Fiona Rae

Born in Hong Kong in 1963, Fiona Rae now lives and works in London. Her abstract canvases first reached a broad public when she took part in Freeze, the 1988 exhibition held at the Docklands in London. That showing made her one of the early figures associated with the Young British Artists, a group whose influence extended well beyond the English art scene.

Rae approaches abstraction as a conceptual problem, examining what painting can do and where its boundaries lie. Her work has remained central to the medium's development. In 2011 she was named professor of painting at the Royal Academy, one of the first women to hold that post.

This catalogue presents the most important pictures from the Row Paintings, the body of work that marks the start of the practice for which she is known internationally. An essay by Terry R. Myers assesses these paintings within their historical moment and within current debates about painting.