Dorich House Museum

ON DISPLAY | KATRIN PLAVčAK, IS SHE A LADY? (2015)

UNTIL MAY 2019

Accompanying Katrin Plavčak’s first UK solo exhibition Haus der Lose / House of Lots at Kingston University’s Stanley Picker Gallery, Dorich House Museum is delighted to display Plavčak’s painting Is She a Lady? (2015) – a fictional group portrait of European women painters of the twentieth century together with the philosopher and women’s rights campaigner Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, the writer Mary Shelley, at The Cock Tavern, a pub near to where Wollstonecraft lived in London. Plavčak is masterful in her advocacy of women artists, especially painters, whose history, rediscovery and recognition is a focus for her own paintings and beyond. With the accuracy and lightness of her brushstrokes and her feeling for the physiognomic characteristics of these personalities, Plavčak creates a highly emotional and artistically inspiring tribute to her predecessors, placing these women in the spotlight. Since 2014, together with the artists Caro Bittermann and Claudia Zweifel, she has been running a website with monographic presentations of women painters who have been dead for at least seventy years. Special thanks to Marlene Haring & Anthony Auerbach, London, for the generous loan.

Katrin Plavčak (b.1970) is an Austrian painter and musician based in Vienna. She studied painting with Sue Williams at The Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, and holds a Diploma from The Social Academy, Vienna. Plavčak has shown at many international galleries and institutions including: the Secession Vienna; Kunsthalle Wien; Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle, Berlin; Kunsthalle Basel; Galerie Mezzanin; Geneva; Marc LeBlanc Gallery, Chicago; Dispari & Dispari, Berlin & Reggio Emilia. From 2012-14 she formed part of the feminist artist group ff and, together with Caro Bittermann and Claudia Zweifel, runs the website The History of Painting Revisited; a growing archive of female painters from history. Plavčak performs with M.O.G, a sewing machine improvistation duo with Swedish artist Ulrika Segerberg, and founded the band Chicken in 2018 with Nicholas Hoffman (vocals, bass) and Hari Ganglberger (drums), Katrin Plavčak (vocals, guitar). Chicken are currently recording their debut album in collaboration with the Visconti Studio at Kingston University.

Haus der Lose / House of Lots is on display at the Stanley Picker Gallery from 17 January until 6 April 2019