Catherine Yass

Catherine Yass is best known for her distinctive photographic and film-based work. The artist frequently employs empty spaces as images in and of themselves–which she perceives as more disorientating when de-populated.

Yass has collaborated with Vital Arts on several occasions, including an Artist –in- Residency project in 2013, where the artist researched the demolition of some of the superannuated buildings at the Royal London, following the redevelopment of the hospital site. She eventually focused on the Grade II-listed Georgian building (famous for housing Joseph Merrick, known as the “Elephant Man”) and roamed the deserted wards and corridors before it underwent renovation work as part of Tower Hamlet’s new Civic Centre. Yass filmed inside the building, which has occupied its Whitechapel site for over 250 years.

Yass’s  work frequently employs empty spaces as images in and of themselves–which she perceives as more disorientating when de-populated. Her resulting film, ‘Royal London’, captures some the building in 2018 in a state of flux, and it cuts between ethereal images of the site’s central, spiral staircase and scenes from demolition work, filmed from below.

The film was exhibited in the group show Living with Buildings: Health and Architecture at the Wellcome Collection, London in 2018.

For the project #100NHSRooms, Yass has donated the work ‘Royal London, (stairwell)’ 2013, an image of the spiral staircase from the unoccupied site, taken during her residency. In order to create this work, she has overlaid the negative and the positive from the original photograph and realised the image as a print.

Catherine Yass, ‘Royal London (stairwell)’, 2013, inkjet print, supported by Wellcome Trust ©Catherine Yass

Catherine Yass lives and works in London and received a BA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1986 and a Masters degree in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2002, and has exhibited internationally with shows including: Lighthouse, Alison Jacques Gallery, London, 2012; a mid-career retrospective at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, 2011; The China Series, Stedelijk-Hertogenbosch Museum, The Netherlands, 2009; and Descent, St Louis Art Museum, 2009. Her work features in a number of important collections worldwide including Tate, London; Arts Council of England, The British Council and the Government Art Collection.