Friends private view – 'Life Room: Anatomy of A Doll' with Cathie Pilkington RA
Monday 3 April 2017 7 - 9pm
The Life Room, Royal Academy Schools
£15. Includes welcome drink.
Friends of the RA book first
Life Room: Anatomy of A Doll
Cathie Pilkington RA introduces her new installation, 'Life Room: Anatomy of A Doll', at an evening private view and drinks reception for Friends of the RA.
Cathie’s reappropriation of the doll calls into question the figurative tradition in art. See her latest project in a unique space where the depiction of the human body has been explored across the centuries.
Known for her unsettling sculptural works, often crafted from an eclectic array of materials and techniques, Cathie Pilkington RA is the Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools. This latest project brings her uncanny, doll-like creations into the realm of the RA Schools’ Life Room, traditionally the setting for the practice of drawing from casts and models. Here, their simultaneous beauty and strangeness will be revealed in various stages of completion, accompanied by other bodily fragments and remnants of the creative process.
Characteristic of Pilkington’s practice, in this project the domestic register of toys and ornaments is entwined with the grand canon of sculpture. Inspiration is drawn from a series of small wax dancers by Edgar Degas that were cast only after his death, freezing their transient poses in permanent bronze. Pilkington explores viewers’ voyeuristic tendencies in the presence of these naturalistic figures by revelling in reimagined distortions of form and impossible anatomies.
*We regret that there is no level access to this event, due to the location of the Life Room and the major renovation works taking place in preparation for our 250th anniversary. *