Biography

English sisters Jane and Louise Wilson are best known for film and video installations where architectural settings are used to investigate issues of power, control and collective memory.

Their atmospheric and theatrical works are often realised as split-screen film environments where the projected images are suspended at uneasy angles forcing viewers to both physically negotiate the exhibition space while navigating the unfolding narrative of the work itself.

For the 9th Sharjah Biennial they presented Spiteful of Dream (2008) where the stories of Bosnian and Herzegovina refugees are heard over filmed footage from Rolls-Royce and Bombardier factories.  The factories are located in Derby near one of the UK's main processing centres for refugees and asylum seekers.

The Wilsons have been working together since 1992 and were shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999. They have had solo presentations at Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2010), New Art Gallery Walsall, UK (2007), the Bergen Art Museum, Norway (2004), de Appel, Netherlands (2004), the MIT List Visual Arts Centre Cambridge, USA (2000) and the Serpentine Gallery, London (1999). Group exhibitions include those at Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2010), the British Film Institute Gallery, London (2009), the Sharjah Biennial (2009), Museum of Contemporary Art, Val-de-Marne, France (2008), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006), Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (2006), and Guggenheim Bilbao (2003-04). Their work is found in public collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Tate, London, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Jane Wilson recieved a BA in Fine Art from Newcastle Polytechnic (1989) and Louise  Wilson recieved a BA in Fine Art from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee (1989).  Both went on to graduate with an MFA from Goldsmiths College of Art, London in 1992. They were recipients of the 1993 Barclays Young Artist Award and a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Berliner Kunstlerprogramm award in 1996. Jane and Louise Wilson were born in 1967 in Newcastle, England and have worked and exhibited together throughout their careers.

October 2010