ARTIST ROOMS | Louise Bourgeois
From Sat 23 Jul 2022 - Sat 19 Nov 2022
Powerful, provocative and personal: discover the Art of Louise Bourgeois in a new exhibition at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum.
Rugby Art Gallery and Museum are the first venue to present a new ARTIST ROOMS touring exhibition celebrating the work of legendary artist Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010). ARTIST ROOMS | Louise Bourgeois brings together a collection of Bourgeois’ sculptures, drawings and prints produced in the last twenty years of her life, a period of extraordinary creativity during which the artist re-articulated many of her lifelong concerns in newly provocative and profound ways, including her exploration of identity, gender, childhood, family relationships, and memory.
In her remarkable eight-decade career, Bourgeois created a body of work which is beguiling, psychologically charged and endlessly inventive, ranging from monumental installations to figurative sculptures and abstract collages. Bourgeois was the first women to be given a sculpture retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1982, and the first artist to have an exhibition at Tate Modern in 2000.
Bourgeois’ art was closely bound up with her life, and she used artmaking as a way of making sense of her experiences. Her sculpture, drawing and writing are characterised by an unflinching emotional honesty, as she continually retold and reworked the memories and stories that shaped her life. With a compelling need to make and re-make, she explored different forms and materials to find the most appropriate means of expressing her ideas and emotions, combining carved marble, cast bronze, wood, latex or stitched and stuffed fabric and found objects.
I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands...
Louise Bourgeois
Banner Image: Louise Bourgeois, Spider I, 1995, ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Lent by the Easton Foundation 2013. © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022. Photo © Tate (Marcus Leith)
ARTIST ROOMS is a touring collection of international modern and contemporary art, presenting the work of individual artists in solo exhibitions. Its national programme reaches audiences across the UK and is developed through local partnerships. ARTIST ROOMS draw from a national collection jointly owned by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland that includes major bodies of work by international artists. ARTIST ROOMS gives young people the chance to get involved in creative projects, to discover more about art and artists, and learn new skills.
The ARTIST ROOMS programme and collection is managed by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland with the support of Art Fund, Henry Moore Foundation and using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Creative Scotland. Its founding collection was established through The d'Offay Donation in 2008 with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments.
Rugby Art Gallery and Museum
Little Elborow Street,
Rugby, CV21 3BZ
For opening times and accessibility information, please visit the Rugby Art Gallery and Museum website or call 01788 533201.
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