In Conversation: Vicken Parsons
29 May, 6.30–8.15pm (doors open at 6pm)
Celebrating a new book about the artist and her work, with an In Conversation with Charlotte Mullins, followed by a drinks reception.
Join us for a celebration of Vicken Parsons’ new book, a major monograph exploring the artist’s remarkable work over the past four decades. The evening will begin in the Kettle’s Yard house with Parsons in conversation with critic, writer, and broadcaster Charlotte Mullins, followed by a drinks reception and the opportunity to purchase the new book.
Find out more about Vicken Parsons at Kettle’s Yard, including exhibitions and books.
About Vicken Parsons
Vicken Parsons (b.1957, Hertfordshire) lives and works in London. Her paintings are held in major national and international collections including Tate, The Government Art Collection, The Arts Council Collection, The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the Jerwood Foundation, the Belvedere Museum, Vienna and Museum Voorlinden, the Netherlands.
Parsons makes small, intimate paintings on wood panel using thin layers of oil paint. Her subjects are usually partial views of interior spaces or landscapes, some remembered and others imagined.
Parsons’ work has beguiled and inspired writers from the fields of art, psychoanalysis, and literature for more than twenty years. Their responses to her ‘visual poems’ – their attempts to interpret them, to distil them for the reader – are gathered here for the first time, in the artist’s only retrospective monograph. The 296-page publication features work from throughout her career including drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Texts by fellow artists and writers from the fields of art, psychoanalysis and literature include contributions from Michael Archer, David Batchelor, Iwona Blazwick, Edmund de Waal, Darian Leader and Charlotte Mullins with a foreword by Kettle’s Yard Director, Andrew Nairne. This beautiful book is a demonstration of painting’s power to evoke emotion and sensation even when on the smallest of scales.
The first thing anyone comments on is the size of the work. What I am trying to do is open up the small physical space of the panel into a space of the imagination, of unknown – possibly vast – dimensions. Paradoxically, you cannot create space without using the language of confinement.
– Vicken Parsons
About Charlotte Mullins
Charlotte Mullins is an art critic, writer, and broadcaster. She is currently writing Art Nation, a new history of British and Irish art for Yale University Press, and has recently published catalogue essays on Ali Banisadr, Vicken Parsons, Yinka Shonibare CBE and Clare Woods. Her latest books include A Little History of Art (Yale, 2022), A Little Feminist History of Art (Tate, 2019) and Rachel Whiteread (Tate, 2017). She writes a weekly column for Country Life and is the presenter of the podcast Making a Mark, produced by Cristea Roberts Gallery in London.
