Neuberger Museum of Art opens "British Subjects: Identity and Self-Fashioning 1967-2009"

Written by Carolyn Mandelker Thursday, 30 June 2011 22:10

Purchase, New York - When artist Tracey Emin, who represented Great Britain at the 2007 Venice Biennale, was asked by an interviewer whether she felt British, she replied, "I am British! My passport's British. I was born in London. My dad's Turkish-Cypriot; my mum's from the East End.... I'm definitively multicultural British!" The interviewer’s question was not so strange considering that in the last sixty years, Britain has become a multi-cultural society, transformed by the dissolution of its empire, post-war immigration, and the new social movements embracing minority cultures. This has had a tremendous impact on British culture and notions of identity -- on what it means to be British and conceptions of selfhood. Exhibition on view at Neuberger Museum of Art from 13 September through 13 December, 2009.

These themes will be addressed in British Subjects: Identity and Self-Fashioning 1967-2009, an exhibition opening at the Neuberger Museum of Art | Purchase College in Purchase, New York. According to Dr. Louise Yelin, curator, the themes “dramatize new notions of identity and present a wide array of artistic practices that constitute self-portraiture today.” On view will be more than sixty works -- masquerade, performance, videos, and installation as well as paintings, sculpture, and photography. Almost all of the artists were born in the post World War II era; many are migrants or children or migrants; some were born in Britain but migrated elsewhere.

Among the artists to be included are internationally-acclaimed painter/collage artist Richard Hamilton, Guyana-born Frank Bowling who participated in the 1971 Whitney Biennial, sculptor Mark Wallinger, Ron Mueck, Yinka Shonibare whose work considers issues of race and class, and Hew Locke; emerging artists Caron Geary and Ellie Rees; and women artists Sarah Lucas, Sam Taylor-Wood, Sonia Boyce, Jenny Saville, who invite us to consider the ways that we think about race and nationality through gender and the body.

 “In recent years, there have been numerous exhibitions devoted to contemporary portraiture and self-portraiture and to recent and contemporary British art,” notes Dr. Yelin. “As yet, though, no museum has undertaken an exhibition specifically focused on British self-portraiture since the 1960s. British Subjects and its accompanying catalogue will invite us to look afresh at Britain and British culture in a post-imperial, global age.” Dr. Yelin is Interim Dean of Humanities and Professor of Literature at Purchase College, State University of New York.  Support for British Subjects: Identity and Self-Fashioning 1965-2009 comes from Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art. Visit: www.neuberger.org/

British Lives: A Symposium
Tuesday, October 27, 2:30-6:30 pm / Free
In two sessions, a panel of distinguished scholars, writers, and artists will discuss: Britain in/and Self-Portraiture and Britain in/and Autobiography. Aminatta Forna, writer and broadcaster, is among the panelists. Two sessions will run 75-90 minutes each, with a question and answer period and a break between.

Film Series: British Subjects
Wednesdays, 4 pm
Free
Each of the following films will be introduced by a Purchase College faculty member who will lead Q and A afterwards. (Programs held in the Museum Study on the first floor)

October 7:  “49-Up”, directed by Michael Apted
Apted had been interviewing a group of Britons from diverse class backgrounds since the mid-60s, when the subjects were seven years old. “49-Up” is the most recent in the series of documentaries tracing the arc of their lives at seven-year intervals. The film offers an often-surprising view of the many different ways that lives develop.