Roy Villevoye

donated by the artist
courtesy: Motive Gallery, Amsterdam

Some recent solo exhibitions
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam 2008, 'Detours'
Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden 2006
Photographers' Gallery, London 2005, 'Propeller'
De Hallen Haarlem, 2004, 'Propeller'
Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam 2001, 'Hunting and Gathering'

Some recent group exhibitions
Centraal Museum, Utrecht 2009, 'Beyond the Dutch – Indonesia, the Netherlands, and the visual arts, from 1900 until now' Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam 2008
Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen 2005

Selected publications
Lex ter Braak [et al.], Detours, Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen 2008
Roy Villevoye, Roy Villevoye: Propeller, Amsterdam: Artimo Foundation 2004

Selected public and corporate collections
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NL • Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, NL • Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, NL • Centraal Museum, Utrecht, NL • Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, NL • Museum van Bommel van Dam, Venlo, NL • Museum Het Domein, Sittard, NL • Stadsgalerij Heerlen, NL • De Hallen Haarlem, NL • Ahold Kunst Stichting, NL • Collectie Koninklijke KPN, NL • ING Kunstcollectie, NL • TNT Post Kunstcollectie, NL • Stichting Kunst & Historisch Bezit Fortis in Nederland, NL • DSM Art Collection, NL • Abn Amro Kunststichting, NL • Bouwfonds kunstcollectie, NL • De Nederlandsche Bank, NL • AMC Kunstcollectie, NL

Starting out as an abstract painter interested in the cultural and political connotations of colours, Roy Villevoye began working with photography, installation, and video in the mid-1990s, often making works based on his stays in the Asmat region of New Guinea. A crucial work in his oeuvre is Kó, where he confronted his position as a (potential) neo-colonial outsider by taking frontal photographs of Papuans holding sheets of paper in magenta, cyan blue, and yellow – the primary colours used in printing. In his current way of working he has more or less stopped staging photographs with imported elements, but has kept a keen eye for elements that sabotage the Western will to see exotic purity. The cross-cultural references of the T-shirt are a recurring motif. Together with Jan Dietvorst, Villevoye has made several longer and shorter films in Papua. They destroy the lingering illusion of New Guinea as an intact bit of prehistory. Instead they offer a glimpse of what may be the post-historical future: a global village of rumour, myth, and misunderstanding against the background of a comatose economy.
Villevoye was awarded the Sandberg Prize and the David Roëll Prize in 2002.

Roy Villevoye is advisor at the Rijksakademie, and was a student there in 1979-1984.