Ruth Dupré wanted to be a classical ballet dancer until her late teens. This first involvement with this artistic discipline has affected her deeply in the way she thinks and creates. Ballet follows a set of strict rules – angles must be just so, lines correct, everything correct, and yet it is communicating every aspect of human experience. This early following of an exact aesthetic principle in fact gave her great freedom when she became an artist. She understood the importance of technique and restrictions, but as they were so familiar, she was able to work with them and around them, rather than be confined by them. Her chosen subjects concentrate on the intimate. Personal experiences of lust, death, love and procreation are vehicles for expression, but often with more than a touch of humour. She has worked in several different materials, predominantly clay, glass, paint and film. Yet there is a tangible continuity, an expressive openness, that connects them all.

 

 

About the artist

Ruth Dupré has exhibited in numerous high profile galleries including the Whitechapel, the Barbican, the Royal Academy, the ICA, and the V & A in London.

She won the Jack Goldhill Prize at the Royal Academy for her glass piece Butchery, and the Bombay Sapphire Prize, for a film she made with Anne Brodie and Louise Gilbert Scott. She has received travel awards from the British Council. Her work is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery and the Corning Museum of Glass, New York.

 

 

Michael Glover, art critic for the Independent, previews her show…

Lashed, crimped and laid low (2013)

 

Ruth Dupré makes work that is inspired by the power of religious iconography, revealing how objects of ritual quickly become fetishes and idols. The pieces in this show – paintings, ceramics and glass - circle these themes, but in expressing the humour of sex, death, and worship, they also transcend such boundaries. The work is often irreverent, energetic and funny, but with serious overtones, drawing attention to the nature of social interaction. She flirts outrageously with the organic forms of the natural world.

 

Like most artists, she makes work to express her personal insights, to point out hypocrisy and falsehoods. Influences are complex and various, from the mummified finger of the 16th century saint immured in its gilded casket, to the power of the palette of Goya. The pieces go their own way, and tell their own stories. Some make direct references; others are more oblique and subtle. Shown together, they make an odd, disjointed statement, yet they are obviously part of the same awkward extended family.

 

 

Curriculum vitae

EDUCATION

 

1975  Ravensbourne Foundation

1976-1980  Middlesex Ceramics BA

2000-2003 Royal College of Art. Glass MA

 

AWARDS

 

2010   Winner of the Jack Goldhill Prize for sculpture at the Royal Academy Summer Show

2010   Nominated for the Bryan Robertson Award

2007   FilmLondon Award

2007   British Council Travel award

2006   British Council Travel Award

2006   Nominated for Arts Foundation Fellowship

2005   Winner of the Bombay Sapphire Glass Prize for video 'Roker Breakfast', made with Anne Brodie and Louise Gilbert Scott

1983   British Council Travelling Award

1982   Crafts Council Arts Setting Up Grant

 

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

 

National Portrait Gallery Collection

Corning Museum of Glass. New York

 

Upcoming solo EXHIBITIONS

 

2019   Art and Talking. Karl-Kunger-Straße 5, 12435 Berlin, Germany

2021   March, Arthouse1, London

 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

 

2017   Hatchery and other Fabrications. Arthouse1, London

2016   Response to Lorca. Omnibus Arts London

2015   Tangles of Uncertainty. Arthouse1, London

2013  Lashed, Crimped and Laid Low. Arthouse1, London

2006   Rollo Contemporary, London

1997   James Colman Fine Art, London

1997   Wellcome Institute of Neurological Studies

 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

 

2016   Small is beautiful. Flowers Central

2010   Rochester City Art Gallery

2008   Sotheby's London

2007   Object Gallery Sydney, Australia

2007   Rollo Contemporary Art, London

2007   Sotheby’s London

2006   Royal College of Art, RCA Secret

2006   Royal Academy Summer Show  (Invited Artist)

2006   New British Glass. Institute of Contemporary Art. Singapore

2006   ICA London. Pecha Cucha arranged by Icon magazine

2006   Ateliers d’Art de France. Montpelier International clay and glass film festival

2005   Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London

2005   Bombay Sapphire Finalists, Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London & touring Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds

2005   Girls on Film, Film Festival, Manchester.

2005   Pecha Cucha event organised by Icon Magazine, ICA, London

2004   Sofa, Chicago, USA.

2004   Roker Breakfast video, Salon des Arts, London

2004   Displaced, National Glass Centre

2004   Where the Line Meets the Sand, Brunel University. 2003 Chase, Royal College of Art

2003   Royal College of Art. MA Show

1998   Contemporary Ceramics, Sotheby's

1997   Inspiration of the Natural World, Craft's Council

1995   Figures in Clay, Craft's Council

1995    Art of the Maker, Bluecoat Display Centre Liverpool:Touring to the Ruskin Gallery, Sheffield; Cleveland Craft Centre; The Garden Room, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham

1994   Value Added, Central St Martin's Gallery

1994   Valentine Show, Victoria and Albert Museum

1993   The Raw and the Cooked. Barbican Art Gallery, London. Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, Shigarake Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan

 

ARTICLES

 

2007   The Times. Michael Glover

2005   a-n magazine

2005   Crafts magazine 197

2005   Living etc

1994   Glas en Keramiek, Ans van Berkum

1989   The Times, Nicole Swengley.

1988   Ceramics and Education, Ruth Dupré, Ceramic Review

1987   Artist's Newsletter, Breaking the Mould. Ruth Dupré

1986   The Times, If the Shoe Fits. Anna Murphy.

1983   Art Review, Whitechapel Open

 

BOOKS

 

In Touch with the Past, Fondazione Palzzo Strozzi, Firenze 2013

Edible Series, Offal. Nam Edwards

The Nature of Clay. Ian Gregory. A and C Black, 2003

The Human Form in Clay. Jane Wailer. Crowood, 2002

The Wellcome Trust, Sci-Art Partnerships in Science and Art, Wellcome Trust 1998

 

TEACHING

 

Royal College of Art

Central St Martin's College of Art

Camberwell College of Art and Design