About the work
Michaela Yearwood-Dan has created All that glitters ain’t gold, 2021 in an edition of 30, especially for Whitechapel Gallery to accompany the exhibition Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy, 19 May – 29 Aug 2021.
Responding to the work of Eileen Agar, Yearwood-Dan looks for similarities in their shared use of collage and layering, landing on the colour blue and botanical influences within a personalised visual narrative. For Yearwood-Dan, blue feels very present in Agar’s work, often as a reference to the sea.
Yearwood-Dan employs gold leaf to allude to Agar’s use of found objects, noticing how Agar is drawn to smaller found objects rather than those used in larger scale assemblages associated with prominent, often male, surrealists. This magpie eye doesn't distinguish between the precious and everyday, tin foil or Rolex watch, creating small glimmers of sectioned out waves.
Yearwood-Dan often titles works as she speaks, with the colloquial and vernacular of south London, All that glitters ain’t gold points to influences from Rap and Hip Hop.
About the artist
Michaela Yearwood-Dan, (b.London in 1994), lives and works in London. Working predominantly with painting and collage, she explores themes of class, culture, race, gender, nature and botanicals. Other themes include love, loss and reflection all whilst remaining playful, such as ‘Love letters to Siri’ (2018), a series of paintings which feature text from emotionally driven notes written in the artist's phone to herself, to which for Yearwood-Dan this edition relates. Yearwood-Dan mixes everyday ‘found’ subject matter from contemporary life with consistent imagery of botany and plant life, bringing to mind processes of dispersal, growth and diaspora.
Selected exhibitions
Recent solo exhibitions include After Euphoria, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (2019), One English Pound, Sarabande: The Lee Alexander McQueen foundation, London, UK (2019). Recent group shows include In Situ, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, (2021), Ancient Deities, Arusha Gallery, Scotland, (2020), No Time Like the Present, Public Gallery, (2020), Clay TM, T.J. Boulting, London, (2020), The Green Fuse, Frestonian Gallery, London, UK, (2020), No Time Like the Present, Public Gallery, London, UK, (2020), Begin Again, Guts Gallery, London, UK, (2020), Artists Are The New Athletes, The Edit Gallery, Limassol, Cyprus, (2019), Looking for validation, Limbo Gallery, Margate, UKDATEGLE: Full English, Platform Southwark, London, UK, (2019), 21st Century Women, Unit Gallery, Mayfair, London, UK, (2018), Oh She does like to be beside the Sea Side, Spanish City, Whitley Bay, Newcastle, UK, (2018), Group Show, Sarabande: The Lee Alexander McQueen foundation, London, UK, (2018), After Cesaire/Morden Tropiques, The Platform Southwark, London, UK, (2018), Hot Milk, Post Institute, Brixton, London, UK, (2018), Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Block336, Brixton, London, UK, (2018), Bloomberg New Contemporaries, BALTIC Gateshead and Baltic 39 Newcastle, UK, (2017)
