no big deal thing

Lily van der Stokker is a Dutch artist based in Amsterdam and New York. Most often taking the form of elaborate and decorative wall drawings, her pieces have a child-like innocence and an adolescent naivety. They deal in a disarmingly unashamed and exuberant way with ideas of beauty, love, relationships, family and the everyday. Despite, or perhaps because of, their apparent simplicity, van der Stokker’s works are often challenging and she has come to be seen as an increasingly important artist in the growing discourse of post-feminist practice. This show will be the largest exhibition of her work to date in the UK.

Van der Stokker plays on stereotypical femininity, developing a style she calls ‘nonshouting feminism’ to explore ideas that seem to be forbidden in art, especially the decorative, the sentimental and the ‘nice’. Her demure medium: coloured-pencil drawings on A4 paper, use the palette of baby clothes and concern the gap between the art world and the creativity of everybody else. At Tate St Ives, van der Stokker will present a series of wall drawings, furniture works and framed drawings on paper in the spectacular, curved, sea-facing galleries.

Born in 1954, her work found prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s as she began exhibiting in important exhibitions and institutions across the world including the Pompidou Centre, Paris and Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis.