Abigail Lane

Abigail Lane is an adept of loosely stitched narratives and the inspiration for her work is drawn from a wide range of personal interests. Subjects such as natural and medical history, games, magic, the circus and various miscellaneous events inform her installations, which are made up of a variety of elements related to each-other in convoluted ways and that exude an atmosphere of the uncanny and display a dark sense of humor.
Her installations are often made up of scenes haunted by bodies, generally represented as figurative fragments, resembling sacred relics, medically documented amputations, prostheses or even morbidly crime scenes.
In her embroidered works, numerous threads are left to dangle. As with the rest of her work, where nothing seems permanent or definitive, everything is captured in a state of transition, caught in flux, blood flowing from wounds, in depictions of the fragility of life itself. The words embroidered on these works constitute disillusioned and mournful comments or statements such as “Close the Sky”, “The End” or “Exit”, that are reminiscent of the 19th century British Gothic movement.

Born in Cornwall in 1967, Abigail Lane studied fine arts at Goldsmiths College, where she played an important role in the exhibition Freeze, organized in 1988 by Damien Hirst and considered as marking the beginning of the Young British Artists movement, of which Lane is seen as a key figure. In a career spanning over 30 years, she has been exhibited on numerous occasions in the UK (the ICA, Whitechapel Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Hayward Gallery…) as well as across the whole of Europe (Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Lyon Biennale, the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, Portikus in Frankfurt, the Bonnefanten Museum in Maaastricht, the CAN in Neuchâtel, etc.) and in the USA (the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York…). She lives and works in Suffolk since 2007.