Jenny Saville is joined in conversation with Nicholas Cullinan, Curator, Tate Modern. This very special event is a rare opportunity to hear the artist discuss her recent practice in the context of the exhibition at Modern Art Oxford.
British artist Jenny Saville (1970), one of the Young British Artists, deconstructs the stereotypes of beauty and eroticism of the female body as seen through art and through men, and then broadens them. She experiments with obese women and changes in the body, but above all she uses her own body as a model and means of reflection. She reveals the natural beauty of the individuality of the women she paints, and her own. This defines her artistic language as much as her traditional pictorial technique. Figures are the sole focus of attention of her huge canvasses, which often cannot contain the whole figure in the same way that our selves cannot control our bodies. Her painting and her skill at drawing spawn a multiplicity of realities that build movement.  Recent solo museum exhibitions include Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2005); Norton Museum of Art, Florida. Saville’s works are featured in several public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Broad, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and Saatchi Collection, London. Saville’s work was included in the 50th Biennale di Venezia in 2003.