Catherine Yass

Catherine Yass was born in London, England, in 1963. After receiving a BA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1986, she studied at Goldsmiths College from 1988 - 90, graduating with a Masters degree in Fine Arts.

Yass is best known for her distinctive photographic and film based work. Typically she manipulates her subject matter by overlaying the negative and the positive from photographs she has taken and then realises the resultant images as lightboxes, prints and films.

In 2017 RIBA held a screening of the artist's film, Aeolian Piano, with the BBC. Recent solo exhibitions include Milton Keynes Gallery (2014); Alison Jacques Gallery, London (2012) a mid-career retrospective at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea (2011); The Phillips Collections, Washington D.C. (2011);  Stedelijk-Hertogenbosch Museum, The Netherlands (2009) and St Louis Art Museum, Missouri (2009). 

Yass was selected to represent Britain at the Indian Triennale at the Museum of Modern Art in Delhi in 2001. She was short-listed for the Turner Prize in 2002 and, in 2005, she took up a British Council Residency in China. Yass has completed major commissions for The Jewish Community Centre, London (2013); Rambert Dance Company, London (2013) and Merce Cunningham, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York (2003). 

Her work can be found in a number of public collections including the Tate, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Biblioteca Albertina, Leipzig; National Museum of Women in the Arts Collection, Washington D.C.; The Jewish Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York and Queensland Art Gallery, Australia.

Yass currently teaches MA Photography at the Royal College of Art, London. She lives and works in London.