Karla Black Biennale Bags For Glasgow Charity

Karla Black

Turner Prize nominee Karla Black swaps plastic bags for linen, in aid of The Glasgow Project Room

Three hand-painted, signed linen bags created by Turner Prize nominee Karla Black, and commemorating her Biennale exhibition, will be offered at a silent auction. Black designed the bags alongside her exhibition representing Scotland at the 2011 Venice Biennale, which was presented by Scotland + Venice, a creative partnership between Creative Scotland, British Council Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland.

Black has asked that the proceeds of the auction go to The Glasgow Project Room, a cause close to the artist’s heart. The Project Room is a non-profit exhibition and project space which since 1997 has been supporting up-and-coming young Scottish artists. Black herself, who still lives and works in Glasgow, had her first ever publicly-exhibited piece shown at the venue in 2000; she went on to have her first solo show there in 2003. Black has stated that she feels the Project Room was hugely important in starting her career as an artist and is keen that it should be able to continue to give new artists the same opportunities.

Bids for the bags should be sent to auction@scotlandandvenice.com, and bidding will end on 4th December at 5pm, while Karla Black’s Venice Biennale exhibition will run until 27th November at the Palazzo Pisani. 

Black is, coincidentally, not the only one of this year’s nominees to have collaborated with the organisation; in 2009, Martin Boyce was chosen to represent Scotland with a solo show in Venice. Karla Black was born in Alexandria, Scotland in 1972, making her the youngest entrant to this year’s Turner Prize.

Black‘s work is known for mixing both traditional artistic media and everyday objects, and her Turner Prize piece ‘More of Today’ is no exception, with sugar paper and pastels found alongside bath bombs and make-up. Although the soft lines and muted colours found in her work have previously prompted more than one critic to describe her work as ‘feminine’, this is  an adjective that Black is keen to avoid, branding this interpretation of her art ‘ridiculous and annoying’ at this year’s Venice Biennale. According to Black, the fact that she chooses to use toileteries typically associated with women does not constitute a comment on feminism, or in fact a comment on anything; Black states that her works do not ‘point outside of themselves with language’. The desire to incorporate these objects into her work, then, is a physical one; these are things she ‘can’t help but use’. Words: Maddie Bates © 2011 ArtLyst

Read more about Turner Prize 2011

Read more about nominee Karla Black

Read more about nominee Hilary Lloyd

Read more about nominee Martin Boyce

Read more about nominee George Shaw

 

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