Julie Verhoeven: Whiskers Between My Legs

Fox Reading Room

Entry with Day Membership

Artist and designer Julie Verhoeven creates an immersive installation in the Fox Reading Room that explores concepts of femininity and how they are represented in popular culture, both past and present. Primarily known for her work as a fashion designer and illustrator, this display highlights Verhoeven’s increasing interdisciplinary practice throughout the visual arts, from fashion illustration, to installation and film.

Using an array of collaged fabrics draped throughout the space, this installation creates a distorted vision of the representation of female identity, inviting visitors to gaze into and enter what Verhoeven describes as a ‘grotto of visual excess’. A newly commissioned film, referencing female seduction, titillation and perversion plays throughout the space from monitors placed within the basins of quilted toilet seats. Verhoeven aims to creates a playful, yet visually cacophonic and ominous environment that defies and questions our own perceptions of femininity gender and taste.

Julie Verhoeven was born in the UK in 1969. She currently lives and works in London. Previous solo exhibitions include: Julie og Jimmy go dogging, 2014, (with Jimmy Merris) Hordaland Arts Centre, Norway; Your Fly is Open, 2013, Stedelijk Museum’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands; Ladies, Lets Rip! 2013,The Holburne Museum, Bath; Daisy: Manwatching (with Anthea Hamilton), 2012, Peles Empire, London; Bread & Butt (with Will Benedict) 2012, Meyer Kainer, Vienna, Gluteus Maximus, 2011, ZINGERpresents, Amsterdam; Man enough to be a woman, 2009, MU, Eindhoven; Rubber Necking, 2009, The White Cubicle; Feathers up my Arse, 2009 ZINGERpresents, Amsterdam, Fannying Around, 2009, Concrete at The Hayward Gallery, London, Verheaven, 2006, Riflemaker, London; Still Life and Women, 2007, ZINGERpresents, Amsterdam; Saint James in Bloom, 2006, The Economist Plaza, London.

Her work has also featured in several group exhibitions including: Sacre 101, 2014, Migros Museum, Zurich, Works on Paper, Gregor Staiger, 2013, Zurich; Antibody, (with Anthea Hamilton) Lisa Cooley, New York, 2013; Paper Pleasures, Studio Voltaire, 2011, London; ‘Cocky Bastard’, 2010, The Dandies Ball, Ritter Zamet, London; Purpling, 2009 Gimpel Fils, London, Feathers up my Arse, 2009, ZINGERpresents, Amsterdam, The Garden Party, 2006, Deitch Projects, New York; Fashion at Belsay, 2004, Belsay gardens, Northumberland.

Accompanying the Reading Room display is Gusset, a publication by Julie Verhoeven available for purchase in the ICA bookshop.

This display was made possible by the Julie Verhoeven Supporters Group, Valeria Napoleone and The Rug Company.

The Fox Reading Room was made possible by the generous support of the Edwin Fox Foundation.