Lucia Nogueira
dal 14/1/2011 al 12/3/2011
Segnalato da
14/1/2011
Lucia Nogueira
Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
The exhibition surveys artist's sculptures, installations and drawings from her ten year career. Before her death (1998) Nogueira had become one of the most individual voices in sculpture in this country. In collecting, adapting and juxtaposing everyday and often unprepossessing objects, found in the street or in junk shops, she was not unalike others of her generation.
The Brazilian born artist Lucia Nogueira died in London in 1998 at the age of 48. This will be the first exhibition in the UK to survey her sculptures, installations and drawings from her ten year career.
Before her death Nogueira had become one of the most individual voices in sculpture in this country. In collecting, adapting and juxtaposing everyday and often unprepossessing objects, found in the street or in junk shops, she was not unalike others of her generation. But Liam Gillick once described her as ‘taking things that are close to hand and imbuing them with malignancy and magic.’
And, while her career as a sculptor was conducted in London, she herself described how her practice derived from her Brazilian background: ‘My way of thinking is very much from Brazil: my way of picking up objects comes from there too. It is something connected with childhood and also with the Brazilian psyche. Our way of thinking is not as linear as it is in Europe. . . . In art you obviously have a background in art history that is very rich. We don’t have that in Brazil at all. I think the way we developed our visual sense is different from the European model. I didn’t have that. We just do everything in a very empirical way, even art.’
Combining pieces of discarded furniture and other objects, her sculptures engage with the space in which they are set. Some are very simple. In a work called ‘Mischief’ a wooden chair has lost its seat and one leg traps a white bridal train that turns out to be an unrolled strip of plastic carrier bags. ‘No Time for Commas’ has a tied-up bag scurrying endlessly around inside an upturned table top. We don’t know what’s in the bag nor in the cupboards turned to the wall, nor why a cable disappears into a plan-chest. In one corner an empty cable wheel is immobilised by a steel pillar.
There is humour and enigma in the drawings. Row upon row of buttons become a crowd of spectators. There are rows of what look like staples, each one slightly bent, with its own personality. Watercolour blotches take on the character of objects which can’t quite be identified except when one becomes an elephant on wheels, or a trio of blots sit themselves down on park chairs. An ink-black helicopter hovers ominously over a column of yellow clouds.
Lucia Nogueira was born in 1950, in the town of Goiânia in central Brazil. She took a degree in Communications and Journalism in Brasilia and moved to the USA where she studied photography. In 1975 she came to London and studied painting between 1976 and 1980, at Chelsea College of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. During the ‘80s she continued to paint as well as making jewellery and furniture. Her earliest sculptures date from 1988. In 1993 she was awarded a residency at the Fondation Cartier in Paris and in 1996 a Paul Hamlyn Award for Visual Artists. She died in London in 1998.
A major retrospective was presented in Porto, Portugal in 2007 and important works have been acquired since her death by Tate and Leeds City Art Gallery.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by Ian Hunt.
If you would like to see a copy of the catalogue essay or to arrange a preview of the exhibition (probably available from 6 January) please get in touch.
Susie Biller
Marketing & Press Officer
srb40@cam.ac.uk
Opening 15 January 2011
Kettle's Yard
Castle Street, Cambridge CB3 0AQ
Gallery open: Tues-Sun 11.30-5pm
admission free