Aberdeen Art Gallery launches its 2024 exhibition programme this week with the only Scottish showing of ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois, a collection of works by the world renowned French-American artist.
Born in Paris in 1911, Louise Bourgeois settled in New York in 1938, where she remained for the rest of her life, continuing to make art until her death at the age of 98. In a career that spanned most of the avant-garde artistic movements of the 20th century, Bourgeois stayed true to her own unique vision. Her endlessly inventive work, inspired by her memories and experiences, spanned monumental installations, figurative sculptures, fabric collages, and drawings, a selection of which feature in this exhibition. She is perhaps best known for the spider sculptures that she produced in the last decades of her life, including the monumental Maman (Mother) created for the opening of Tate Modern in 2000. Visitors will have the chance to experience Spider 1994, standing at over three-metres high, one of several important loans from the artist’s foundation, The Easton Foundation, on display at Aberdeen Art Gallery.
Subscribe to our daily newsletter
Why? Free to subscribe, no paywall, daily business news digest.
This exhibition focuses primarily on works produced during the last 20 years of her life, a period of extraordinary creativity. Bourgeois re-examined many of her lifelong concerns to create a body of powerful new work exploring identity, gender, childhood, family, and memory. Her use of textiles, including age-worn clothing and garments from her household and personal history, imbues her late sculptures with a sense of intimacy and mortality. Personal, provocative, vulnerable, and raw, Louise Bourgeois’s work is certain to reach visitors with a powerful immediacy more than a decade after her death.
Councillor Martin Greig, Aberdeen City Council’s culture spokesperson said:
The work of Louise Bourgeois is exceptionally interesting and intriguing. It is a great pleasure to be able to host this major exhibition of her work at Aberdeen Art Gallery. We are the only Scottish partner venue on the ARTIST ROOMS UK tour so this is a welcome opportunity for local people to experience key artworks and learn more about this fascinating artist of international standing. A fully-funded programme for young people aged from thirteen to twenty-four, supported by ARTIST ROOMS, will enable them to explore the artist and find out more about her creative activities. We are pleased to renew our partnership with Tate and National Galleries of Scotland through ARTIST ROOMS, which has previously brought the work of well-known artists, Ron Mueck and Diane Arbus to the city.
Ceri Lewis, Senior Curator, ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland said:
Bourgeois was often at the forefront of contemporary practice throughout her remarkable seven-decade career, and she remains a major influence on artists today. She pursued a wholly personal path, and her varied and prolific output is often deeply autobiographical, retelling the stories and memories of her life, from traumatic childhood to fierce old age. But the themes that emerge in her work are to do with life, living, loving, and suffering – profoundly human emotions that touch us all.
ARTIST ROOMS is all about bringing the work of great artists such as Bourgeois to towns and cities throughout the UK, free of charge. We are delighted that our partnership with Aberdeen Art Gallery will offer the opportunity for local audiences to see major works by such an inspirational artist, and will enable young people in particular to experience world-class international artists from our national collections.
ENDS
ARTIST ROOMS presents the work of international artists in solo exhibitions drawn from a national touring collection jointly owned by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland. This exhibition draws on the remarkable body of Bourgeois’s work in ARTIST ROOMS, alongside generous loans from The Easton Foundation, Artist Rooms Foundation and Tate.
