We launch our 2024 exhibition programme with the only Scottish showing of work by French-American artist Louise Bourgeois, who is widely recognised as one of the most important and influential figures of modern and contemporary art.
In a career that spanned most of the avant-garde artist movements of the 20th century, Bourgeois stayed true to her unique vision. Her endlessly inventive work, inspired by her memories and experiences, spanned monumental installations, sculptures, fabric collages and drawings. She is perhaps best known for her large-scale spider sculptures, including one she created for the opening of Tate Modern in 2000.
This exhibition focuses on works produced during the last 20 years of her life, a period of extraordinary creativity, during which Bourgeois re-examined many of her lifelong concerns to create a body of new work exploring identity, gender, childhood, family and memory. Personal, provocative, vulnerable and raw, her work reaches us with a powerful immediacy more than a decade after her death.
ARTIST ROOMS is a national collection of international modern and contemporary art. Its programme reaches audiences across the UK and is developed through local partnerships.
Image: Louise Bourgeois Spider I 1995. ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by The Easton Foundation 2013 © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2024. Photo © Tate
