Master Class: Marvin Gaye Chetwynd

About

Testing Ground: Master Class invites leading international artists to share their expertise with a small group of emerging artists from around the country over a week long intensive, led by artist Doug Fishbone.

Join us each evening for a public lecture by the artists.
Tonight: Marvin Gaye Chetwynd

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd (b. 1973, London) is a British artist whose practice intertwines performance, sculpture, painting, installation and video. Her performances and videos harness elements of folk plays, street spectacles, literature and multiple other genres. They generally employ troupes of performers – friends and relatives of the artist – and feature handmade costumes and props. Through improvisatory, irreverent and carnivalesque dramas, Chetwynd has ranged across a panoramic range of subjects. For over a decade, she has also worked on an extensive series of paintings collectively titled Bat Opera. Throughout this series, the theatrical tropes of Chetwynd’s performance work are closely echoed: the paintings reflect a concurrent affinity for Brechtian drama, street theatre, puppet shows and ceremonial pageantry.

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd studied Social Anthropology at University College London before studying art at the Slade and the RCA. She has performed and exhibited internationally, and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2012 for Odd Man Out at Sadie Coles HQ (restaged at Tate Britain, London, from October 2012 to January 2013). In 2014 her film Hermitos Children 2 was shown at Studio Voltaire, London, as part of a major solo exhibition. Major performances include The King Must Die, Studio Voltaire, London (2014);The Green Room, Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2014); Home Made Tasers, New Museum, New York (2011-12), Free Energy Workshop, Hayward Gallery, London (2011), part of British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet, and A Tax Haven Run By Women, Frieze Projects, Frieze Art Fair, London (2010), and The Snail Race, Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan (2008). Solo exhibitions have taken place at Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2014); Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin (2012); Le Consortium, Dijon, France, (2008); and Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, Switzerland, (2007). Group exhibitions include the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Goteborg, Sweden (2013); Performance Now: The First Decade of the New Century, various venues, USA (2012-14); andBritish Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet, various UK venues (2010). In 2007 a book was published on her performances by Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst. Her solo exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ in spring 2014 coincided with the publication of two artist’s books, Some Canterbury Tales(Four Corners Press), and Bat Opera (Koenig Books / Sadie Coles HQ). In 2015 Chetwynd will present a solo commission at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, Switzerland, followed later in the year by an installation of her Canterbury Tales collages (2014) as part of the museum’s exhibition Toys Redux – on Play and Critique.