Fiona Rae


Fiona Rae is a Hong Kong-born British artist. She is one of the Young British Artists who rose to prominence in the 1990s. Throughout her career, she has been known for having a portfolio of work that includes elements of energy, and complexity. Her work is known for aiming at expanding the modern traditions of painting.

Life and career

Rae was born in Hong Kong and also lived in Indonesia before moving to England in 1970. After moving to England she attended Downe House which is an all girls boarding school in Berkshire. She then attended Croydon College of Art to study a Foundation Course and Goldsmiths College, where she completed a BA Fine Art.

Young British Artist

In 1988, she participated in Freeze, an art exhibition organised by Damien Hirst in London Docklands; the exhibition helped launch a generation of artists who became known as Young British Artists or YBAs.
In 1991, Rae was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, and in 1993 she was nominated for the Austrian Eliette Von Karajan Prize for Young Painters.
She was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2002 and is referred to as a Royal Academician allowing the use of RA after her name. In 2002 she was appointed a Tate Artist Trustee between 2005 and 2009. She was commissioned by Tate Modern to create a 10-metre triptych Shadowland for the restaurant there in 2002.
In December 2011, she was appointed Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy, one of the first two female professors since the Academy was founded in 1768.
Rae has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries internationally and her work is held in public and private collections worldwide. Of her work, William Corwin summarises, "Rae's paintings are very much objects to be admired; windows into worlds in which she is mistress, giving the viewer over to a semi-recognizable, occasionally comforting, but mostly alien dreamscape."

Public collections

Following the success of 'Freeze' in 1988, Rae's paintings have appeared in solo shows internationally.
Aside from numerous exhibition catalogues, Rae’s paintings are discussed in many publications including: