Kim Lim Singaporean-British, 1936-1997

Overview
Kim Lim

Kim Lim was born in Singapore and spent much of her early childhood in Penang and Malacca. After her schooling in Singapore, Lim knew that she wanted to become an artist, and at eighteen, she enrolled at St. Martin's in London, where she spent two years concentrating mainly on wood carving. She then transferred to the Slade, where taught by the etcher Anthony Gross and lithographer Stanley Jones, she developed a strong commitment to printmaking.

 

On journeys back to Singapore she stopped off in Europe and India, soaking up the art 'like a sponge'. These were the experiences that confirmed in her a lifelong predilection for things archaic, and for the flow and rhythm of Indian and South East Asian sculpture : "I found that I always responded to things that were done in earlier civilizations that seemed to have less elaboration and more strength." In Greece she was entranced by Cycladic sculpture. Of Chinese art she was moved most by early Shang bronzes, Han sculpture, Sung pottery: things characterized by formal and decorative simplicity.

 

Kim Lim exhibited widely after leaving the Slade in 1960. From 1980, she turned to stone-carving, whilst continuing to make prints and fill sketchbooks with drawings from nature. With her husband the sculptor and painter William Turnbull, she made journeys to China, Indonesia, Cambodia, Egypt , Malaysia and Turkey, always alert to art and nature alike, and with a sharp eye to human diversity.

Works
Exhibitions
Biography
Kim Lim

Solo Exhibitions

1966  Kim Lim, Axiom Gallery, London

1968  Kim Lim, Axiom Gallery, London

1973  Kim Lim: Prints, Waddington Galleries, London

1974  Kim Lim, Alpha Gallery, Singapore

1975  Museum of Modern Art, Oxford

1975  Felicity Samuel Gallery, London

1977  Tate Gallery, London

1979  Kim Lim: Sculpture, Drawings, Prints, The Roundhouse Gallery, London

1981  Southampton Museum and Art Gallery, Southampton

1982  Kim Lim, Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London

1983  Arcade Gallery, Harrogate

1984  Kim Lim: Prints and Drawings, 1972-80, Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London

1984  Kim Lim, National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore

1985  Kim Lim, Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London

1990  Kim Lim, Waddington Galleries, London

1993  Orangery Show, Roche Court, New Art Centre, Wiltshire

1995  Kim Lim: Sculpture and Works on Paper, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield

1999  Kim Lim, Camden Arts Centre, London

1999  Kim Lim: A Tribute Exhibition, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore

2014  Kim Lim: Carvings, New Arts Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury

2018  Kim Lim: Sculpting Light, STPI Gallery, Singapore

2018  Kim Lim, Sotheby's S2, London

2020  Tate Modern, London, Spotlight: A display of Prints from the Tate Collection and Sculpture from the Estate, curated by Elena Crippa

 

Public Collections

Arts Council of Great Britain (3 works)

Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport

Contemporary Art Society, London

Fukuyama City Museum, Hiroshima, Japan

Government Art Collection, London (3 works)

I.B.M., New York

Leicestershire Education Council

Middelheim Museum, Belgium

Nagaoka Museum of Modern Art, Japan

National Gallery, Singapore

Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton

Tate Gallery, London and Liverpool (57 works)

Wakefield Art Gallery, Wakefield

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