press release
gina pane
27 November 2001–19 January 2002
This winter, the John Hansard Gallery launches the first UK
solo exhibition of the hugely influential French artist, Gina
Pane who lived and worked in Paris until her death in 1990.
The exhibition is accompanied by the first English language
publications about her work, and includes specially commissioned
essays by Anne Tronche, Jennifer Blessing and Bernard Blistène.
Building on the Gallery’s 1999 exhibition Lie of the
Land, which showed Pane alongside, amongst others, Ana Mendieta,
Dennis Oppenheim, Bill Viola and Marina Abramovic, this project
offers timely access to a broader range of work from the artist’s
archive, French National and Regional Art collections and private
lenders. By concentrating upon work from various stages in Pane’s
career, the exhibition examines the relationship between her
practice as a painter, sculptor, installation artist and performance
artist.
Some of the pieces on display, such as Azione Sentimentale
(1973), include the photographic documentation of performances
in which Pane is seen to enact carefully planned and deliberately
controlled self-wounding. In these works, Pane explores the
relationship between mark-making on the body and scarring of
the landscape, and seeks to demonstrate both the extreme fragility
of the body and the reality of suffering. In conjunction with
this, the subject matter and symbolic gestures featured in many
of her pieces articulate her engagement in late 1960s feminism,
identity politics and environmentalism. Whilst such works established
Pane’s reputation as a seminal artist of feminist practice
and performance during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, her legacy for
contemporary art practice has become more urgent, making an
exhibition of this key historical figure ever more timely.
The Gina Pane exhibition is a John Hansard Gallery collaboration
with Arnolfini, Bristol where it will be seen (23 February–14
April 2002) in the context of an ambitious contemporary performance
art programme. The project has been funded by the Arts Council
of England’s National Touring Programme and the Henry
Moore Foundation.
