Marie Yates (b. 1940 Manchester, UK) is one of a few distinctive British feminist and conceptual artists of her generation. She studied Fine Art at Hornsey College of Art from 1968-1971 and Social Anthropology at University College from 1977-79. She received a Masters in Photographic Studies from the University of Derby in 1988.
Marie Yates taught Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, Leeds University, Chelsea School of Art, Goldsmith’s College, University of London, and Photography and Media at the University of the Arts London, as well as in many other Fine Art departments across the country.
She began her exhibiting career in the early 60's, and by the 1980s and 90s, her wide exhibiting trajectory was well-known throughout Britain, showing in the main British galleries such as the ICA, Riverside Studios, Midland Group and Arnolfini as well as the regional public galleries plus The New Museum in New York and other venues in the US and Europe.
From 1970 her work focussed on the dynamics between text and image using photography and from 1978 onwards taking in ideology, sexual difference, and fantasy, using montage and mixed media.
Around 1991 she left London for Greece where she continued to work exploring psychoanalysis, politics and media. From 1997 she embarked on the use of digital techniques to further her explorations.
Yates has used her unique approach to photography combined with text, and installation to achieve highly personal explorations of landscape, images of women, representation, sexual politics, and the media, and her main interest is in how we read an image. She presents the notion of art as a social construct rather than an object or image-based aesthetic experience. She creates work that questions meaning and is known for her conceptual artworks which have laid the foundation for this current generation’s conceptual turn.
Her works are in the collections of TATE, Arts Council and The British Council.
Visit the artist's website at www.marieyates.art