Cork Street Galleries, in partnership with the British Council, has announced Sonia Boyce OBE RA as the artist for its Cork Street Galleries Banners Commission 2022. Work from Feeling Her Way, Boyce’s critically acclaimed British Council commission for the British Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, will be unveiled on Cork Street on Thursday 13th October 2022. Launching during Frieze Week, London’s busiest week in the art market calendar, the work will remain on Cork Street for 6 weeks.
Feeling Her Way was commissioned by Emma Dexter, British Council Director Visual Arts, Commissioner of the British Pavilion and chair of the British Pavilion selection committee, and curated by Emma Ridgway, Shane Akeroyd Associate Curator.
Cork Street Galleries is honoured to be partnering with the British Council and Sonia Boyce OBE RA on the 2022 Cork Street Banners commission. This unique collaboration, which shares site-specific elements of Boyce’s award-winning exhibition for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale Arte 2022 during London’s Frieze Week, marks another momentous occasion in Cork Street’s rich history. We are delighted to be joining the British Council on Cork Street to celebrate Boyce’s outstanding work.
– Jenny Casebourne, The Pollen Estate
Awarded the prestigious Golden Lion award for best national participation at the Venice Biennale, Feeling Her Way is an immersive installation that centres around the vocal experimentation of five outstanding black female musicians. A central theme in Boyce’s practice, the improvisation, interaction, and playfulness that the musicians display in each others’ presence demonstrates the potential of collaborative play as a route to innovation. Embodying feelings of freedom, power, and vulnerability that are so present in Boyce’s exhibition in Venice, larger than life portraits of Tanita Tikaram in Tanita (2021) and Poppy Ajudha in Poppy (2021), two of the five vocalists brought together by the artist, take centre stage on Cork Street.
Sonia Boyce OBE RA as the Cork Street Galleries Banners Commission artist for 2022, 13th October – 27th November 2022, Cork Street Galleries, London, W1S corkstgalleries.com
The 2022 Cork Street Galleries Banners commission coincides with Sonia Boyce’s forthcoming exhibition Just for the Record at Simon Lee Gallery in London (12th October – 16th December).
In addition, the British Council is delighted to share Cultureshock’s specially commissioned video walkthrough of Sonia Boyce’s exhibition in Venice with members of the public via QR codes placed on the street.About the artist
Sonia Boyce OBE RA came to prominence as a key figure in the burgeoning Black-British art scene of the early 1980s. She was one of the youngest artists of her generation to have her work acquired by Tate, featuring deeply personal reflections on race, class and gender in Britain.
Boyce has taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions, both internationally and in the UK. Notable recent solo exhibitions include Just for the Record, Simon Lee Gallery (2022), In the Castle of My Skin, Eastside Projects, Birmingham and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art ( 2021), Manchester Art Gallery (2018), The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2017), Villa Arson, Nice (2016), and group exhibitions including Prospect 4, New Orleans (2017), and All the World’s Futures, 56th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2015). 2021 also saw the completion of Boyce’s major public art commission for London’s Elizabeth Line/Crossrail project Newham Trackside Wall. Boyce currently features in Tate Britain’s Life Between Islands, Caribbean – British Art 1050s – Now, and from March in Radio Ballads at the Serpentine Gallery and Barking Town Hall and Learning Centre from March.
In 2016, Boyce was elected a Royal Academician, and in the same year received a Paul Hamlyn Artist Award. In 2019, she received an OBE for Services to Art in the Queen’s New Year Honours List, as well as an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art. Boyce is currently a Professor at University of the Arts London, where she holds the inaugural Chair in Black Art & Design.
