Wright Auction

Associated with the Young British Artists (YBA), Kerry Stewart was born near Glasgow and studied German and art history at Edinburgh University before attending Chelsea School of Art in London from 1989 to 1993. Stewart came to recognition in the mid-1990s with works—usually made from painted plaster or fiber glass—known for being simultaneously unsettling, tender, and humorous: a nun sleeping on the floor, a billowing cape with no wearer, a pregnant schoolgirl in uniform. Particularly in comparison to some of the more sensationalist work of her YBA peers, according to Robert Clark in The Guardian, Stewart’s works appear “to cope with their vulnerability by drifting off into some interior and introverted world,” and, at their best, make use of the tension “between deep pathos and pathetic amateurishness.”