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I am an artist and writer working in London and France. Reader in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, I am also a Research Associate of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, London. I have exhibited widely in Europe and North America. Publications include A Case of Hysteria, Book Works, London, 1999. Filigrane Editions, France, published a small book on my work Le bonheur des femmes, a work that began in the perfume departments of the grands magasins of Paris, where I retreated after walking the streets in pursuit of Marx and Freud, in the shadow of Lacan. Mine is a practice of stupid refinement, trapped in archives, libraries, the arcades, and the intersection of public political action and private subjectivity.

I am following Sigmund Freud on holiday, and I have dreamt of Rome, been melancholy in Trieste, and had a disturbance of memory in Athens, which can be traced in Freud on Holiday. Volume I. Freud Dreams of Rome (information as material 2006) and Freud on Holiday. Volume II. A Disturbance of Memory (information as material, York, with CUBEARTEDITIONS, Athens, 2007). I have forgotten my shoes on the steps of the Freud Museum, London, and I thought of witty and amusing remarks too late on the stairs of the Freud Museum, Vienna, and these events are recounted in L'esprit d'escalier and An Agent of the Estate
(information as material, 2007 and 2008).Forbes Morlock and I worked on Freud and the Gift of Flowers in 2009 (information as material, once again). The small book Afterwards, although published by Warwick Arts Centre (2009) may be considered to be part of the same series. Recently I have started a new series of modest booklets in which I recount railway-related scenes and incidents in the works of Freud, under the title Reisen. A third holiday book,entitled The Forgetting of a Proper Name, in which neither Freud nor I quite manage to get away from it all, has just been published by CUBEARTEDITIONS and information as material.

I was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, where I was happily translating the Freudian canon, with particular attention to typefaces and the three essays on sexuality, from 2007 to 2011. In early 2008 I exhibited at Sleeper, Edinburgh, for which I worked hard on my embroidery and my worst traits,and at Feriancova Contemporary/ Bastart, Bratislava, where I took Rousseau to task on natural education.In November of the same year I exhibited a new series of works at CHELSEA Space, which insisted on a relation between fashion and revolutionary moments in the history of France.There are more works in this series, some of which were shown in Pont-Aven in October/November 2009, including a stuffed vixen holding the PUF edition of Marx's Capital in her jaws. I have had solo shows recently at AMT_Project, Bratislava, DomoBaal, London, and the Ideas Store, London, in which I exhibited works that drew on my collections. FRAC Bretagne has recently acquired several works for its collection, as has Penguin Books.

I have been working on some rather amateur water colours, copying old postcards from memory, which gave me great pleasure, despite their talentless inadequacy, but I think these may now have come to an end. I have re-photographed the smoke of steam trains, the flat, limpid waters of mountain lakes, and the snow on Alpine peaks (some of these were shown at Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer in 2009, some at DOMOBAAL and at at AMT_Project in 2011). Somewhat to my surprise, these have turned into three very short films, which were screened in New York and St Petersburg in autumn 2011. Painstakingly I have sketched women modelling lingerie (and copied quite beautifully their textual descriptions), while thinking of nothing. I am drawing bridles, bits, stirrups, saddles, and dressage movements, while thinking of 'Little Hans'. I was painting women's faces, but have had enough of this (some were shown at AMT_Project and some in my exhibition at DOMOBAAL), so am back to lingerie, silk, and perversion (same old, same old). I am also noting the weather of Freud's holidays, the meals (good and bad) he ate while on holiday, and the train times of his journeys – the two former are now appendices in the series Freud on Holiday and the last is the second book in the Reisen series. I have paid my son an enormous amount of money to fill old school exercises books with handwritten lines (as though it were a cruel punishment), which are the indexical references to mother/son relations in Freud's works, and these were exhibited at the Freud Museum in 'Les paris sont ouverts' in the summer of 2011. I will have solo exhibitions at Galerie des Petits Carreaux, Paris, for which I am drawing the passionate descriptions of silk given by his kleptomaniac patients to Dr Clérambault, in September 2012, and at Galerie Bugdhan und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, early in 2013. My exhibition Un vent de révolution is now at Centre d'art Passerelle, Brest, until 18 August.

Represented by:
Domo Baal, London
Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf

Do see also the website of Documents d'Artistes Bretagne, which has a very nice dossier on my work in English and French, though sadly, it is not up to date.

Current:
Un vent de révolution Centre d'art Passerelle, 18 May to 18 August, 41 rue Charles Bertholet, Brest, www.cac-passerelle.com
Curated by Ulrike Kremeier, and exhibiting lovely dresses, delightful bonnets, literate animals, and moments of surprising violence.

Forthcoming:
Ma Nana et autres filles (encore)
Galerie des Petits Carreaux, Paris, vernissage Saturday 15 September

Book subscription and bumper bonus offer
Offer One:
Sharon Kivland – 12–Part Subscription Package – domobaal editions 2012 (Early Bird)

Following the surprising success (the artist was surprised anyway), of her recent book La mer est si bleue, Domo Baal Editions and Sharon Kivland are launching a new book project, which will be offered on subscription. It may be described as a speciality package and will certainly be most attractive. Sharon Kivland is working on a series of twelve books, each in an edition of 100, in a stapled 26×20cm format, with between twelve and twenty–four pages, which draws on her extensive and particular collection of printed ephemera and postcards, classed thematically according to the whim of the artist (see below). Early Bird subscribers, for the modest price of £100 (to include postage and packing to all UK or EU addresses) will receive one book each month (more or less, precise timing cannot be guaranteed) for a year, from January 2012. There will be the option to order a specially designed slipcase (together with a Bonus Edition) to hold the collection at the end of the year, as well as the monthly offer of a limited edition archival print taken from the book of the month at a special price.

Titles may include:
Frères et Sœurs
Communiants et Communiantes
Nus exotiques
Chalets Suisses
Les Lacs alpins
La Neige sur les montagnes
Femmes et roses
Les Arrangements des fleurs
Les Chiens des Pyrenées
Les Femmes du monde
Les Amants
Pierrots et Pierrettes
Certains messages de loin

(Although the titles are in French, as the books are (largely) made of images only, language should be no barrier to comprehension)
 
Offer Two:
Sharon Kivland – Bumper Freudian Package

Domo Baal in association with information as material and CUBEARTEDITIONS, presents a special offer of a Bumper Freudian Package of Sharon Kivland's twelve publications on and around readings of the life and work of Sigmund Freud. This is an opportunity to acquire these books at a keen price and to have an overview of Kivland's psychoanalytically–inflected reading, which she has described as 'ventriloquism'. The usual total retail price is £121.50 but here is offered for £85 including post and packing to UK addresses (an extra £15 to be added for EU posting). As some of the books are nearly out of print, this offer is limited to 40 subscribers, with preference given to those who subscribe to both of these elegant packages.

FULL DETAILS AND OF BOTH OFFERS AND TO ORDER DIRECT VIA PAYPAL:
http://www.domobaal.com/publications.html#sharon-kivland

Recent exhibitions and projects include:

Screening of Sharon Kivland: Reisen, three very short films: The limpid waters of mountain lakes, The snow on alpine peaks, The smoke of steam trains, in ‘Freud’s Holiday’ at Freud’s Dreams Museum, St Petersburg, Russia; an event to commemorate twelve years of the museum’s  work, which opened on the 100th anniversary of The Interpretation of Dreams (4 November, 1899).
www.freud.ru

Some new books were shown at
The London Art Book Fair
Friday 23–Sunday 25 September 2011
Whitechapel Gallery, London

'Why do I keep reading the same books?', AMT_Project, Bratislava, July to September 2011, curated by Petra Feriancova, exhibiting David Raymond Conroy, Dorota Kenderová, Sharon Kivland, Jirka Thyn, Jaro Varga, and Anabela Zigová.

'Les paris sont ouverts', Freud Museum, London, July to September 2011, curated by Caroline May, exhibiting Dimitris Dokatzis, Maria Finn, Eve Fowler, Sharon Kivland, Lindner, Jeff Ono, and Paul P.

'Text and Image', Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, June to August 2011, exhibiting Robert Barry, Peter Hutchinson, Sharon Kivland, Jürgen Klauke, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Thomas Ruff, and Ingolf Timpner.

'Sequences', Johan Deumens Gallery, Haarlem – a group exhibition in a beautiful house (so I am told) in Herengracht, Amsterdam.

Solo exhibition at DOMOBAAL, London, 5 March to 9 April 2011: I am sick of my thoughts.

Solo exhibition at AMT_project, Bratislava, 10 February to 2 April 2011, curated by Alberto Matteo Torri: Reproductions
Guest artist: Benjamin Swaim
See the following http://artycok.tv/lang/cs-cz/reproductions/7226 for a short interview.

'Encounters', group exhibition at Galerie Bugdhan & Kaimer, Düsseldorf, February to March, 2011.

Le cri de la soie, artist's project for Cahiers intempestifs, 2011, St-Etienne, France.

'The Perverse Library', Shandy Hall, Coxwold, Yorkshire, September to October, 2010, curated by Simon Morris.

'elles@pompidou, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, June 2009 to June 2010, curated by Camille Morineau.

'Super Farmers' Market'
Handel Street Projects, 18 June to 17 July 2010, curated by MaryAnne Francis and Lucy Heyward.

'Sophisticated Boom Boom (in B& W)', D OMOBAAL, London, May to June, 2010.

Mes plus belles, Le Sphinx, Paris, April 2010, in which I showed some overly made-up Breton women, more roses and women, and some seductive gestures.

'Time is a sausage', September 2009 to January 2010. Group exhibition at domobaal, London. Solo project and book: Freud and the Gift of Flowers (with Forbes Morlock) in 'Time is a Sausage', November to December 2009 , in which I showed the floral tributes Freud did not receive and five Freudian riddles and their five answers, sadly unrelated.

Reisen, October–December 2009. Solo exhibition at Bugdahn & Kaimer, Düsseldorf, in which I exhibited some dreams of Rome, several Swiss hotels, the steam of trains as we journey (our hearts turn to the south), the snow on mountain peaks and the water of mountain lakes, and watercolours (from memory) of landscapes that have never existed, coupled with best wishes for a new year. I am particularly fond of the last, despite their incompetent rendering, which I cannot simply blame on my lack of recall.

Quels seraient les meilleurs moyens de perfectionner l’éducation des femmes? Solo exhibition at CIAC, Pont-Aven, 1st October to 22nd November 2009, curated by Catherine Elkar, in which I exhibited some old works and some new, including a series of letters, or rather their last lines, from Denis Diderot to Sophie Volland, my ABC of faults, and one may consider the ensemble as between a school room and a boudoir, mediated by the constant figure of the libertine. Several texts circulate about the work, by Catherine Elkar, Brigitte Charpentier, and Danielle Robert-Guédon, who is kind enough to note that I am neither hermetic nor obscure:

Il serait vain de tenter une classification, de vouloir assigner des propos définitifs à l'oeuvre de Sharon Kivland. Non que cette oeuvre soit hermétique ou obscure, bien au contraire, mais le bloc des connaissances préexistant à l'aboutissement est si dense que le moindre fil tiré de l'écheveau entraîne un infini questionnement. Tout au moins, pouvons-nous aborder ce travail en considérant la notion de 'déplacements', qu'il s'agisse d'errance, de détours, de passages ou bien de métaphores, d'ellipses et de métonymies.

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