solo showing at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, ten thousand rose heads placed on a bed of their stalks gradually withered as the exhibition went on. [10] For Intensities and Surfaces (1996) Gallaccio left a thirty-two ton block of ice with a salt core in the disused pumping station at Wapping and allowed it to melt. [11]

preserve 'beauty' 1991–2003 was an artwork which Gallaccio produced as a nominee for the 2003 Turner Prize. The installation consisted of a wall of gerbera daisies pinned behind a single sheet of glass. [12] Behind glass, the flowers recall still-life and romantic landscape paintings, as well as flower arranging and pressing. [13]

Other works by Gallaccio include Stroke (1993) in which benches in the gallery and cardboard panels attached to the walls were covered in chocolate, "Two Hundred Kilos of Apples Tied to a Barren Apple Tree", Atelier Amden, Amden, Switzerland (1999) and Because Nothing has Changed (2000), a bronze sculpture of a tree adorned with porcelain apples. [14] [15] Because I Could Not Stop (2002) is a similar bronze tree but with real apples which are left to rot. [15]

Red on Green was recreated ten years later for the exhibition Blast to Freeze: British Art in the 20th Century mounted by Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in 2002–2003 and for the 2004 British Council exhibition Turning Points: 20th Century British Sculpture. [16]

In Stoke (2004), Gallaccio coated an old farm building at Edinburgh's Jupiter Artland with almost 90 pounds of 70 percent cocoa, confectioner-quality chocolate. The work invited visitors to lick, touch, and stroke the walls. [17]

2005 saw the publication of Anya Gallaccio: Silver Seed by Ridinghouse, which accompanied the artist's exhibition commissioned by the Mount Stuart Trust for an installation at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, UK. [18]

At Houghton Hall in Norfolk, the Marquess of Cholmondeley commissioned a folly to the east of the great house. "The Sybil Hedge" is an "artlandish" folly. [19] It is based on the signature of the marquis' grandmother, Sybil Sassoon. Gallaccio has created a sarcophagus-like marble structure which is sited at the end of a path; and nearby is a copper-beech hedge which is planted in lines mirroring Sybil's signature. [20]

Commissioned for The Whitworth Art Gallery, Untitled (2016), dubbed the ‘ghost tree’, investigates themes of life, death and nature. Inspired by the removal of a decaying tree, Gallaccio worked from digital scans of the removed tree, later reproducing in ribbons of complex stainless steel plates, a monumental and reflective 'ghost tree'. It has become "a haunting response to loss and a timeless monument to nature." [8] [21]

In a 2018 interview with Ocula, Gallaccio remarked of the YBA breakout exhibition Freeze: "It feels just as precarious now as it did then. And I think it is good to constantly remind myself of that and not to get complacent. The bravado and the chutzpah of Freeze was impressive; it was more about a kind of attitude and that is something that has had reverberations." [22]

Awards and acknowledgements

In 2006, she was listed on the Pink Power list of 100 most influential gay and lesbian people of 2006. [23]

In 2003, Gallaccio was shortlisted for the Turner Prize alongside Grayson Perry, Jake and Dinos Chapman and Willie Doherty. [24] One of her pieces for the show was preserve "beauty", 1991–2003, which was made from glass, fixings and 2,000 red gerberas. [25]

Exhibitions

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Turner Prize</span> Annual prize presented to a British visual artist

The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible. The prize is awarded at Tate Britain every other year, with various venues outside of London being used in alternate years. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the UK's most publicised art award. The award represents all media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Young British Artists</span> Loose group of visual artists

The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, in the late 1980s, whereas some from the group had trained at Royal College of Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Landy</span> British artist

Michael Landy is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). He is best known for the performance piece installation Break Down (2001), in which he destroyed all his possessions, and for the Art Bin project (2010) at the South London Gallery. On 29 May 2008, Landy was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bridget Riley</span> British painter (born 1931)

Bridget Louise Riley is an English painter known for her op art paintings. She lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Chadwick</span> British sculptor, photographer and artist

Helen Chadwick was a British sculptor, photographer and installation artist. In 1987, she became one of the first women artists to be nominated for the Turner Prize. Chadwick was known for "challenging stereotypical perceptions of the body in elegant yet unconventional forms. Her work draws from a range of sources, from myths to science, grappling with a plethora of unconventional, visceral materials that included chocolate, lambs' tongues and rotting vegetable matter. Her skilled use of traditional fabrication methods and sophisticated technologies transform these unusual materials into complex installations". Maureen Paley noted that "Helen was always talking about craftsmanship—a constant fount of information". Binary oppositions was a strong theme in Chadwick's work; seductive/repulsive, male/female, organic/man-made. Her combinations "emphasise yet simultaneously dissolve the contrasts between them". Her gender representations forge a sense of ambiguity and a disquieting sexuality blurring the boundaries of ourselves as singular and stable beings."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Davenport (artist)</span> English artist

Ian Davenport is an English abstract painter and former Turner Prize nominee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Damien Hirst</span> British artist (born 1965)

Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist and art collector. He is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest living artist, with his wealth estimated at US$384 million in the 2020 Sunday Times Rich List. During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Serota</span> English art historian

Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art historian and curator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freeze (art exhibition)</span> Art exhibition

Freeze is the title of an art exhibition that took place in July 1988 in an empty London Port Authority building at Surrey Docks in London Docklands. Its main organiser was Damien Hirst. It was significant in the subsequent development of the Young British Artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Craig-Martin</span> Irish contemporary conceptual artist and painter

Sir Michael Craig-Martin is an Irish-born contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is known for fostering and adopting the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artwork, An Oak Tree. He is an emeritus Professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths. His memoir and advice for the aspiring artist, On Being An Artist, was published by London-based publisher Art / Books in April 2015.

Jon Thompson was an artist, curator and academic known for his involvement in the development of the YBA artist generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fiona Rae</span> British artist

Fiona Rae is a Hong Kong-born British artist. She is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who rose to prominence in the 1990s. Throughout her career, she has been known for having a portfolio of work that includes elements of energy, and complexity. Her work is known for aiming at expanding the modern traditions of painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liam Gillick</span> English artist (born 1964)

Liam Gillick is a British artist who lives and works in New York City. Gillick deploys multiple forms to make visible the aesthetics of the constructed world and examine the ideological control systems that have emerged along with globalization and neoliberalism. He utilizes materials that resemble everyday built environments, transforming them into minimalist abstractions that deliver commentaries on social constructs, while also exploring notions of modernism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glenn Brown (artist)</span> British artist

Glenn Brown is a British contemporary artist known for the use of appropriation in his paintings. Starting with reproductions from other artists' works, Glenn Brown transforms the appropriated image by changing its colour, position, orientation, height and width relationship, mood and/or size. Despite these changes, he has occasionally been accused of plagiarism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zarina Bhimji</span> Ugandan Indian photographer

Zarina Bhimji is a Ugandan Indian photographer, based in London. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2007, exhibited at Documenta 11 in 2002, and is represented in the public collections of Tate, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alison Wilding</span> English artist

Alison Mary Wilding OBE, RA is an English artist noted for her multimedia abstract sculptures. Wilding's work has been displayed in galleries internationally.

Ridinghouse was founded in 1995 as a British book publisher specialising in art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Country Yard Show</span>

East Country Yard Show was an exhibition of contemporary art organized by Henry Bond and Sarah Lucas. It was on view between 31 May—22 June 1990. The exhibition was a "seminal" London group show which was significant in the subsequent development of the Young British Artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charlotte Verity</span> British painter

Charlotte Verity, Lady Le Brun is a painter living and working in Somerset, UK. A monograph on her work, Charlotte Verity was published by Ridinghouse, in November 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compton Verney Art Gallery</span> Art gallery in Warwickshire, England

Compton Verney Art Gallery is an art gallery at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, England. It is housed in Compton Verney House, a restored Grade I listed 18th-century mansion surrounded by 120 acres (49 ha) of parkland which was landscaped by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown.

References

  1. ↑ Great women artists. Phaidon Press. 2019. p. 16. ISBN   978-0714878775.
  2. ↑ "Delicious or revolting? The strange taste of chocolate art". BBC News. 6 September 2024. Retrieved 14 September 2024.
  3. ↑ exhibit-e.com. "Anya Gallaccio - Artists - Lehmann Maupin". www.lehmannmaupin.com. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  4. ↑ "Turner Prize 2003 artist: Anya Gallaccio | Tate". www.tate.org.uk. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  5. ↑ "Anya Gallaccio, preserve 'beauty'' 1991–2003". Tate. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  6. ↑ "Landscape into art | Tate". www.tate.org.uk. Archived from the original on 6 October 2014.
  7. ↑ "UCSD Faculty". Dah.ucsd.edu. Retrieved 21 June 2013.
  8. 1 2 "Between Architecture and Nature: Anya Gallaccio's Ghost Tree". Made In Bed. 14 September 2022.
  9. ↑ "Anya Gallaccio – preserve 'beauty' 1991–2003". Tate Gallery . Retrieved 1 July 2013.
  10. ↑ Smee, Sebastian. (May 2004). "A dying art". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 1 July 2013.
  11. ↑ Mundy, Jennifer. (13 August 2012). "Lost Art: Anya Gallaccio". Tate Gallery. Retrieved 1 July 2013.
  12. ↑ "Turner Prize 2003 artist: Anya Gallaccio | Tate". www.tate.org.uk. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  13. ↑ "Anya Gallaccio, preserve 'beauty' 1991–2003". Tate. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  14. ↑ Schubert, Karsten. (1994). "Anya Gallaccio Archived 23 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine ". frieze . 15. Retrieved 1 July 2013.
  15. 1 2 Williams, Eliza. (9 January 2008). "Anya Gallaccio Archived 23 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine ". frieze. Retrieved 1 July 2013.
  16. ↑ Council, British. "Anya Gallaccio | Artists | Collection | British Council – Visual Arts". visualarts.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  17. ↑ "Anya Gallaccio - Press | Thomas Dane Gallery". Thomas Dane Gallery. Archived from the original on 19 March 2016. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  18. ↑ "Silver Seed". Ridinghouse. Retrieved 5 August 2012.
  19. ↑ McCarthy, Anna. "Focus on Jeffe Hein", Houghton Hall Education Newsletter [1 .doc Archived] 10 October 2011 at the UK Government Web Archive , January 2009, p. 3.
  20. ↑ Donald, Caroline. "The new garden at Houghton Hall, King’s Lynn, Norfolk," [ dead link ]The Times (London). 11 May 2008.
  21. ↑ Dr Leanne Green. "Anya Gallaccio's Ghost Tree". HENI Talks.
  22. ↑ "A conversation with Anya Gallaccio". Ocula. 30 May 2018. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  23. ↑ The Independent, (2 July 2006), Gay Power: The pink list. Retrieved 25 June 2007.
  24. ↑ "Turner Prize 2003 | Tate". www.tate.org.uk. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
  25. ↑ "Anya Gallaccio at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham". Culture24. 24 April 2003. Retrieved 27 November 2009.
  26. ↑ Feeley, Claire (12 April 2021). "The Great British Art Tour: a crystalline cave to dazzle and unsettle". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 April 2021.
  27. ↑ "Anya Gallaccio | Thomas Dane Gallery". Thomas Dane Gallery. Retrieved 22 May 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.