Ivorypress at Kettle’s Yard

From 12 October 2021 to 30 January 2022, Kettle’s Yard will host a selection of works, including two artist’s books from the 25 years history of Ivorypress, throughout the house in a way that allows them to dialogue directly with the space and the existing collection.

The selection includes 6 photographs by American photographer Mariana Cook to be installed in Helen’s bedroom. The images were made in the last ten days of the artist’s mother’s life. While Cook is best known for her portraiture, the light abstraction on view represents her quiet contemplation of matter and essence.

A painting created with clay on felt and a mixed ceramic sculpture by Chilean artist Fernando Casasempere will be shown in the Bechstein Room. The works based on three sources of inspiration: pre-Hispanic heritage, the Chilean landscape and the impact that living in London for twenty-two years has had on the artist’s work.

Drawings by young Spanish artist Blanca Miró Skoudy will be exhibited alongside works on paper by Spanish master Eduardo Chillida from the artist’s book Reflections in the Attic. Miró Skoudy’s works have been previously shown in her first solo exhibition at the Ivorypress space in Madrid. The precise lines of her drawings trace bodies that reconfigure the naturalist point of view; the limbs, eyes, hair and mouths of her figures are assembled using a multiplicity of perspectives, recalling the French and Spanish surrealist traditions of Cocteau, Miró, Picasso and Breton.

Reflections was the first artist’s book published by Ivorypress. It includes 11 facsimiles of works on paper (6 of them are going to be shown in the attic) each of them chosen by Eduardo Chillida to represent a five-decade span of his work between 1950 and 2000.

Additionally, Walking and Sleeping, the artist’s book created by British artist Richard Long for Ivorypress is going to be displayed on the Library table. It’s a book about concurrent time. Each page represents one day from seven different walks, represented through 22 pages of text and 11 photographs.

This exhibition is part of a multi-institutional exhibitions program taking place in museums and libraries across Europe and the United States during 2021 and 2022 on the occasion of Ivorypress’ twenty-fifth anniversary. Participating institutions include the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid, the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, the British Library in London, the Centro de Iniciativas Culturales at the Universidad de Sevilla, Ivorypress Space in Madrid, Kettle’s Yard at the University of Cambridge, Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, Museo Chillida Leku in Hernani, Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Neues Museum in Berlin, Stanford University Library in California, the Warburg Institute in London, and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven.

As part of the celebration, Ivorypress is publishing moreover a three-volume book that chronicles the history of Ivorypress since 1996, using a variety of primary sources that range from oral histories and archival documents to pictorial records and texts.