Autograph is loaning 3 works from our collection by Ingrid Pollard to Barbican Art Gallery for the exhibition RE/SISTERS.
Featuring around 50 international women and gender non-conforming artists, RE/SISTERS explores the relationship between gender and ecology, highlighting the systemic links between the oppression of women and the degradation of the planet.
Pollard is one of the leading figures in contemporary British art. She is renowned for using portrait and landscape photography to question our relationship with the natural world and to interrogate social constructs such as Britishness, race, sexuality and identity. Working across a variety of techniques from photography, printmaking, drawing and installation to artists’ books, video and audio, Pollard combines meticulous research and experimental processes to make art that is at once deeply personal and socially resonant.
The works Autograph were loaning are all from our 2017 commission The Valentine Days by the artist. Created in response to the archival photographs on display in Autograph's exhibition Making Jamaica: Photography from the 1890s, we invited Pollard to apply her signature hand-tinting technique to large-scale modern prints created from scans of 19th century postcards of Jamaica.
Ingrid Pollard was born in Georgetown, Guyana. In the 1980s she was part of a constituency of British artists who championed black creative practice, showcasing her work in group exhibitions such as The Thin Black Line at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1985), D-Max (1987) and Self-Evident (1995), both at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.
In 2007, Pollard was awarded the Leverhulme Fellowship Award. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and received her doctorate-by-publication from the University of Westminster in 2016. She was a recipient of the BALTIC Artist Award in 2018, and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Artists in 2020.
Pollard's work is represented in the collections of Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cartwright Hall, Bradford, and Arts Council England.
Banner image: Ingrid Pollard, The Valentine Days #2 [detail], commissioned by Autograph.
Works on loan: All images © and courtesy of Ingrid Pollard / The Caribbean Photo Archive / Autograph, London. 1) Ingrid Pollard, The Valentine Days #5, commissioned by Autograph. 2) Ingrid Pollard, The Valentine Days #3, commissioned by Autograph. 1) Ingrid Pollard, The Valentine Days #2, commissioned by Autograph.
Autograph is a place to see things differently. Since 1988, we have championed photography that explores issues of race, identity, representation, human rights and social justice, sharing how photographs reflect lived experiences and shape our understanding of ourselves and others.