Keith Arnatt was one of the UK’s leading artists during the emergence of conceptual art in the 1960’s and 1970’s. His work from this period explores the range of possibilities of meaning and function within art, as well as considering how the perception of an artwork operates in relation to the act of creating a work. The artist’s extensive use of photography during this time was mainly to record works whose physicality was connected to specific contexts. From 1973, Arnatt began to develop a growing interest in the camera as an instrument for art making, adopting the camera as his primary tool for producing art rather than simply documenting it. The artist’s subsequent photographic series underscore his analytic method of working, and reveal an observational style influenced by his awareness of the typological preoccupations of artists and photographers such as Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Read MoreKeith Arnatt was born in Oxford, UK in 1930. He died in Wales in 2008. Major solo exhibitions include Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1977, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, 1986, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, 1989, 2007, CAYC - Centro de Arte y Comunicación, Buenos Aires, 1992, XXI Bienal de São Paulo, 1991, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2009, Tate Britain, London, 2013. Major group exhibitions include Seattle Art Museum, 1969, Camden Arts Centre, London, 1969, Tate Gallery, London, 1972, Hayward Gallery, London, 1972, MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1970, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1990, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 2001, Tate Britain, London, 2002, 2007, Fundació Joan Miró, Centre d’Estudis d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona, 2003, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 2004, Kunstmuseum Bern, 2006, MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2009, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2011, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2011, MOCA - Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2012.
Text courtesy Sprüth Magers.
