Katherine Gili: a Career
Survey
private view: Wed 18 May,
6.00-8.30pm.
exhibition open: 18 May - 11 June 2011, Wed–Sat
11.00am–6.00pm.
tube: London
Bridge
free
catalogue
available.
Katherine Gili is a sculptor who for the past 40
years or so has demonstrably extended the physical potential and emotional range
of her steel sculpture in a manner both intelligent and forceful. Beginning from
a rigorously abstract canon, she has developed in the latter part of her career
a distinct and direct relationship with the physicality of the body. This
exhibition at Poussin Gallery and its accompanying catalogue address the
extraordinary critical evolution of her work through its connected and progressive
phases.
Katherine Gili was born in Oxford in 1948,
graduated from Bath Academy of Art in the late sixties and then studied on the
Advanced Sculpture Course at St Martin’s School of Art, where Anthony Caro was
teaching. She subsequently herself taught at St Martin’s from 1975-1984 and also
at Norwich School of Art 1972-1985. Her sculpture was exhibited for the first
time at the Museum of Modern Art Oxford in 1973. Gili’s career is marked by solo
exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 1977 and the Salander O’Reilly
Gallery, New York in 1981. Her work has appeared in seminal surveys of sculpture
in Britain including The Condition of Sculpture at the Hayward Gallery in 1975;
A Silver Jubilee Exhibition of Contemporary British Sculpture at Battersea Park
in 1977; British Abstract Art: Sculpture, in 1995 and British Figurative Art:
Sculpture in 1998, both at Flowers East Gallery in London. Major group shows
include the annual Stockwell Depot Exhibitions from 1974 to 1979; The Hayward
Annual in 1979; Sculpture from Stockwell Depot at the Sainsbury Centre for
Visual Arts Norwich 1982; Have You Seen Sculpture from the Body? Tate Gallery in
1984; and Escultura Nueva Reino Unido, Conde Duque, Madrid in 1988. More
recently, Gili’s work appeared in Steel, Canary Wharf, London in 2006 and the
Royal Academy Summer Shows of 1996, 1997 and
2009.
Katherine Gili’s work is represented in the
collection of Arts Council England, as well as several other public
and
corporate collections in the UK and abroad, including the City of Lugano,
Switzerland; Cartwright Hall Museum,
Bradford; and the General Electric
Corporation USA. Her sculptures can also be found in private collections in
Britain, Spain and the
USA.
