"The Yellow Hammer", conceptual drawing, bird, nuclear mutation, contemporary

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Yelena Popova
"The Yellow Hammer", conceptual drawing, bird, nuclear mutation, contemporary
2012

About the Item

"The Yellow Hammer" is a work executed with watercolor on an offset print of a British, vintage bird identification book that has been used by Yelena Popova. For the series of these works she took the book apart and added – in watercolor – mutations to the birds that were identified in the book. Then, the watercolors on paper were framed. On the left side the identification, on the right side the manipulated images that made out of the original birds birds with mutations. While the frame measures 30 x 36.8 cm, each sheet of the book measures 16.5 x 11 cm. But why did Yelena Popova do so? While she lives and works since many years in Nottingham (UK) and while she is (now) a British artist, she was born in 1978 in the USSR. Before she studied art at the prestigious Royal College in London (between 2009-2011), where she graduated with the Master Degree in 2011, she had studied Set Design and Technology at the Theater School, Moscow (1995-2000), and received a Postgraduate Diploma at Central Saint Martins in London (2007). Her background as an artist who was born behind the so-called Iron Curtain, when Socialism was still very much alive and when the world had not even thought about Perestroika and Glasnost, explains her interest in political topics and in a practice of art that has relevance (or at least a relation) to issues that concern our societies. This attitude is the basis for the understanding not only of her videos or computer-installations, but also of her abstract painting-installations, and obviously also of her series with the mutated birds. These are related to a heavy nuclear accident that happened in her hometown Ozyersk in 1957, many years before she was born in 1978. Ozyersk was one of the secretive USSR-cities where nuclear energy and weapons were studied and produced. Popova’s father was one of the researcher in this field. And thus she was, as an artist, interested in it. Around the time when she was growing up, the accident became known worldwide due to researches on the (mutated) animals in the region. Yelena Popova, who shot two artist-documentaries that dealt with the history of her hometown, created the mutated-bird-series as a reminder of that accident and of how we, as human beings, treat our world. Yelena Popova was a ‘Visiting Professor at Helsinki Fine Art Academy’ in 2017-18. She has enjoyed several prestigious residencies in the last couple of years, like – for instance - at Girton College, University of Cambridge. And she enjoys to be constantly shown in institutional solo-exhibitions, such as “The Scholarstones Project“ in Manchester’s Holden Gallery (2020), „Townlets“ in Wakefield’s The Art House (2018), „Elements“ in Cambridges Girton College, University of Cambridge (2017), „After Image“ in Nottingham’s Nottingham Contemporary (2016), „Unsensed“ in Newcastle’s Hatton Gallery, or „Recite a Painting“ in Warwickshire’s Upton House, National Trust, or in Basel’s Kunst Raum Riehen (2013). Her works have been collected by important public and private collections, such as - The Arts Council Collection, London - Government Art Collection, London - the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur in Münster, Germany - the New Hall Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge - Notthingham Castle Collection, Nottingham - Outset Purchase Prize, RCA Permanent Art Collection, London - the Saatchi-collection - the Zabludowicz Collection, London

Creator:
Yelena Popova (1978)
Creation Year:
2012
Dimensions:
Height: 11.82 in (30 cm)Width: 14.49 in (36.8 cm)
Medium:
Paper,Watercolor,Offset
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
21st Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Cologne, DE
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU134425691511