Jane Simpson: Fresh Fresher

Born in London in 1965, Jane Simpson studied at the Chelsea School of Art, London and the Royal Academy Schools, London. Following her graduation in 1993, she participated in various international group exhibitions including 'Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away' curated by Damien Hirst for the Serpentine Gallery, London and the infamous 'Sensation: Young British Artists' from the Saatchi Collection' at the Royal Academy, London. In 1999 she was selected IASPIS Fellow to Goteborg, Sweden and Artist in Residence by the Shoreditch Town Hall Trust, London. She has had recent solo exhibitions at the Norrtalje Konsthall, Sweden, Asprey Jasques, London, the Goteborgs Konstmuseum, One in the Other, London, the Galeria Javier Lopez, Madrid, Gagosian Gallery, London, and the Sandra Gering Gallery, New York. Most recent group shows include Valencia Bienale, 2005; 'kissingcousins' curated by Jane Simpson and Sarah Staton, 2007, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; 'Weather Report (Art and Climate Change)', 2007, Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno Canary Islands. Forthcoming shows include 'My bloody inheritance and other tales' at Gering & Lopez, New York.

Fresh Fresher is a monograph on the work of British artist Jane Simpson. It is a celebration of her career since 1992 when, while still a student, she first experimented with the use of ice and her now trademark refrigeration technique. Rather than following a strict chronology, the book surveys Simpson's work thematically, punctuated by three critical texts. An introduction by Norman Rosenthal and essays by Ulrike Groos, Director, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Mark Godfrey, Slade School of Art, place the artist's work in a broader art historical context. By positioning the pieces in abstract perspectives of vivid colour, the book's design accentuates the pastel tones and shades that, as in her rubber casts of kitchen utensils or photographs of Tupperware, Simpson characteristically uses in her work. Fresh Fresher takes its title from Simpson's sculpture of a pair of vases with roses in different stages of bloom, a work she based on two of Giorgio Morandi's paintings. A variation on the classical tradition of still life, this piece (2000) exemplifies the underlying themes invariably present in the artist's work to date: the process of appropriation and transformation, and the dialectics of decay and renewal.