THE Glasgow-based artist Cathy Wilkes has been chosen to represent the UK at the world's biggest visual arts festival, the Venice Biennale.
Cathy Wilkes, born in Belfast but long based in Scotland, will present at the Great Britain pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Wilkes, an award-winning artist who attended Glasgow School of Art, is known for her sculptures and installations which often feature domestic items as well as mannequins and fabric.
She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2008.
The UK has had a pavilion at the visual arts showcase in Venice since 1937, and Scotland has had its own show since 2003.
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The choice of Wilkes guarantees a major platform for a Scottish-based artist in the Giardini, the park and garden area of the city where many national pavilions are based.
Scotland + Venice, the separate pavilion for Scotland, announced last week it was searching for curators and artists for the show next year.
Emma Dexter, the chair of the British pavilion selection committee and visual arts director of the British Council, said: "Cathy Wilkes’s distinctive and highly personal sculptural installations, evoking the rituals of daily life while alluding to existential questions at the core of human existence, will trigger complex new meanings and atmospherics within the grand domestic architecture of the British Pavilion.
"I am in no doubt that her exhibition will be a unique and powerful contribution to the Biennale Arte 2019."
Hugh Mulholland, Senior Curator at The Mac, Belfast and member of the British Pavilion Selection Committee, said: “Cathy Wilkes is a deeply thoughtful artist; central to her practice is a desire to give voice to an inner world, to understand the human condition and to address an emotional deficit at the core of society, a preoccupation which could not be more apt for the current world order."
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Fiona Bradley, the director of The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh was a member of the British Pavilion Selection Committee, and she said: "Cathy Wilkes’s work is eloquent and engaging, with an uncompromising visual intelligence that will reach across national borders to appeal to the many and diverse audiences for the Biennale Arte 2019."
The UK Pavilion is commissioned by the British Council.
The Biennale will run from 11 May 2019 to 24 November 2019.
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