Thérèse Oulton

This website is an archive of selected images and texts on the artist, Thérèse Oulton. You can browse exhibitions or bodies of work, read essays and texts on and by the artist. Because of the number of works over several decades, the representation of each period is necessarily limited. In addition you can browse an extensive bibliography and exhibitions list.


Thérèse Oulton, born 1953 followed her student years at university, St Martin’s, and the RCA, with a Boise Scholarship spent in Italy.

Portrait of Therese Oulton, 1990

1990

On her return, her ground-breaking and controversial exhibition of large scale oil paintings, Fools’ Gold at Gimpel Fils took a critical position towards both abstraction and figuration, challenging the prevailing orthodoxies of both, the resulting explosive reception of which didn’t deter the work from its hermetic explorations in the following decades.

The works have been shown internationally in one-person exhibitions at Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, and Marlborough, London.

Early on nominated for the Turner Prize, her work is to be found in major museums and collections worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum, New York, Tate Modern, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, British Museum, V&A and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne amongst others.

Although mainly based in London, she has lived for several years in Vienna, Paris, New York, and at present lives in London and Nice.

Although always traumatised by the subject, for the duration of the period culminating in the exhibition, Territory, 2010, these paintings are imbued with the anxiety of the decaying state of the landscape.
The catalogue introduction by the artist attempts to explicate this seeming aberration from her central concerns.

The most recent work on this website, Through a Narrow Aperture, 2020, evidences the particularity of this current pandemic.