MARINA’s RA RETROSPECTIVE RUNS UNTIL NEW YEAR’S DAY
For the first time in its 255-year history, the Royal Academy is giving over its Main Galleries to a solo show by a female artist. While we’re not happy it’s taken this long, we’re ecstatic that the acclaimed Serbian performance artist and Honorary Royal Academician, Marina Abramović has been chosen for the honour.
This major exhibition is the first major solo survey in the UK of Abramović’s work and will present key moments from her five-decade-long career through sculpture, video, installation and performance.
After training as a painter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Marina Abramović turned to performance in the early 1970s and established the hallmarks of her practice: everyday actions ritualised through repetition and endurance.
A pioneer of performance art, she has pushed herself to the limit physically and mentally for her work ever since.
NO TWO VISITS WILL BE THE SAME
Offering an overview of her practice and enduring interests – including the importance of public participation and drawing energy from nature – different works will be reperformed during the exhibition’s run, making every visit unique.
Works such as The Artist is Present will be re-staged through archive footage while others will be reperformed by the next generation of performance artists, trained by the Marina Abramović Institute. Some of which will be reperformed in the UK for the first time such as Imponderabilia, 1977 and Nude with Skeleton, 2002.
The exhibition will also conclude with The House with the Ocean View. First performed by Abramović in 2002, it saw the artist live in a house constructed in the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, never leaving the gallery and only drinking water for 12 days. Held a year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it invited audiences to share in the simple act of living. It will be reperformed at three points during the London exhibition’s run.
Advance booking is recommended. For more information and tickets, visit www.royalacademy.org.uk.