Opening Day Talk: Claire Ashley

Scottish-born, Chicago-based artist Claire Ashley mines the language of painterly abstraction, monumental sculpture, and slapstick humor to investigate inflatables as painting, sculpture, installation, and performance costume.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries, museums, site-specific installations, performances, and collaborations such as the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, United Kingdom; Beacon Arts Center, Scotland; the Louis Kahn Library at Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire; and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, among many others. Her new augmented reality piece is currently on view at Millennium Park in downtown Chicago as part of Augmented Chicago: Inaugural Realities, a celebration of the park’s 20-year anniversary. Her work has been featured in Studio International, VICE, Hyperallergic, Artforum Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers, and The Boston Globe.

Ashley received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, Ilinois) and her BFA from Gray’s School of Art (Aberdeen, Scotland). She currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Contemporary Practices and the Department of Painting and Drawing.