Cathy Wilkes – British Pavilion, 58th Venice Art Biennale 2019

Cathy Wilkes’ exhibition at the British Pavilion, 58th Venice Art Biennale, installation view; photo © Riccardo Bianchini / Inexhibit

Cathy Wilkes – British Pavilion, 58th Venice Art Biennale 2019

At the 58th Venice Art Biennale, the British Pavilion presents a solo exhibition by Cathy Wilkes (b. 1966 in Dundonald, Nothern Ireland).

The six rooms of the pavilion accommodate a number of objects – doll-like sculptures, delicate paintings, a Brillo pad, pottery and glassware, and more – to depict a rarefied domestic space, in which the statues of balloon-womb children and of what (possibly) is their mother, stand together with their everyday objects and, perhaps, incubuses.

“The smallest particle of suffering is the object, and I, the subject who acts upon the object, am every atom unfolding from the womb. And atom here among us and another atom in a faraway galaxy are inseparable epitomes of the same.
I solemnize and dignify the ghosts of interference which proceed from their origin and whip themselves up before me. I observe, they nucleate and propagate. If I could disappear, how fluid, how graceful and unending, how undisturbed and unpredictable would be the changing patterns thereabout.
On both the left and the right there is nothing worth seeing and nothing worth hearing. I return home to wait in place and draw forth what is yet to come.” (Cathy Wilkes)

At the same time disquieting and fascinating, the silent space inhabited by Wilkes’ evanescent creatures and objects is scaring and attractive, melancholic and poetic.
Arguably, one of the best national pavilions of this year’s Venice Biennale.

Cathy Wilkes’ exhibition at the British Pavilion, 58th Venice Art Biennale, installation views; photo © Riccardo Bianchini / Inexhibit