Ms Phoebe Unwin
- Associate Professor, Painting
Featured Media
Slade School of Fine Art
University College London
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
Biography
Phoebe Unwin was born in Cambridge in 1979. She studied at Newcastle University (BA Hons 1998 – 2002) and Slade School of Fine Art (MFA 2002 – 2005). Recent exhibitions include 'Osmosis', Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London (solo, 2020); 'Iris', Towner Gallery, Eastbourne UK (solo, 2019); 'The Aerodrome', Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2019); 'Field', Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (solo, 2018); 'Home and Unhome', Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and Contemporary Art Centre, Chongqing, China (group, 2020); 'Le Realtà Ordinarie', Banca di Bologna, Bologna (group, 2020); 'Cet Elixir', Moly-Sabata Fondation Albert Gleizes, Sablons, France (group, 2019); 'The Day in the Evening', Space K, Seoul (group, 2018); ‘31 Women’ Breese Little Gallery, London (group, 2017); ‘Portrait, for a Screenplay, of Beth Harmon’ Tenderpixel, London (group, 2017); ‘Illicit Flowers’ Stiftung Museum Schloss Moyland, Germany (group, 2016); ‘Towards Night’ Towner Gallery, Eastbourne (group, 2016); ‘Walk Through 500 Years of British Art’ Tate Britain, London (group, 2016); ‘Distant People and Self-Soothing Objects’, Wilkinson Gallery, London (solo, 2015); ‘One Day Something Happens: Paintings of People, work selected from the Arts Council Collection by Jennifer Higgie’ (group, 2015-16); ‘Emotional Resources’, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland (group, 2014-15) and The British Art Show 7 ‘The Days of the Comet’, a Hayward Gallery National Touring Exhibition (group, 2010-11).
Her work is held in both private and public collections including Tate Collection, UK; Arts Council Collection, UK; Saatchi Collection, London; Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut; Government Art Collection, UK; Kolon Group Collection, Seoul; Jiménez-Colón Collection, Ponce; Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia; HSBC, London; Fenberger House, Nagano Prefecture, Japan; British Council Collection, UK; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; and Southampton City Art Gallery.
Research Interests
Phoebe Unwin's paintings explore perceptions of everyday experience. Her invented figurative images and their corresponding relation to mark, scale and colour, fuse to visually articulate the variety of feelings invested in looking.
www.phoebeunwin.com
Exhibitions
Painters ± Collection 2021 2021 - Nakata Art Museum, Hiroshima, Japan
Pericolante 2020 - Arcade Gallery, London, UK ; Vortic online platform
La Diablesse 2020 - Tramps, London, UK
Le Realta Ordinarie 2020 - Banca di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Cet Elixir 2019 - Moly-Sabata Fondation Albert Gliezes, Sablons, France
Iris 2019 - Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
The Aerodrome 2019 - Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK
Field 2018 - Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London UK; Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy; Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne UK
Pregnant Landscape 2018 - Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London
The Day in the Evening 2018 - Space K Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
A Poem for Raoul and Agnes 2017 - Ancient and Modern, London

‘A Poem for rAoul And Agnes’
selected by Sherman Sam
3 July ~ 6 September 2014
Opening Wednesday 2 July, 18.00 ~ 20.00
Ann Craven, Matthias Dornfeld, Roy Dowell, Fergus Feehily Jane Freilicher, Clive Hodgson, Eithne Jordan, Alex Katz Markus Karstieß, Winifred Nicholson, Norbert Prangenberg Audrey Reynolds, Phoebe Unwin
31 Women 2017 - Breese Little Gallery, London
Portrait for a Screenplay of Beth Harmon 2017 - Tenderpixel Gallery, London, UK
Solo Presentation 2016 - Saatchi Gallery London
Towards Night 2016 - Towner Gallery Eastbourne
Walk Through 500 Years of British Art 2016 - Tate Britain, London, UK
Ghosts of Other Stories: The British Council Collection 2016 - The Model
The Model is delighted to partner with the British Council in this centenary year of the 1916 Rising on an exhibition drawn from the British Council Collection. Art collections by their very nature rarely convey a definitive narrative of the development of artistic practice. In many ways they come into being hostages of fortune, with acquisitions dictated by the shifting economic, political and social concerns of their time. Each collection is a babble of riotous voices telling of the myriad concerns and questions at the heart of every individual artwork. Narrative threads once caught, quite often disappear, giving us glimpses but rarely the full story.
Ghosts of Other Stories explores works within the British Council Collection where threads of lost stories or forgotten histories flash momentarily into the light. Each work has at its heart an elusive or mysterious quality that speaks of a story passing into history untold, unheard or interrupted.
The exhibition includes works by Tomma Abts, Ed Atkins, Bank, Tacita Dean, Ryan Gander, Graham Gussin, Merlin James, Rosalind Nashashibi, Mike Nelson, Susan Philipsz, Wolfgang Tillmans, Phoebe Unwin, Rachel Whiteread and Cerith Wyn Evans.
Illusive Flowers 2016 - Museum Schloss Moyland
Lasst Blumen sprechen!
Blumen und künstliche Natur seit 1960
One Day Something Happens: Paintings of People, a selection by Jennifer Higgie from the Arts Council Collection 2016 - Hayward Gallery National Touring Exhibitions, UK
Distant People and Self-Soothing Objects 2015 - Wilkinson Gallery, London
Emotional Resources 2014 - National Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland
Exhibition dates: 19 September 2014 - 10 January 2015.
Main Gallery: Victor Alimpiev, Amalia Ulman, Johann Arens, Renate Bertlmann, Ian Breakwell, Harry Burke, Moyra Davey, Július Koller, Daniel Lichtman, Harry Meadley, Erica Scourti, Matthew Smith, Pilvi Takala, Marie Toseland, Phoebe Unwin, Donald Urquhart
Project Space: Joanna Piotrowska
"To intimate is to communicate with the sparest of signs and gestures, and at its root intimacy has the quality of eloquence and brevity" - Lauren Berlant
What does it mean to convert private experience into public speech? Emotional Resources is a group exhibition that brings together art works from an international group of artists from the Seventies to the present day, exploring forms of intimacy and the everyday. The artists employ a range of approaches and media, including painting, video, photography and performance. Alongside the group show NGCA will present Polish photographer Joanna Piotrowska's first solo exhibition, s.w.a.l.k. (sealed with a loving kiss) in the Project Space. From the tender touch to an awkward embrace the exhibitions ask, how did the public sphere become saturated with the exposure of private life?
The artworks shift between embodied forms of conversation such as speech and gesture towards more textual forms of communication, registering a curiosity in the overlooked details of daily life. Intimacy, to paraphrase Lauren Berlant, has the ability to repel the rhetoric and logic of law and politics within the public sphere and engender more intuited relationships. We can see the love letter in the workplace as a radical act; vulnerability and awkwardness can be a quest for something more authentic. At a moment when the division between private and public is increasingly dissolved, how do we value emotionalism?
Central to the exhibition is Ping-Pong (U.F.O.) (1970-onwards), a functioning Ping-Pong table by Július Koller. The work attempts to disarm the usual expectations of a gallery environment and calls for a more playful and social engagement with public space. Working in Communist Czechoslovakia throughout the Seventies and Eighties, Koller's work offered a spirited counterpoint to a society that was increasingly governed by bureaucracy. This serves as a guiding principle for 'Emotional Resources', and suggests that it is valuable to assert our personal histories and actual bodies into public concerns.
Emotional Resources is the first project curated by George Vasey since joining the organization.
Opere dalla collezione di Mario Testino 2014 - Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli
Opere dalla collezione di Mario Testino
dal 17/05/2014 al 14/09/2014
Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli
Studio dell'artista Elliot Hundley a New York, fotografato da Mario Testino
“Somos libres” inizia così l’inno nazionale del Perù, patria di Mario Testino (Lima, 1954). Essere libero (e rimanerlo) è ciò che ha sempre ispirato il lavoro del famoso fotografo di moda.
Per capire esattamente cosa ha influenzato nel tempo lo stile del fotografo, ci pensa una collettiva ospitata alla Pinacoteca Agnelli.
La mostra è un viaggio nella collezione privata di Testino. Si inizia con alcune immagini a studi d’artista scattate dallo stesso Testino e si finisce con l'indagare il mondo visto e interpretato dalla lente fotografica quanto dall’occhio e i profondi nessi tra i linguaggi dell’arte, della fotografia pubblicitaria e di moda.
Somos Libres II, a cura di Neville Wakefield, inaugura il 17 maggio alla Pinacoteca Agnelli.
Termina il 14 settembre.
Artisti in mostra:
Francis Alÿs, Nobuyoshi Araki, Diane Arbus, Tauba Auerbach, Richard Avedon, Hernan Bas, Cecil Beaton, Erwin Blumenfeld, Michaël Borremans, Cris Brodahl, Glenn Brown, Yul Brynner, Nicholas Byrne, Gillian Carnegie, Larry Clark, Anne Collier, Nigel Cooke, Verne Dawson, Marlene Dumas, Martin Eder, William Eggleston, Cyprien Gaillard, Nan Goldin, Andy Hope 1930, George Hoyningen-Huene, William Klein, Cary Kwok,Glenn Ligon, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Jonathan Meese, Jonathan Monk, Katy Moran,Helmut Newton, Chris Ofili, Paul P., Horst P. Horst, Martin Parr, Irving Penn, Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Peyton, George Platt Lynes, Ged Quinn, Bob Richardson, Herb Ritts, Ugo Rondinone, Wilhelm Sasnal, Steven Shearer, Cindy Sherman Daniel Sinsel,John Stezaker, Rudolf Stingel, Neil Tait, Phoebe Unwin, Adriana Varejão, Chris von Wangenheim, Andy Warhol, Mathew Weir, Kehinde Wiley, Katharina Wulff, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Lisa Yuskavage.
- See more at: http://www.contemporarytorinopiemonte.it/ita/Agenda/Somos-libres-II#sthash.NxpjulfH.dpuf
DISPLAYS: Three Women Painters: Phoebe Unwin, Clare Woods and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye 2014 - Contemporary Art Society
Showcasing new paintings we have recently purchased for museums, this display provides a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the work of these three prominent female artists.
To Tell Them Where It’s Got To by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was presented to Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery, which has a strong holding of works by English artists from the 19th and 20th centuries, including ‘traditional’ portraiture. Clare Woods’ landscape painting, Obscene Porridge, was purchased for Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery, Carlisle. The museum’s rural surroundings have made landscape a key feature of its collection. Concrete Ball by Phoebe Unwin was purchased by the Contemporary Art Society for Southampton City Art Gallery. At the core of Southampton’s collection is British 20th century and contemporary painting and sculpture.
There was an Artist Talk at the Contemporary Art Society on 15 May 2014. To view to the talk click here
I Cheer a Dead Man's Sweetheart 2014 - De La Warr Pavilion
I Cheer a Dead Man’s Sweetheart is both a celebration and an exploration of painting in Britain today, presenting the recent work of twenty-one living artists whose practices span six decades.
The exhibition takes its title from the last verse of the poem Is My Team Ploughing by A. E. Housman, first published in 1896. As a conversation between a dead man and his living friend who is now with the girlfriend he left behind, it serves as an allegory for the influence of the past and its evolving significance in contemporary painting practice.
Iconic figures such as Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff are presented next to other established, mid-career and emerging artists such as Gary Wragg, Phoebe Unwin and Joella Wheatley.
Using a range of techniques, the paintings reveal intriguing and surprising connections and contrasts as well as the underlying preoccupations of the artists after long periods spent working in their studios.
The paintings have been selected to evoke an immediate response both to the works themselves and the process of painting and to encourage visitors to make their own connections between these apparently different approaches. The result is a particular perspective on painting in contemporary Britain.
Fabric 2014 - Oriel Sycharth Gallery, Wales, UK
FABRIC
This show broadly focuses on fabric not only in the sense of textiles but also as in the texture of reality and phenomena. Fabric (in the sense of cloth) can be used as a signifier, associated with social class and history, or as in the case of military uniforms or decorations as an indicator of rank, achievement, or valour. Fabric broadly speaking also includes the ‘fabric of the universe’, things we cannot see and the materials that are used to capture/isolate them. Fabric may be explored in relation to the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself. Although we cannot see things apart from the way we do in fact see them, we can think them apart from our mode of perception, thus making the thing-in-itself a kind of independent object or object of thought/intellect. In this way we can use fabric as a starting point for work through which we can explore the very nature of existence, matter and reality.
The Presence of People and Shapes 2013 - Wilkinson Gallery
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Phoebe Unwin 2012 - The Corridor, Reykjavik, Iceland
The Nails, The Colours, The Mast 2012 - Kotti-Shop, Berlin
The Nail, The Colours, The Mast was a group exhibition at Kotti Shop, Berlin. From the preview text - "'The Nail, The Colours, The Mast' is a dismantling of the expression 'Nailing one's colours to the mast'. The original phrase, which means to defiantly state an opinion and stick to it, has its origins in nautical history. One signal of communication used by 17th C shipmates, was to lower the colours (flags) as a sign of defeat, so to physically nail the colours to the mast meant 'No Surrender!'".
Fade Away 2011 - Transition Gallery, London, touring to Gallery North, Newcastle.
Group painting exhibition curated by Ali Sharma. Catalogue with text by Barry Schwabsky published for the exhibition. Gallery North is a public gallery at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
A Sort of Night to the Mind, A Kind of Night For Our Thoughts 2011 - Arch 402
Arch 402 Gallery is delighted to present A Sort of Night to the Mind, A KIND OF NIGHT FOR OUR THOUGHTS, an exhibition of twenty-three UK based artists engaged with painting. Curated by Moyra Derby and Bob Matthews, the exhibition will also host a series of talks and educational events led by some of the featured artists [further information to follow]. Two alternative translations of Honoré de Balzac's description of illusion from the 1832 short story âThe Purse' provide the title for this exhibition. First shown at The Herbert Read Gallery in Canterbury, this exhibition demonstrates the recurring relevance of illusion and in counterpoint, materiality.
Man made 2011 - Wilkinson Gallery, London, U.K.
Days of the Comet, British Art Show 7 2010 - Hayward National Travelling Exhibitions, showing at: Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham UK; Hayward Gallery, London UK; CCA Glasgow, Scotland and Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth UK.
"The British Art Show is widely recognized as the most ambitious and influential exhibition of contemporary British art. BAS7 is curated by Lisa Le Feuvre and Tom Morton and includes work by 39 artists from the last five years, three quarters of which is seen here for the first time."
"... avant il n'y avait rien, après on va pouvoir faire mieux." 2010 - CIRCUIT, Centre for Contemporary Art, Lausanne
Contemporary drawing exhibition
Le Deuill 2010 - IFF Gallery, Marseille, France
Exploring notions of mourning in contemporary art.
Newspeak: British Art Now (Part 1) 2010 - Saatchi Gallery, The Duke of York's HQ, Sloane Sq, London, UK
Survey show of contemporary British art. All works are from the Saatchi Collection.
Making an Outside Space Theirs 2009 - Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, U.S.
Jerwood Contemporary Painters 2009 - Jerwood Space, London
Emerging contemporary painters. Touring to Leeds Project Space, University of Gloucestershire, Gallery at NorwichUniversity
'Feelings and Other Forms' 2008 - Wilkinson, London
M25: Around London 2008 - CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain
Contemporary art from London.
Jeckyll Island 2008 - Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, U.S.
Notations- A Celebration of John Cage 2008 - Slade School of Art, UCL, London UK
Exploration between visual art and music
A Short Walk from a Shout to a Whisper 2007 - Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes UK
Public museum solo exhibition and catalogue publication.
The Contented Heart 2007 - W139, Amsterdam
Group contemporary painting exhibition, showing 8 artists from UK, Holland and Germany.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice 2007 - Galleri Faurschou
Contemporary Artists and Late Picasso
Very Abstract and Hyper Figurative 2007 - Thomas Dane Gallery, London, UK
Saturn Falling 2007 - The Corridor, Iceland
The Grand and the Commonplace 2006 - Wilkinson Gallery, London, U.K.
First solo exhibition.
Augnablik: The Blink of an Eye 2005 - Govett-Kerr, Hoxton Square, London
Three recent Slade Graduates
Between Courage and Coincidence 2005 - Ibid Projects, Vilnius, Lithuania
Rant - Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA
Exhibition exploring design and art relationships.