Catherine Yass
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Catherine Yass (born 1963) is an English artist.
Catherine Yass was born in 1963 in London and in her early years lived in Hampstead. She later studied at the Slade School of Art, London (1982-1986) and then at Hochschule der Künste, Berlin (1984-1985). She received a Boise travelling scholarship for the period 1986-1987 and then graduated with an MA from Goldsmiths College, London in 1990.
Yass is noted for her very brightly coloured photographs, a number of which present an image which is a combination of the positive and negative. Many of her works are mounted on light boxes.
Yass's subjects are varied: her early works often depict the people and institutions who commissioned, supported, or curated her work. Later she concentrated on interiors, making a series of photos of Spitalfields Market in London, and another, Corridor (1994), of a mental hospital.
Other series included shots of toilets, steel mills in Wales and Star, a series of pictures of Indian Bollywood stars displayed alongside pictures of empty cinemas.
Yass has also worked with video. Descent (2002) is a film made by lowering the camera in a crane over a construction site at London's Canary Wharf. With a moving camera, she also took a series of still photographs (such as Descent: HQ5: 1/2s, 4.7°, Omm 40mph), resulting in images of vertical streaks and blurred patches of colour.
In 2000, Yass designed the Christmas tree for Tate Britain, and in 2002 she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize.
