Our long time collaborator, photographer, artist and Gucci model Petra Collins has lent her hazy vision to the Tate Modern for a short film to mark the opening of the first major Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective in the UK in over 20 years. Called a “leading voice of ‘New-Wave Feminism'” by the gallery, who could be better than Collins to represent O’Keeffe, who once said, “Men put me down as the best woman painter…
…I think I’m one of the best painters.”
This year marks a century since O’Keeffe’s debut in New York and the Tate’s retrospective is an opportunity for many to see her work for the first time as none are held in any public collections in the UK. The exhibition spans O’Keeffe’s most active years from the 1910s to 1970s and includes over 100 major pieces (!!).
We can’t do such a vast collection of influential work justice with words, but Collins herself puts it best, describing her own video clip contribution: “O’Keeffe was one of the first artists who made me appreciate colour in a whole new way. Her use of it makes me feel like her landscapes are complex beings. That with each stroke of colour, each line, each curve, she’s bringing these locations to life. With this short I wanted each girl to really play with their surroundings (that were inspired by O’Keeffe’s desert and Lake George – her two favourite spots) – to use their every inch of skin, muscle, bone, etc and really put themselves into her landscape too – while making their own.”
