An exhibition of new works by Steve McQueen has been announced for the Thomas Dane Gallery, London. This will open on 14 October and will occupy both Duke Street spaces. The exhibition will celebrate the tenth anniversary of McQueen’s Into This World, which was the gallery’s inaugural show in 2004. In the ensuing decade, Steve McQueen has become acknowledged as one of the world’s outstanding living artists, an award-winning director of feature films and a commanding public figure.
Born in London in 1969, Steve McQueen first began making artworks using the medium of film and video during his student years. Over the last twenty years, he has been the author of some of the most seminal works of film and video designed for gallery-based presentation, as well as three feature films made for cinematic release. In both expressions of the medium, the artist’s signature is evident and this new work further extends the range of McQueen’s enquiry into the image and image making.
His language is one of intensity, intimacy, violence and sensuality – and the work is an experiential challenge in every case. This often violent assault on the senses – through sound, as much as image – obliquely brings about an understanding of the lives of others whose connection to our own is not always apparent. At the heart of the exhibition will sit ‘Ashes’ (2014). This new commission, created with the support of Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo and unveiled for the first time in Europe, brings together these various strands. It delivers the viewer into a highly sensory space with the potential for epiphany or self-revelation.
Steve McQueen’s work is held in museum collections worldwide, including Tate, London, Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago and the Musée d’Art Moderne Georges Pompidou, Paris. He won the Turner Prize in 1999, was named Official War Artist to Iraq in 2003 and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2009. A recent and highly acclaimed survey of his work travelled from the Art Institute of Chicago to the Schaulager, Basel. McQueen won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 for his feature film ‘Hunger’. McQueen’s latest feature ’12 Years a Slave’ was awarded the Oscar for Best Picture at the 2014 Academy Awards. Having been appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE, 2002), he was created Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 New Year Honors for services to the Visual Arts. Steve McQueen lives and works in Amsterdam.
Steve McQueen: 14 October – 15 November 2014 Thomas Dane Gallery London