Nicola L.: I Am The Last Woman Object

Camden Arts Centre, London

Lygia Clark: The I and the You

Whitechapel Gallery, London

Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers & Lygia Clark

in Check Mate(s), Casa SP Arte, São Paulo, Brazil

Monica Sjöö: The Great Cosmic Mother

Moderna Museet Malmö

Alison Wilding: Sculptor’s Drawings

Whitworth Art Gallery

Lenore Tawney: Time Trembling

Independent 20th Century, New York

Lygia Clark

Neue Nationalgalerie

Ana Mendieta

in ‘What it Becomes’, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jane Dickson

in ‘Shifting Landscapes’, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Lygia Clark

Pinacoteca de São Paulo

Ana Mendieta

in ‘Manifesta 15’, Barcelona Metropolitana

Alison Wilding

in ‘Art in Stone’, Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera, Barcelona

Alison Wilding: On Paper

Ridinghouse

Carol Rhodes

in ‘Fictional Syntheses’, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin

Nicola L. will be the subject of a major survey exhibition at Camden Arts Centre in Autumn 2024. Emerging in the mid-1960s, the artist developed a multidisciplinary practice that playfully merged the principles of art and design. Often celebrated in the context of Pop Art, Nouveau Realism, Feminism and design, there has yet to be an in-depth exploration of Nicola L.’s expansive practice, which ranged into cosmology, environmental concerns, spirituality, mortality, sexuality, soft sculpture, activism and political resistance. This will be the first time the full breadth of her practice has been shown on the European continent.

Encompassing sculpture, performance, painting, collage and film—all of which carry an air of wit, playfulness, and radical subversion—the show will be an opportunity to experience all aspects of Nicola L.’s multidisciplinary practice. A significant group of the artist’s Pénétrables will be shown along with performance documentation; intended as performative or participatory works, these textile sculptures are composed of forms that people could insert limbs or heads into, becoming one with the artwork, and in some cases with other performers, as one single organism. Additionally, many of the artist’s large-scale functional objects will appear through the show, including sofas and commodes. Taking furniture as their basis, her sculptures expand into large-scale soft pliable forms like feet or full (but dismembered) bodies intended as sofas and lacquered wooded cabinets with the silhouette of a stereotypical female torso. The exhibition will also integrate the artist’s work in moving image which became a focus for her from 1977 onwards.

An exhibition catalogue will be produced to accompany the exhibition, which will tour to Frac Bretagne, France, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria and Museion, Bolzano following its presentation at Camden Arts Centre.