Janice Kerbel
Janice Kerbel (b. 1969, Toronto; lives/works: London, England) has been recognized internationally since the 1990s for work that shapeshifts in her constant search for ways to inhabit and expand existing languages and forms. Synchronized swimming (Sink, 2018), music composition (DOUG, 2014), and theatre lighting (Kill the Workers!, 2011), are examples of formats that Kerbel has taken up in recent years, in addition to audio recordings, performance, and printed matter. In Bank Job, 1999, Kerbel spent a year and a half posing as an architecture student surveying a London bank; she published the information she gathered in that time period as 15 Lombard St., 2000, a detailed manual–titled with the bank’s address–for how to rob it. In 2014, The Common Guild commissioned DOUG, an operatic piece in the form of 9 songs for 6 voices, for which Kerbel was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize. In this cacophonous performance, the title's fictional character experiences nine, imagined catastrophes. Kerbel translated that project into a series called Score, 2015, a suite of silkscreen prints that considers ways of scoring music through typography instead of conventional, musical notation.
Kerbel received an MFA from Goldsmith’s College, University of London and a BFA from Emily Carr College of Art in Vancouver. She has also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and has a BA (honors) from the University of Western Ontario. Kerbel is currently Professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College. She was a nominee for the 2015 Turner Prize and, in 2010, she received an Award for Artists from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, London, UK.
Recent solo exhibitions include greengrassi, London (2023); Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2022); Notes from Sink / A routine for 24 women, at The Common Guild, Glasgow (2018), and a live performance of Sink organized by The Common Guild at The Western Baths Club in Glasgow. Significant solo exhibitions have also been held at Fundaçao de Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2017); Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto (2013); Arts Club of Chicago (2012); Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Canada (2012), Chisenhale Gallery, London (2011), and Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2011); Tate Britain, London (2010); greengrassi, London (2009); European Kunsthalle, Cologne (2008). Nick Silver Can’t Sleep was commissioned by Artangel in 2006 with BBC Radio 3 and was performed live at Tate Britain in 2007.
Kerbel’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including Southbank Centre, London (2022); Liverpool Biennial (2018); Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams (2017); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany (2017); V-A-C Foundation, Venice (2017); La Biennale de Montréal (2016); Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, Italy (2016); Tramway, Glasgow (2015); Elevated, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2014); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013); Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2012); Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2012); CCS Bard Galleries, Annandale-on-Hudson, USA (2012); Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2011); Drawing Room, London (2010); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2010); Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (2006).