RENEE SO
b. 1974, Hong KongRenee So was born in Hong Kong in 1974 and grew up in Melbourne, Australia. So lives and works in London. Spanning numerous traditional craft techniques including ceramics, hand-woven textiles and furnitur, So’s work is centred around representations of the female figure in prehistoric cultures. She bestows monumental grandeur and caricatural qualities to the figures in her works, which weave together a pattern of cross-cultural references. These include prehistoric Europe, Africa and Meso-America as well as ancient Egypt, Assyria and China. Her fictional personas borrow from ancient ritual masks, military and aristocratic portraiture.
Recent solo exhibitions include Effigies and Elginisms_,_ Cample Line, Scotland, UK (2022), _Ancient and Modern, _De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, UK (2019-20) and _Bellarmines and Bootlegs, _Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK (2019). Group exhibitions include Human Conditions of Clay, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK; Chapter Gallery, Cardiff, Wales, UK (2021-22), Hapticity: A Theory of Touch and Identity, Lychee One, London, UK (2021), London Making Now, Museum of London, UK (2021), _Transparent Things, _Goldsmiths CCA, London, UK (2020), One Day, Something Happens: Paintings Of People, curated by Jennifer Higgie, The Arts Council Collection, Leeds Art Gallery, UK (2015), A Conspiracy of Detail, Mackintosh Museum, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, UK (2013), Newspeak: British Art Now, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2010) and The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia (2010-11).
Courtesy Kate MacGarry
Works at Kate MacGarry
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