Artist: Katherine Gili

Felix & Spear Gallery are delighted to announce that Tate Britain will be exhibiting the sculpture ’Vertical IV’ made by Katherine Gili in 1975, for the first time since its acquisition, from July this year onwards in their 'Ideas into Action (1965-1980)' room. To celebrate and coincide with this display, the gallery presents ‘Shift’. One of the first sculptures Gili made, only one year into her career in 1974, rarely seen in fifty years but effectively the beginning of a range of works leading up to the making of ‘Vertical IV’.

“First shown at the Chelsea Gallery and in the annual Stockwell Depot exhibition of that year ‘Shift’ and other of her works stood out enough to attract the attention of the more sharp-eyed critics of the time. “Katherine Gili’s sculptures work their way up off the ground, activate or imply extension around a central axis…pieces seem almost folded and bent out of one piece of steel, with slight shifts of planes moving in front of and behind the main face and gently insinuating themselves into surrounding space… These sculptures are very beautifully crafted, each element perfectly poised in its relationships (1). At the time much constructed steel sculpture attempted to spread out into space and confront the viewer with an almost zany environmental experience. But having developed her approach from these sculptures over the next few years Catherine Lampert was able to conclude of Katherine’s work “The scale reflects her own size, but the impression is neither humanistic nor domesticated. Instead, qualities of grace and honesty outweigh and refresh the cliched ideas linked to the medium and the idiom” (2). The calm assurance of this sculpture with its subtle, integrated, elements, extending across space but controlled by an internal rhythm, though architectonic in conception, evinces reflection and anticipates her future development.” (3)

Katherine Gili born Oxford 1948, graduated from Bath Academy of Art in 1970 and studied at St Martin’s School of Art 1971-73. In 1978 she began to radically develop her work, leading to exhibitions at Tate Gallery in 1984 and the Conde Duque Centre in Madrid in 1988. She has exhibited widely, has regularly shown in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions and in 2013 her sculpture ‘Ripoll’ won the Jack Goldhill Prize. Her work is represented in private, public, and corporate collections in the UK, Switzerland, Spain, and the USA.

This is Katherine Gili’s sixth exhibition with Felix & Spear.

(1) Judy Marle- Studio International October 1974
(2) Catherine Lampert- Women Artists in the UK- Studio International March 1977
(3) Robert Persey-Notes on Katherine Gili’s Career-as yet unpublished