Laura Owens

Spotlight

The Spotlight exhibition series includes a new or never-before-exhibited artwork accompanied by a commissioned piece of writing. It is the hope of this series to create focused and thoughtful dialogues between the visual arts and critics, poets, scholars, etc. In this iteration, the Spotlight features Laura Owens’s Untitled, 2023, with a text by curator and art historian Mark Godfrey.

Laura Owens (b. 1970, Euclid, OH) is an artist living and working in Los Angles, CA. Owens earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, in 1992. She earned her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, in 1994. Recent solo exhibitions include Laura Owens, Valerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Germany (2022); Laura Owens: Rerun, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio (2021); Laura Owens & Vincent van Gogh, Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles, France (2021); Laura Owens, House of Gaga, Mexico City, Mexico (2020); and Books and Tables, Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2019). Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX (2023); Together in Time: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Capturing the Moment, Tate Modern, London, UK (2023); Christian Sveaas Art Foundation: The Travel Bureau, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2022); Repeater, Sadie Coles HQ, London, UK (2022); Courage before Expectation, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2022); and Drawing Together: 201 Exquisite Corpses, Museum Im Ballpark, Kriens, Switzerland (2022). Owens forms a part of numerous public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; among others.

Mark Godrey (b. 1973) is a curator and art historian living and working in London, United Kingdom. Godfrey was a Lecturer in History and Theory of Art at the Slade School of Fine Art (London) from 2002–2007 before joining Tate Modern (London) as Senior Curator from 2007-2021. There, he organized several major exhibitions, including Olafur Eliasson: In real life (2019–20); Soul of a Nation (2017); Gerhard Richter: Panorama (2011–12); and Roni Horn AKA Roni Horn (2009). Godfrey has independently curated exhibitions by Nicole Eisenman, David Hammons, Jacqueline Humphries, Laura Owens, R.H. Quaytman, Christopher Williams, among others. His writing has been featured widely in contemporary art publications, catalogues, and journals; he recently co-edited The Soul of a Nation Reader (Gregeory R. Miller & Co, 2021). Godfrey, alongside Kerryn Greenberg, former head of international collection exhibitions at Tate, and Rudi Minto de Wijs, who worked in the institution’s marketing department and served as co-chair of its Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) network, founded New Curators, a paid one-year curatorial training program hosted by South London Gallery for individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds.