Timothy Taylor Gallery

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Timothy Taylor Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new work by internationally acclaimed artist Kiki Smith. Chuck Close described her as “one of our greatest artists” in a recent feature by Time magazine on ‘100 People who shape our world’. Her first solo show in the UK since 1997 will be the inaugural exhibition in the new Timothy Taylor Gallery space at 21 Dering Street. Almost ten years on the show will consist of recently completed sculpture, drawings and etchings, and will reveal a noticeable progression away from investigations of the corporeal, towards a more mystical examination of spiritual relationships with the wider cosmos. Whereas her earlier work dealt with mortality and the dichotomy between the psychological and physiological power of the body, this new work is a celebration of life and the universe.

Although Kiki still has a fascination with the female form, she is now looking at the body from a new vantage point, referencing fairytales, folklore, religious iconography and cosmology. Nature and the relationship between humans and the natural world is also a subject of this exhibition. Kiki is carrying on the tradition of her father Tony Smith’s contemporaries Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois with her exploration of female and organic forms using experimental materials including beeswax, glass, ceramic, fabric and paper, and a variety of methods such as sculpture, sewing, appliqué, photography and etching. With this exhibition Kiki continues to use techniques as varied as printmaking, drawing and sculpting with material as diverse as paper, ink, bronze and mica.

A group of photolithographic prints depict magnificent women lounging in celestial heavens. These are a form of ‘drawing with paper’, using handmade Nepalese paper to give the prints a material sensuousness. The drawings are first printed, then collaged and hand-painted. An appliqué process is used to adhere Mica flakes and silver leaf to create silver stars, fluorescent moths, glowing tattoos and other cosmological motifs. Both a celebration of the female form and a study of human’s relationship with the universe, the drawings are innocent and magical. The theme of nature is continued with a group of bronze wall relief sculptures of birds, individual and in groups resting on fallen trees, and an ejaculating snake, which are representative of a cosmic mandala.

Also on display will be ‘Touch’ (2006) a set of six new colour etchings and aquatints of dying flowers published by Harlan & Weaver in New York. The portfolio includes a poem by the poet Henri Cole, commissioned especially for this print.

• Download the press release (PDF 543kb)
• Read more about Kiki Smith