Annette Lemieux first garnered attention on the newly global art scene of the 1980s. Since that time she has continued to produce work that grows in depth and resonance, proving herself an artist of lasting significance. Lemieux’s early use of traditional techniques painting, printing, casting, and photography expanded to include found materials laden with cultural meanings and evocative of personal memories. Whatever the material, Lemieux masters and invents techniques and processes that correlate with states of mind. Major themes she returns to within our shifting political and cultural climate include the horror of war, the nature of time, the elusive truth of memory, the nature of ideas and art-making, and the relationship between personal experience and cultural history.
This mid-career retrospective exhibition surveys Lemieux’s work over the past 25 years, tracing themes such as the relationship between personal memory and cultural history, content and medium, and text as image. The illustrated exhibition catalogue includes essays by exhibition curators Lelia Amalfitano and Judith Hoos Fox and guest essayists: critic Rosetta Brooks, cultural theorist Peggy Phelan, and critic and scholar Robert Pincus-Witten.
The exhibition was organized by Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Major funding was provided by Rosann and Richard Noel with additional sponsorship by Fox Development Corporation; Fred and Donna Giertz; Nancy B. Tieken; Office of the Chancellor, U of I; Office of the Provost and Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs, U of I; Illinois Arts Council, a State Agency; Krannert Art Museum Director’s Circle; and Krannert Art Museum Council. Courtesy of the Artist and the Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, MA
