Dolores de Sade
10 Manse Road, London, N16 7QD
07952676262
doloresbunny@googlemail.com
www.doloresdesade.com


Education

MA Printmaking: Royal College of Art, 2011
BA (Hons.) Fine Art: The Sir John Cass School of Art (LMU), 2009
PhD History: University of York, 2006.
BA (Hons.) History: Birkbeck College, (ULU), 2000


Grants and Awards

Royal Etcher Award, Royal Society of Painter Printmakers, London 2011
Birgit Skiöld Memorial Trust Award, London 2011
British Institution Award, Royal Academy, London 2011
J K Burt Award, Originals, London 2010
Ede and Ravenscroft Award, London 2010
Guangdong Museum Purchase prize, Qijiang, 2010
St Cuthbert’s Mill Award, Printmakers Council, London, 2008
American History Bursary, University of York, 2000


Solo Shows

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and Other Stories, Whitstable, August 2011
Some Fragments, Show Off Gallery, Whitstable, June 2010
Heart of Darkness, Show Off Gallery, Whitstable, July 2009


Selected Group Shows and Performances

Hot Off the Press, Curwen Gallery, January 2011
Clifford Chance Postgraduate Printmaking Survey Exhibition, December 2011
Qijiang International Print Festival, China, November 2011
BITE, Mall Galleries, London, August 2011
Sawchestra perform Prince Achmed at Folly for a Flyover, London, July 2011
SHOW, Royal College of Art, London, July 2011
East London Printmakers, Space, London, July 2011
Spritz, Tintype Gallery at Simon and Muirhead, London, June 2011
Mailto, Drift Station Gallery, Nebraska, June 2011
Royal Academy Summer Show, May 2011
CMYOK! Café Gallery, Southwark, March 2011
The Readers Late at Barbican, London, August 2010
Originals, Mall galleries, London, February 2010
Qijang International Print Festival, China, October 2009
IMPACT, Spike Island, Bristol, September 2009
Salon 09, Matt Roberts Arts, Vyner Street, September 2009
Printmakers Council Miniature Print Exhibition: Touring UK. May 2009
The Readers and The Apathy Band. GSK, Royal Academy, London. December 2008
Kunst Tut Gutes: Autohaus Glinicke, Minden, Germany. October 2008
Mailshot. Whitstable Biennale: Whitstable, June 2008


Professional Organizations

East London Printmakers (Chair 2011-Present)
Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (A.R.E)
The Sawchestra
The Readers (2008-2011)


Artist’s Statement

Dolores de Sade’s work is primarily focused on the landscape, but concerned with memory, nostalgia, myth and narrative. Looking at possible portrayals of an event, place or object, her work explores the temporal nature of such states of being,

The surreal nature of de Sade’s work derives in part from the fact that it comprises images that are exact in their structure and composition, but whose imagery, though familiar, appears to have abandoned their ordinary meanings; they can be read as experiments in the ways in which image, and language themselves work to create structures of meaning. Common themes that emerge are exploration, science, typology and geography, although their treatment here lends to new interpretations and conceptualizations of those concepts.

Primarily her works deal with our place as individuals within society, with the sometimes disempowering aspect of our contemporary overload, and the romantic fading memory of a simplified world view in which one’s sense of place was denoted by boundaries of personal vision and physicality, a memory which is now transformed into an endless web of connections and information, most of which, though highly omnipresent and totally accessible, leaves us as spectators rather than participators in what we are able to know.

While our society is presumed to be in some form of decline, that we fail to find a collective ability to act as a whole, these fears are nothing new. Somewhere in the transforming relationship of words and images, in the visual and verbal slippages that occur between what may be spoken or written and the physical stuff of the world, a new place opens up: a place that demonstrates the inadequacy of imagination and reason to each other. De Sade uses this liminal position as a space within which to search for shared disidentifications in the psychological service and implication of symbols and the manners by which those symbols can be maneuvered and rejuxtaposed in order to provoke new ideas or new points of view - in other words, the creation of, in a sense, conscious dreams. These conscious dreams demonstrate a playful framework of shared understanding and misunderstanding rooted in the belief that the combined nature of history and our contemporary levels of information enable us to engage with and see beyond our personal borders.

Influenced by eighteenth and nineteenth century book and periodical illustration, these works demonstrate an interest in the ways that information is given the authority of knowledge and how knowledge is transposed through memory, nostalgia and archetype. Finding parallels with the challenges brought about by the sudden plethora of images and information that new printing techniques and early beginnings of mass media in the eighteenth and nineteenth century and those of our own digital age, these works are concerned with narrative and temporality, exploring the philosophies of Blanchot, Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein and the artist’s senile Grandmother.

Her work spans a range of media, including etching and engraving, painting, writing, sound, performance and film and is held in private and public collections including V&A, Government Art Collection, British Library, Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal College of Art, Sir John Cass School of Art and Guangdong Museum, China.

Reviews:

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/britarts-new-wave-who-are-the-successors-to-hirst-and-emin-2318101.html