
Michelle Charles
7 June - 27 July 2008
Michelle Charles’ paintings and drawings explore how we look at things and the relationship between what we see and what we remember. Her subjects include glasses of milk, bars of soap, scrubbing brushes, tea towels, knitting, flies and plastic shopping bags. This was the first major exhibition of her work in the UK.
The catalogue includes essays by critics Dore Ashton and Guy Brett. Dore Ashton writes: ‘It requires great skill, great craft, to reduce an object to its essence in just a few swift strokes of the brush. Charles succeeds – again and again and again and again.’
Michelle Charles was born in London in 1959. With a Jacob Mendelson Fellowship in memory of David Bomberg, she moved to the United States in 1982, finally working for thirteen years in New York where she was represented by the John Weber Gallery and where awards included Pollock Krasner Foundation Fellowships in 1993-94 and 2001-02. She returned to London in 2001 where she now lives and works.
Michelle Charles’ exhibition preparations were grant-aided by the Arts Council England.