Jackie Nickerson
Salvage: The title alludes to the reused and recycled content of Jackie Nickerson's 2020 series of studio portraits that explore the homogeneity of portraiture - balance, similarity, proportions, size - that characterise the genre. With her photographic examination of old masters and modern paintings, Nickerson (* 1960) illuminates the way in which artists over centuries interpret the observed world in their own way by using common visual techniques and means of expression in different media.
Jackie Nickerson began photographing Zimbabwean farm workers in 1996 as a way to change the perception that those who work in African agriculture are disempowered, unmodern people. The resulting series, ‘Farm’, focused on the unique and beautiful clothing the workers made for themselves, and by doing so highlighted the worker’s identity, individuality, and ultimately their modernism. This was published by Jonathan Cape in September 2002. (German edition, Leben Mit Der Erde, published by Frederking and Thaler, 2002; French edition, Une Autre Afrique, published by Flammarion, 2002.
Nickerson is an American born British artist who lives and works between London and rural Ireland. Her work is held in many important private and public collections and has been exhibited in venues which include the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, Salzburg; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; National Portrait Gallery, London; Mudam Musee d’Art Moderne, Luxembourg; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; Sunderland Museum, UK; Harn Museum, Gainesville; Vatican Museums, Rome; Benaki Museum, Athens Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. She is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.