Are Germans the World's Best Collectors? A Q&A
Corin Sworn
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Glasgow-based artist Corin Sworn is recognized for her thoughtful installations, drawings, and films, through which she examines the dynamics of human-object relationships. In particular, Sworn often seeks to expose and explore the narratives, cultural importance, and personal significance tied to things. She often combines images with spoken audio tracks, as well as film with objects, so as to not only create impactful viewing experiences, but to also artfully intertwine history, fiction, and differing perspectives.
In 2013, Sworn represented Scotland at the 55th Venice Biennale. Her contribution to the national pavilion was a film titled The Foxes that revolved around a collection of old slides belonging to her anthropologist father, who took them while in Peru during the 1970s. Interested in layering the present and the past, Sworn presented a personal soundtrack—it highlighted a conversation between the artist and her father regarding the slides—as an accompaniment to more recent video footage from a 2013 trip to Peru. Typical of her work, The Foxes thus poignantly addressed themes of memory, the passage of time, oral history, personal experience, recording, imaging, landscapes, and place.
Sworn’s exhibition history includes solo shows at the London Film Festival, the Timespan Museum and Arts Centre in Helmsdale, …
Glasgow-based artist Corin Sworn is recognized for her thoughtful installations, drawings, and films, through which she examines the dynamics of human-object relationships. In particular, Sworn often seeks to expose and explore the narratives, cultural importance, and personal significance tied to things. She often combines images with spoken audio tracks, as well as film with objects, so as to not only create impactful viewing experiences, but to also artfully intertwine history, fiction, and differing perspectives.
In 2013, Sworn represented Scotland at the 55th Venice Biennale. Her contribution to the national pavilion was a film titled The Foxes that revolved around a collection of old slides belonging to her anthropologist father, who took them while in Peru during the 1970s. Interested in layering the present and the past, Sworn presented a personal soundtrack—it highlighted a conversation between the artist and her father regarding the slides—as an accompaniment to more recent video footage from a 2013 trip to Peru. Typical of her work, The Foxes thus poignantly addressed themes of memory, the passage of time, oral history, personal experience, recording, imaging, landscapes, and place.
Sworn’s exhibition history includes solo shows at the London Film Festival, the Timespan Museum and Arts Centre in Helmsdale, Scotland, Tate Britain, Glasgow’s Tramway, the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, EASTinternational in Norwich, England, Kunsthalle Basel, and New York’s Participant Inc. In addition to the 55th Venice Biennale, Sworn has also been included in group exhibitions at CEAAC in Strasbourg, Intermedia in Glasgow, and London’s LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images. Sworn is nominated for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2013-2015.
Born 1977
Hometown London, England
Lives and Works Glasgow, Scotland
Education
MFA, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, Scotland, 2009
BFA, Integrated Media, Emily Carr Institute of Arts and Design, Vancouver, Canada, 2002
Art and Design Program, Central St. Martins College, London, England, 2001
BA Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 1999
Works Available for Purchase
No works
