Drawings and sculptures
Tania Kovats makes drawings, sculpture, installations and large-scale time-based projects that explore our experience and understanding of the natural world. Kovats’ enduring themes are the experience and understanding of landscape, geological processes, patterns of growth and the intersection of landscape, nature and culture. Recently she has focused on water as her central subject; the seas and oceans, river systems, maritime culture, flooding and tides, necessarily touching on socio-political and environmental concerns.
Bleached (2017) is a haunting series of sculptures which reflect on the remote but urgent issue of coral bleaching. The work recycles specially fabricated coral salvaged from a decommissioned museum display. Kovats’ work creates a slice through a bleached coral reef, a starkly beautiful representation of a potentially devastating environmental event.
Image: Stefan Handy for Meadow Arts
About the artist
Tania Kovats
Tania Kovats makes drawings, sculpture, installations and large-scale time-based projects that explore our experience and understanding of the natural world. While Kovats is perhaps best known for her sculptures and drawings, her work encompasses a range of creative strategies, from map-making to writing, and she is also active as a curator, teacher and author. Kovat’s enduring themes are the experience and understanding of landscape, geological processes, patterns of growth and the intersection of landscape, nature and culture and how art can speak to our critical climate crisis. Recently she has focused on water as her central subject; the seas and oceans, river systems, maritime culture, flooding and tides, necessarily touching on socio-political and environmental concerns.
Tania Kovats (born Brighton, 1966) studied at Newcastle Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. Notable recent solo exhibitions include ‘Head To Mouth’, Berwick Gymnasium (2019), ‘Troubled Waters’, Phoenix Gallery, Exeter (2019), ‘Evaporation’, Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester (2016), ‘Oceans’, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2014). Important recent group exhibitions include ‘UnNatural History’ (curated by Invisible Dust), Herbert Museum & Art Gallery, Coventry (2021), ‘Future Knowledge’, Modern Art Oxford (2018), ‘Women Power Protest’, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (2018) and ‘Vita Vitale’, Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2015). In 1991 she was awarded the Barclays Young Artist Award at the Serpentine Gallery, London. In 2015 she was nominated for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Kovats’ work is held in numerous public and private collections including the Arts Council Collection, London, British Council, London, National Maritime Museum, London, Government Art Collection, London, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, Jupiter ArtLand, Edinburgh, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven and the Speed Museum, Kentucky.
Kovats is currently Professor of Drawing and Making at DJCAD, University of Dundee.