Join us for the opportunity to meet Newcastle-based artist, Nadia Hebson in her studio.
Working in painting and installation Nadia Hebson appropriates from a diversity of seemingly unrelated sources, from Early Flemish portraiture to Czech Cubist furniture. Her low tone paintings and environments avoid clear narrative readings, suggesting instead an underlying psychological intent.
Her recent exhibition of paintings and objects at Vane, Moda WK was made in response to the work and correspondence of British artist Winifred Knights (1899-1947), taking Christa Wolf’s novel The Quest for Christa T and Claudia von Alemann’s 1980 film Blind Spot as touchstones for a form of subjective biography. Hebson has been thinking through paint-less painting as Wolf did through writing and von Alemann through sound. Characterised by speculation, fiction and intuition all three approaches sidestep biographical conventions in favour of alternative form – where both the contingent and tangential can figure. In this body of work Hebson considered dress, misunderstanding and misinterpretation, writer’s/painter’s block, and the on-going currency of painting; Knights, for her, has assumed the role of dead mentor.
Nadia studied at The Royal Academy School, London. Recent residencies and scholarships include the British School at Rome; Durham Cathedral Residency and AIR Antwerpen. In 2008 she was awarded the Sovereign European Art Prize. Solo projects include: From Flemish Portraiture to Czech Cubist Furniture, Volta NY and Grand Mal, Transition, London. Group exhibitions include: The Continuation of Romance, Rosenfeld Porcini, London, The Dorian Project, Secondguest, New York and The Jerwood Contemporary Painters, Jerwood Space, London. Curatorial projects include The Whiteness of the Whale, Transition, London and Moda WK, Vane, Newcastle, a group iteration of the solo project at Lokaal 01, Antwerp.