Phoebe Unwin (b. 1979)

Executed in 2013, Phoebe Unwin’s monumental Bed exemplifies the artist’s exploration of the relationship between figuration and abstraction. Unlike her paintings, many of which are grounded in elusive memories and shifting psychological states, Bed belongs to a group of works which directly represent flat material surfaces, including Brick Wall of 2011 and her opened and closed Curtains of 2013. Rather than representing windows onto a world beyond, these works demarcate real physical spaces, executed on vast scales and with densely patterned – almost sculptural – surfaces.

Reviewing the artist’s 2013 exhibition at Wilkinson Gallery, Frieze Magazine described how ‘The textured surfaces – layered with acrylic, glassine paper, pastel and Indian ink – hark back to a history of painters jostling to flaunt skill through their painstaking execution of fabric, while the monochromatic designs reference Op Art, a movement fixated with the fallibility of vision’ (E. Nairne, ‘Phoebe Unwin’, Frieze Magazine, Issue 159, November-December 2013). At the same time, the present work’s flatbed orientation invites comparison with Robert Rauschenberg’s seminal Bed of 1955 (Museum of Modern Art, New York), which, for the first time in art history, evoked a horizontal rather than an upright vantage point. Born in Cambridge in 1979, Unwin first achieved significant public recognition in 2007, following the success of her first museum exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery that year. In 2010, one of her works was acquired by Tate, London.