Since garnering acclaim in the 1990s for a series of subtle architectural interventions in gallery spaces, conceptual artist Bethan Huws has been altering public and private sites, staging performances, and producing films, sculptures, watercolors, and mixed-media works that play with viewers’ perception. Mining her memories and her Welsh identity, as well as the practice of Marcel Duchamp, Huws posits that perception and understanding are premised on a process of translation; in her work, she aims to make this process apparent. By stenciling “FALSE TEETH” onto the windows of a seaside shelter, for example, she effectively transforms its windowpanes into a set of false teeth through the power of suggestion and language. In Untitled (Read, red. . .) (2008), she spells out the words “read” and “red,” illustrating how their meaning shifts and overlaps depending upon how they are perceived.
- Established
- Represented by industry leading galleries.
- Collected by a major museum
- Tate
- 2020
- Le Arti 1964-2020 | The Practice of Drawing, Vistamare/Vistamarestudio
- 2016
- Bethan Huws Culture, Language & Thought, Kolumba KunstmuseumOrizzonti, Vistamare/Vistamarestudio
Untitled (Less is not...), 2012-2016
Since garnering acclaim in the 1990s for a series of subtle architectural interventions in gallery spaces, conceptual artist Bethan Huws has been altering public and private sites, staging performances, and producing films, sculptures, watercolors, and mixed-media works that play with viewers’ perception. Mining her memories and her Welsh identity, as well as the practice of Marcel Duchamp, Huws posits that perception and understanding are premised on a process of translation; in her work, she aims to make this process apparent. By stenciling “FALSE TEETH” onto the windows of a seaside shelter, for example, she effectively transforms its windowpanes into a set of false teeth through the power of suggestion and language. In Untitled (Read, red. . .) (2008), she spells out the words “read” and “red,” illustrating how their meaning shifts and overlaps depending upon how they are perceived.
- Established
- Represented by industry leading galleries.
- Collected by a major museum
- Tate