by Dolores de Sade
Dolores de Sade’s work is concerned with knowledge, memory, nostalgia and narrative. Looking at possible portrayals of an event, place or object, her work explores the temporal nature of such states of being.
Common themes that emerge are exploration, natural history, typology and geography, although their treatment here lends to new interpretations and conceptualizations of those concepts. The surreal nature of de Sade’s work derives in part from the fact that it comprises images that are exact in their structure and composition, but whose imagery, though familiar, appears to have abandoned their ordinary meanings; they can be read as experiments in the ways in which image, and language themselves work to create structures of meaning.
Primarily her works deal with our place as individuals within society, with the sometimes disempowering aspect of our contemporary overload, and the romantic fading memory of a simplified world view in which one’s sense of place was denoted by boundaries of personal vision and physicality, a memory which is now transformed into an endless web of connections and information, most of which, though highly omnipresent and totally accessible, leaves us as spectators rather than participators in what we are able to know.
While our society is presumed to be in some form of decline, that we fail to find a collective ability to act as a whole, these fears are nothing new. Somewhere in the transforming relationship of words and images, in the visual and verbal slippages that occur between what may be spoken or written and the physical stuff of the world, a new place opens up: a place that demonstrates the inadequacy of imagination and reason to each other. Such places demonstrate a playful framework of shared understanding and misunderstanding rooted in the belief that the combined nature of history and our contemporary levels of information enable us to engage with and see beyond our personal borders.
Influenced by eighteenth and nineteenth century book and periodical illustration, these works demonstrate an interest in the ways that information is given the authority of knowledge and how knowledge is transposed through memory, nostalgia and archetype. Finding parallels with the challenges brought about by the sudden plethora of images and information that new printing techniques and early beginnings of mass media in the eighteenth and nineteenth century and those of our own digital age.
Her work spans a range of media, including etching and engraving, painting, writing, sound, performance and film and is held in private and public collections including V&A, Government Art Collection, British Library, Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal College of Art, Sir John Cass School of Art, Ministry of Culture, Thailand and Guangdong Museum, China.
Education
MA Printmaking: Royal College of Art, 2011
BA (Hons.) Fine Art: The Sir John Cass School of Art (LMU), 2009
PhD History: University of York, 2006.
BA (Hons.) History: Birkbeck College, (ULU), 2000
Grants and Awards
Royal Etcher Award, Royal Society of Painter Printmakers, London 2011
Birgit Skiöld Memorial Trust Award, London 2011
British Institution Award, Royal Academy, London 2011
J K Burt Award, Originals, London 2010
Ede and Ravenscroft Award, London 2010
Guangdong Museum Purchase prize, Qijiang, 2010
St Cuthbert’s Mill Award, Printmakers Council, London, 2008
American History Bursary, University of York, 2000
Exhibitons
London Original Print Fair, Royal Academy, London. April 2012
Miniature Print Show, London Print Studio, June 2012
Double Take, Studio 3 Gallery, Canterbury, May 2012
On Metaphor, Show Off Gallery, Whitstable, December 2012 (Solo Show)
Hot Off the Press, Curwen Gallery, London, January 2012
Qijang International Print Festival: China, November 2011
Postgraduate Printmaking 2011: Clifford Chance, London, December 2011
London Art Book Fair, (Birgit Skiold Award), Whitechapel Gallery, London, October 2011
This Place, Show Off Gallery, Harbour St, Whitstable, August 2011 (Solo Show)
BITE, Mall Galleries, London, August 2011
Royal Academy Summer Show (British Institution Award), London, June 2011
London Original Print Fair, Royal Academy, April 2011
Some Fragments: Whitstable, June 2010 (Solo show)
Originals 10: Mall, London, February 2010
Qijang International Print Festival (Purchase Prize Award): China, October 2009
Salon 09: Matt Roberts Arts, Vyner Street,London. September 2009