Kaye Donachie
27 Feb - 11 Apr 2010
Maureen Paley is pleased to present new work by Kaye Donachie in her fourth solo exhibition at the gallery.
Donachie’s intimate portraits pay tribute to a cast of historical figures: modernist performers, futurist actresses and non-conformist poets become protagonists connected by their unconventional beliefs and manners, as if in conversation with one another. These chosen characters include Edna St. Vincent Millay, Nina Hamnett, Michael Corinne West and Mina Loy. The paintings recognise their charisma and intensity as individuals that have inspired Donachie to render them in present day, recounting and illuminating their past and having them serve as muses for her work. In her fragile, muted paintings Donachie creates portraits that in fact serve to evoke the atmosphere of the particular time, place or movement surrounding the various subjects of her investigation.
Kaye Donachie was born in Glasgow in 1970 and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1997. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Peres Projects, Berlin and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, both in 2009, as well previous shows at Maureen Paley. Other recent exhibitions have included The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art, Tate St Ives, in 2009; The Brotherhood of Subterranea, Kunstbunker, Nuremberg; At Home, Yvon Lambert, New York; If Everybody had an Ocean curated by Alex Farquharson, Tate St Ives & CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux; Very Abstract and Hyper Figurative, curated by Jens Hoffmann, Thomas Dane Gallery, London; Tate Triennial curated by Beatrix Ruf, Tate Britain, London; Ideal Worlds: New Romanticism in Contemporary Art, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Donachie lives and works in London.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of films selected by the artist, screened in the upstairs gallery.
Donachie’s intimate portraits pay tribute to a cast of historical figures: modernist performers, futurist actresses and non-conformist poets become protagonists connected by their unconventional beliefs and manners, as if in conversation with one another. These chosen characters include Edna St. Vincent Millay, Nina Hamnett, Michael Corinne West and Mina Loy. The paintings recognise their charisma and intensity as individuals that have inspired Donachie to render them in present day, recounting and illuminating their past and having them serve as muses for her work. In her fragile, muted paintings Donachie creates portraits that in fact serve to evoke the atmosphere of the particular time, place or movement surrounding the various subjects of her investigation.
Kaye Donachie was born in Glasgow in 1970 and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1997. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Peres Projects, Berlin and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, both in 2009, as well previous shows at Maureen Paley. Other recent exhibitions have included The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art, Tate St Ives, in 2009; The Brotherhood of Subterranea, Kunstbunker, Nuremberg; At Home, Yvon Lambert, New York; If Everybody had an Ocean curated by Alex Farquharson, Tate St Ives & CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux; Very Abstract and Hyper Figurative, curated by Jens Hoffmann, Thomas Dane Gallery, London; Tate Triennial curated by Beatrix Ruf, Tate Britain, London; Ideal Worlds: New Romanticism in Contemporary Art, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Donachie lives and works in London.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of films selected by the artist, screened in the upstairs gallery.