The Ashmolean Museum presents Thomas Houseago: Contemporary Sculpture on view through 20th February 2011.
For the first time, the Ashmolean Museum and Modern Art Oxford will collaborate in the display of contemporary sculpture, presenting work by British artist Thomas Houseago.
In his first major solo exhibition in a UK public gallery, new and recent sculptures by Los Angeles-based artist Thomas Houseago will go on show at Modern Art Oxford and in the Ashmolean Museum’s forecourt and newly redeveloped Cast Gallery.
Thomas Houseago was born in Leeds in 1972 and now lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include The Moon and the Stars and the Sun, Michael Werner Gallery, New York (2010); Two Faces, Ballroom Marfa, Texas (2009); Thomas Houseago, Zero, Milan (2009).
The artist has come to public prominence in recent years with his monumental, figurative sculptures that are charged with a remarkable energy and vitality.
Houseago works primarily with media that demonstrates a sensibility towards classical sculptural materials and processes; primitive, totemic sculptures are hewn from giant timbers. Hessian is slathered in plaster and crudely wrapped around steel armatures, and largescale, free-standing works are ambitiously cast in bronze.
Thomas Houseago: What Went Down will be later presented at Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany, and The International Center of Art and Landscape at Vassivière Island, France.
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