An abstract art installation featuring wireframes, glass boxes, and colorful panels on the floor. The scene includes a yellow mesh-covered dome with scattered objects, creating an eclectic, modern aesthetic.

Cathy Wilkes

Mummy’s Here

This exhibition presented a new commission by British artist Cathy Wilkes, the artist’s first solo commission in London.

Since the late 1990s, Glasgow–based Cathy Wilkes (b. 1966, Dundonald, Belfast) has built a considerable reputation for sculptural installations of profound and mysterious intensity, which often evoke interiors and places of loss. Wilkes insists on the private life of the artist, and questions how art can relate to human experience.

Wilkes has produced an outstanding and unique body of work spanning 25 years, she is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential artists working in the UK today. In 2016, she was the inaugural recipient of the Maria Lassnig Prize and presented the largest solo exhibition of her work to date at MoMA PS1, New York (2017–2018).

Wilkes was selected to represent Great Britain at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, presenting a major solo exhibition of new work opening on 11 May 2019 and running till 24 November 2019.

This commission was supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.

Cathy Wilkes (b. 1966, Dundonald, Belfast, lives and works in Glasgow, UK) graduated with a BA from The Glasgow School of Art in 1988, and completed her MFA at the University of Ulster, Belfast in 1992.
Selected solo exhibitions include: Yale Union, Portland (2018); MoMA PS1, New York (2017-2018); Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (2017); The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2016); Tate Liverpool, touring to LENTOS Kunstmuseum, Linz and Museum Abteiberg, Möenchengladbach (2015 - 2016); Tramway, Glasgow (2014); The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2012); ‘I Give You All My Money’, The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, Chicago (2012); Gesellschaft Fur Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (2011); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2011); Kunstverein, Munich (2011); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2011); and ‘Mummy’s Here’, Studio Voltaire, London (2009).
Wilkes was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2008. She represented Great Britain at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 after having represented Scotland in 2005, as part of the exhibition ‘Selective Memory’, and was featured in ‘The Encyclopedic Palace’, part of the Biennale Arte 2013, Venice.
Selected recent group exhibitions include: 13th FellbachTriennial of Small-Scale Sculpture, Fellbach (2016); ‘The Great Mother’, Palazzo Reale, Milan (2015); ‘The Human Factor’, The Hayward Gallery, London (2014); ‘The Encyclopedic Palace’, Biennale Arte 2013, Venice; ‘Studio 58: Women Artists in Glasgow Since WWII’, Mackintosh Museum, The Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow (2012); and ‘Abstract Resistance’, Walker Arts Centre, Minneapolis (2010).
Cathy Wilkes, Mummy’s Here, 2009. Installation View, Studio Voltaire, London. Courtesy of the artist and The Modern Institute, Glasgow.