Sheila Hicks & The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers
in Art Basel OVR: Portals
16 – 19 June 2021
Sheila Hicks, Mercurial, 2021. Courtesy: © Sheila Hicks
Qunnie Pettway, Bricklayer - Blue Cream, c. late 1970s. Courtesy: © Qunnie Pettway / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London
Sheila Hicks, Ouessant, 2020. Courtesy: © Sheila Hicks
Rebecca Myles Jones, Center Medallion - stacked bricks with checkerboard frame, c. 1950s. Courtesy: © Rebecca Myles Jones / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London
Alison Jacques is pleased to announce our participation in Art Basel OVR: Portals with a joint presentation of work by Sheila Hicks (b. 1934, Hastings, Nebraska) and The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers. The curated booth, which is now open to VIPs and will be accessible to the public from 17–19 June, celebrates the social memory of material: the manner in which textile practices can preserve and connect otherwise distinct histories and cultures.
For Art Basel OVR: Portals, which coincides with Hicks’s third solo exhibition at Alison Jacques, ‘Music to My Eyes’ (4 June–31 July 2021), the pioneering American Paris-based artist will present a new version of her celebrated ‘Lianes’ series and a textured bas-relief in linen and wool, as well as several sculptural objects from her ongoing series of round sculptural ‘Boules’.Hicks’s work will be shown alongside quilts produced by the women artists of Gee’s Bend, a remote community on the Alabama River. The geographic isolation of Gee’s Bend has fostered a unique environment for both the artistic community and their aesthetic vocabulary, with their techniques and compositional strategies passed down through generations.
This is exemplified at Art Basel OVR: Portals through the inclusion of quilts by Rebecca Myles Jones and Lola Pettway, as well as Loretta Pettway Bennett and her mother, Qunnie Pettway, who was first taught to quilt by her grandmother, Candis Pettway, a central figure in the history of Gee’s Bend.