Julie Roberts: In Retro

Murder Victims, Dentist's Chairs and Homeless Children Up-coming exhibition of works by Julie Roberts at Kunsthallen Brandts

Julie Roberts is one of Britain's most talented young visual artists. She was born in 1963 and trained in the early 1990s at the Glasgow School of Art and St. Martins in London. At this time, neo-expressionist painting was dominant in Europe and the US, but Julie Roberts chose an almost opposite direction. Her paintings of the early 1990s are characterized by large monochrome backgrounds against which she examines and analyzes isolated objects. She is especially interested in instruments involving treatment of the human body: hospital beds, operating tables, gynaecology couches, wheelchairs, dentist's chairs and straitjackets, presented as though they were products in a sales catalogue. The artist is clearly preoccupied with theories concerning society's methods of exercising power and making people anonymous.

From the Dead to the Living Starting in the mid-1990s, the human body became the main focus of Julie Roberts' art. The dead body. The artist painted a whole series of Jack the Ripper's victims. She painted death masks, dead artists, murders and suicides. After the start of the new millennium, Julie Roberts once again changed her motifs. She is now interested in people living in strained circumstances. She portrays children from orphanages and needy families, and she examines the possibilities that exist for women – or rather the lack of such.

Representative Examples of Roberts' Work The exhibition In Retro moves through all of Julie Roberts' unique themes. In collaboration with the artist, Kunsthallen Brandts has selected 60 works that demonstrate Julie Roberts's fascinating range and offers the visitor a rare chance to see an exhibition of works by one of the most original painters in contemporary European art.

Opening The exhibition will open on Thursday, 18 September, at 5 p.m. Pat Fischer, director of the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh, will deliver the opening speech. In connection with the exhibition, Kunsthallen Brandts will publish a 120-page catalogue featuring essays by Francis McKnee and Lisbeth Bonde. The exhibition will be open to the public from 19 September through 31 December 2008.

Julie Roberts
In Retro