Louise Bourgeois, Blackpool

About

GRUNDY ART GALLERY and ARTIST ROOMS are bringing the work of internationally acclaimed French-American artist Louise Bourgeois to Blackpool for the very first time.

ARTIST ROOMS is a touring collection of international modern and contemporary art jointly owned by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland that presents the work of individual artists in solo exhibitions. Its programme reaches audiences across the UK and is developed through local partnerships.

Born in Paris in 1911, 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. Bourgeois’s art was closely bound up with her life, and she used art as a way to make sense of her experiences. Her sculpture, drawing, and writing are characterised by emotional honesty, as she retold the memories and stories that shaped her life. Using different forms and materials including marble, bronze, latex, and fabric, Bourgeois made work that is personal, provocative, vulnerable, and raw; work that reaches out to us with a powerful immediacy more than a decade after her death.

This exhibition focuses on works produced during the last 20 years of her life, a period of extraordinary creativity, during which 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 garments from her household and personal history, give her late sculptures a sense of intimacy and mortality.

Bourgeois is perhaps best-known for her large-scale spider sculptures including Maman 1999, created for the opening of Tate Modern in 2000. A symbol and representation of motherhood, and her own mother in particular, who was a weaver and the manager of the family’s antique tapestry restoration business, the spider is a recurring motif throughout Bourgeois’ work. For the first time on this current tour of ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois, visitors will be able to see one of these monumental spider sculptures for themselves when Spider 1994 occupies one of Grundy’s side galleries. This is one of several important loans from The Easton Foundation in the exhibition, and will provide a mesmerising addition to what is already a world-class display of one of the 20th century’s most important artists.

ARTIST ROOMS Louise Bourgeois at Grundy Art Gallery will be supported by a public programme of talks, workshops and events. Please check Grundy’s website and social media for more information.