Jessica Voorsanger
Jessica Voorsanger’s work explores popular culture with a particular fascination on celebrity. Historically this began with a subjective focus on fan adulation but the work has come to explore these themes in relation to identity, gender and humour using colour, pattern, performance and interactivity as vehicles within a multi-disciplinarian practice. Voorsanger uses a wide range of media from painting and installation to performance and addresses difficult subjects like her relatively recent experiences of cancer.
The most recent work has continued to include performance (hosting a series of film events at Tate Modern as Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso and Peggy Guggenheim) and working on a series of compilation paintings that encompass collage, vintage fabric and painted interventions. The most recent painting installation, posed the question “What would I make if I was the Artist-in-Residence on the Starship Enterprise?”
She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (1987) and her MA in Fine Art from University of London, Goldsmiths College (1993). She has shown extensively including: Mystery Train, Art on the Underground & ICA, London / Eastenders, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London / The Woody Allen Show, Gallery-33 FON, Berlin / I Think I Love You, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh / The Retrieval Series: Bob Geldof, Modern Culture, New York / Baby Shower, Camden Art Centre, London. Group exhibitions: Star Struck, New Art Gallery Walsall, England / Hearing Voices, Seeing Things, Serpentine Gallery, London / Forward/Backward Reloading, Island 6 Art Center, Shanghai China / Air Guitar, touring show including Milton Keynes Gallery & Cornerhouse, Manchester / To Whom it May Concern, CCAC, San Francisco CA. Her monograph published by Black Dog Publishing The Art of Jessica Voorsanger came out in 2014.