Jonathan Owen / United Kingdom

England born 1973, works in Scotland 1995–

Jonathan Owen transforms existing objects, images and works of art. As part of the NGV Triennial Owen presents Untitled, 2016, the artist’s largest and only life-size work to date, is a modified nineteenth-century marble statue of a nymph. Owen carved away sections of the figure’s torso dramatically to reveal a series of interlocking chain forms. Details of the original sculptor and title remain undisclosed to the viewer to deliberately complicate authorship and interpretation of the new work. The sculpture is recognisable as a figure, but semi-detached from itself, drawing attention to the material it is made from.

BIO

Owen lives and works in Edinburgh. In 2002 he participated in New: Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary British Art at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, and in 2014 was included in Art Basel, Miami and Hong Kong. In 2016 Owen exhibited at Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerala, completed a public commission for the Edinburgh Art Festival and participated in Frieze Art Fair, London, and the Armory Show, New York.