Birgit Jürgenssen Untitled, 1978-1979. SX-70 Polaroid.
HANNAH WILKE, ANA MENDIETA, BIRGIT JÜRGENSSEN IN BODY I AM
OPENING JANUARY 22 – FEBRUARY 16
Alison Jacques Gallery
16-18 Berners Street
London W1T 3LN
www.AlisonJacquesgallery.com
Hannah Wilke (b. New York, NY, 1940; d. Houston, TX, 1993) trained at Stella Elkins Tyler School of Fine Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, and began exhibiting her work in 1961. Key solo museum exhibitions during her life included Hannah Wilke: Scarification Photographs and Videotapes at Fine Arts Gallery, University of California, Irvine in 1976, and Hannah Wilke: A Retrospective at the University of Missouri in 1989. Major solo presentations of her work since her death include a touring exhibition of Intra-Venus (1994 – 1997) and Hannah Wilke: Gestures, at the Neuberger Museum of Art, New York (2008).
Her work features in many of the worldʼs most significant collections of contemporary art including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; The Centre Pompidou, Paris; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; LA County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Ana Mendieta (b. Havana, 1948; d. New York, 1985) trained at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Since her death, Mendieta has been recognised with international solo museum retrospectives such as Ana Mendieta, The Art Institute of Chicago (2011); Ana Mendieta in Context: Public and Private Work, De La Cruz Collection, Miami (2012); Blood and Fire, Galerie Lelong, Paris (2011); Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance, The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., that travelled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Des Moines Art Centre, Iowa, and Miami Art Museum, Florida (2004). Mendieta also had a solo exhibition, Silueta and Silence, at Alison Jacques Gallery in 2010.
Significant group shows include A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance, Tate Modern, London (2012); Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2012), Selected Histories: 20th-Century Art from the SFMOMA Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2011); Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011) and Elles@Centre Pompidou, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010).
Birgit Jürgenssen (b. Vienna, Austria, 1949; d. Vienna, Austria, 2003) began her artistic career in 1968 studying at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, where, in 1980, she later became a lecturer, preceding a fifteen-year position as a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.
Jürgenssen has exhibited across Europe and North America since 1970, and during this time, had over forty solo shows, some of which have included: Birgit Jürgenssen Retrospective, Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna (2011), Schuhwerk. Subversive Aspects of ‘Feminism’, MAK, Vienna (2004) and Früher oder später, Landesgalerie, Landesmuseum, Linz (1998). Notable recent group shows include elles@centrepompidou, Centre Pomidou, Paris (2010), and, both showing until Spring 2013, Amor Psyche Action – Vienna, The Feminine in Viennese Actionism, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague and Privacy, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt.
Jürgenssen’s work will be shown for the first time at Alison Jacques Gallery as part of a group exhibition, Body I Am, running 22 January – 16 February 2013.
