Mary Kelly was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, US, in 1941 and lives in the present day in Los Angeles. She has performed a elementary function within the historical past and ongoing improvement of conceptual and feminist artwork, with works which have explored sexuality and girls’s expertise, wider problems with identification, the spectacle and trauma of conflict, and the character of reminiscence in relation to historical past and geopolitics.
Set up view of Mary Kelly’s We do not need to set the world on fireplace at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, 2025 Courtesy the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London. Picture: Mark Blower
Knowledgeable by a spread of thought, together with crucial principle, psychoanalysis and literature, her work takes various bodily types, however usually manifests in multimedia installations, involving a wealthy materiality that features textual content and paperwork, pictures and printmaking, sculpture, sound and movie.
Set up view of Mary Kelly’s Put up-Partum Doc: Documentation III Analysed Markings and Diary-perspective Schema (1975) at Generali Basis, Vienna Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London
She displays on her groundbreaking tasks like Put up-Partum Doc (1973-77) and Interim (1984-89), and the way in which that her use of autobiography has shifted in her work over time. She discusses the dramatic shift in her life following her transfer to Beirut within the Sixties and the occasions of Might 1968. She remembers the second she encountered Franz Kline’s work aged 15 and the way it confirmed a lifelong pursuit of non-figurative work.
Mary Kelly’s Interim Half 1: Corpus Menacé (1 of 5 sections) (1984-85) Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London
She displays on her function inside Conceptualism and her esteem for her friends in that motion. She discusses the significance of writers as various as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Genet, William Carlos Williams and Jacques Lacan. Plus, she provides perception into her life within the studio and solutions our ordinary questions, together with a shifting reply to the last word query: what’s artwork for?
Mary Kelly: We don’t need to set the world on fireplace, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, till 17 January 2026
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the humanities and tradition platform. Bloomberg Connects presents entry to an enormous vary of worldwide cultural organisations by means of a single click on, with new guides being added usually. They embody a variety of museums the world over which have had main shows of Mary Kelly’s work, from the Whitney Museum of American Artwork in New York to Tate Britain and the Institute of Up to date Arts in London and Fruitmarket in Edinburgh. Within the Fruitmarket information, you’ll find in-depth options on the exhibition Jaune Fast-to-See Smith: Wilding, the primary posthumous exhibition in a public gallery or museum of the work of the Native American artist, activist, educator and curator, which continues till 1 February 2026. The information has an audio information to the exhibition, in addition to options on six main works within the present, wherein the artist’s son Neal Ambrose-Smith explores Indigenous tradition and making, and the distinctive voice that Jaune Fast-to-See Smith delivered to her material and supplies.
