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
© 2019 Ruth Dupré
web design by Rebecca Fairman