Jane South
Biography
Born 1965, Manchester, United Kingdom
Lives and works in New York, NY
Jane South’s work delves into the formal in-between in new and sophisticated ways. Her characteristic architectural forms and pseudo-industrial material are condensed. The past emphasis on three-dimensionality, accentuated by boxes and cages, are flattened into grids and swaths of subtle tones. Her signature paper and balsa wood constructs are replaced by tectonic assemblages of softer materials -canvas, tarp, packing foam, and thread. Once tight and opaque, the application of color is now painterly and reductive. By flattening the shapes and softening the edges, South's new work offer, not just one, but a profusion of forms and images.
Born in Manchester, England, Jane South worked in experimental theater before moving to the United States in 1989. She has a BFA in Theater from Central St. Martins, London, UK, and an MFA in Painting & Sculpture from UNC Greensboro.
Solo exhibitions include Shifting Structures: Survey (2019), Mills Gallery, Central College, Pella, IA; Raked (2014), Spencer Brownstone Gallery, NY; Floor/Ceiling (2013), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT; Box (2011), Knoxville Museum of Art, TN and Shifting Structures: Stacks (2010), the New York Public Library, NY.
Selected group exhibitions include the Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts at the American Academy of Arts & Letters, NY, SLASH: Paper Under the Knife, Museum of Arts & Design (MAD), NY; Burgeoning Geometries: Constructed Abstractions, Whitney Museum of American Art, Altria; The Drawing Center, NY; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA and the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD.
Southʼs work has been reviewed in The New York Times, the LA Times, Artforum, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, New York Magazine, Frieze, ArtNews, NY Arts Magazine, and The New Yorker. She is a contributor to the book “The Artist as Cultural Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life” (editor: Sharon Louden).
Grants and residencies include the Guggenheim Fellowship (2021); Brown/RISD Mellon Foundation Fellowship (2015); Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2009); Dora Maar House, Menérbes, France (2010); Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France (2010); Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2001 & 2008); New York Foundation for the Arts (2007); Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Italy (2008); MacDowell Colony, NH (2002 & 2004); Yaddo, NY (2001 & 2002). In 2018 South was elected to the National Academy of Design.
Jane South is currently Chair of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute.