To fulfil its mission of encouraging knowledge exchange, Katara has announced an artist talk and residency programme by Lisa Milroy, an award-winning guest artist of Encounter: The Royal Academy in the Middle East.
The artist talk will begin at 6pm on January 27 at Katara building 15 and will be open to the public. The residency programme will be held from January 28 to February 2 at Katara Art Studios, building 19.
Katara, the cultural village, had collaborated with The Royal Academy of Arts to co-curate Encounter: The Royal Academy in the Middle East, which was launched in December 2012 and would run till March 6 this year in Katara Gallery 1 and 2, building 19 and 22.
The exhibition features over 80 works of art in a wide variety of media by 25 Royal Academicians and 25 prominent artists from across the Middle East.
The artist talk will comprise a conversation session between artists featured in Encounter: The Royal Academy in the Middle East, Milroy, Qatari artists Ibtisam al-Safar and Fatima al-Naimi, as well as curator Sa’id Costa.
The residency programme aims to guide Qatari artists who have the desire to improve their artistic practices and skills. The programme also provides a platform for the sharing and exchange of knowledge between Katara and the Royal Academy.
The Milroy residency programme will start with a public talk where she will present herself to the Qatari audience, providing them with an overview of her work and career.
Dr Khalid al-Sulaiti, general manager of Katara, said: “This is an excellent opportunity for young Qatari artists to learn the true fundamentals of art from an award-winning artist. It has been a pleasure to have Lisa Milroy share not only her impressive works in this unique exhibition but also her broad experience. This exhibition contributes to our wider vision of nurturing local talent and providing them with a platform to showcase them.”
Milroy was born in 1959 in Vancouver, Canada, and graduated from Goldsmiths College of Art, London, in 1982. In the 1980s, her paintings featured ordinary objects isolated against an off-white ground, such as shoes, clothes, books, bulbs and hardware. In the early 1990s, Milroy’s approach to still life painting shifted, leading to depictions of objects within settings. As the imagery expanded to include landscape, architecture and people, her painting style and exhibition strategies
diversified.
Milroy’s recent focus is on large-scale, installation-based paintings. She won the John Moores Painting Prize in 1989 and was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2006.
Currently living in London, she has been the head of graduate painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, since 2009. In 2001, her work was the subject of a major survey at Tate Liverpool and her paintings are held in many private and public collections in the UK and abroad.
Artwork by Lisa Milroy.
