OXFORD.- Modern Art Oxford presents an exhibition of work by British artist Jenny Saville. Tracing her practice from the early nineties to the present, this exhibition is the first solo show of the artist's work in a UK public gallery.
Saville rose to prominence with a series of paintings that suggested a measuring, marking or constricting of the female form. Later works explored the boundaries between states of the body, medical and social categorisation, and between life and death. In the Stare series, the artist uses a single found image as a starting point for a number of works, with the face of the subject repeatedly reworked in layers of paint. In new works presented at the Ashmolean Museum and Modern Art Oxford, Saville takes inspiration from Renaissance Virgin and Child paintings to create highly gestural, multi-layered works on paper. Combining dynamic poses and sensitive detail, these drawings off a unique reflection on motherhood, one that is both universal and highly personal.
Jenny Saville was born in Cambridge, England in 1970. In 1990, midway through her BA course at the Glasgow School of Art, she exhibited in Contemporary '90 at the Royal College of Art. In 1992 she completed her degree as well as showing in Edinburgh and in Critics Choice at the Cooling Gallery, London. Following the success of her show at the Saatchi Gallery in 1994, she took part in the exhibition American Passion, which toured from the McLellan Gallery, Glasgow, to the Royal College of Art and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut.
Her work has been included in exhibitions worldwide including Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1997, traveled to Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York 1998-99); The Nude In 20th Century Art, Kunsthalle Emden, Germany (2002, travelled to Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen in 2003); Painting, Museo Correr, 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003); and Paint Made Flesh, Frist Center for the Arts, Nashville (2009, travelled to the Philips Collections, Washington D.C. and Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY in 2010). In 2005, her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome.
