Magazine Your Guide to the new Pallant House Gallery
www.pallant.org.uk Number 8 June 2006
ÂŁ1.50
CRAIGIE AITCHISON Miss Anna-Maria Michalitsianou No.1 1963, Oil on canvas 10 x 8 inches Provenance: Beaux Arts Gallery Exhibition, 1963 University of Glasgow and Arts Council Scottish Committee, 1964 An Exhibition of Scottish Artists aged plus/minus 30, cat.no. 7
129 Portland Road London W11 4LW Tel: 0207 229 1099 Email: art@piano-nobile.com www.piano-nobile.com Works may be viewed in Sussex on request
20TH
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THE GALLERY SPECIALISES IN CENTURY MODERN BRITISH ART BOMBERG BUTLER CHADWICK COKER COLDSTREAM DOBSON FRINK GERTLER GILMAN GINNER GORE GOWING GRANT HEPWORTH HILTON JOHN MOORE NASH PAOLOZZI PHILPOT PIPER SICKERT SMITH SUTHERLAND TREVELYAN TURNBULL WEIGHT WOOD
J ONAT HA N C LARK F I NE A RT Dealers in C20 British Paintings and Sculpture
Representative of the Estates of Ivon Hitchens, Roger Hilton, Bryan Wynter, Adrian Heath, John Wells & Kenneth Armitage
Ivon Hitchens 1893 - 1979 Poppies & Foxgloves 1941 oil on canvas 24 x 20 ins The Ivon Hitchens monograpgh by Peter Khoroche available at ÂŁ45
18 PARK WALK LONDON SW10 0AQ Tel: 020 7351 3555
Email: info@jonathanclarkfineart.com
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Contents 7 Roger Reed, Chairman of the Trustees Introduces 8 Stefan van Raay Director 12 Sir Colin St. John Wilson, MJ Long and Rolfe Kentish The Architects 16 Building a New Audience for the Future 21 The Heart of the New Gallery The Community Artwork 22 The Prints Room 26 The New Library 27 The Garden 28 An Overview of the Collections 33 - 61 Room by Room A Guide to Pallant House Gallery 64 The Bookshop 66 Artists’ Books and Circle Press 69 Pallant Publications 70 Art for All New multiples and prints 75 The Pallant Introducing the new restaurant 78 Magic Realities A meeting with Mary Fedden in her studio 82 Forthcoming Exhibitions 84 Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox The Appeal
87 The Friends 90 Events Programme Talks, Tours and Visits 96 Introducing the Staff and Trustees 97 Thank you 98 Final Voice Sally Mather, Partner in Art
Issue 8 June 2006 Editor Andrew Churchill Designer David Wynn Gallery Editorial Frances Guy, Simon Martin, Marc Steene Guest Editorial (with many thanks) Emma Hill, Jock Johnston, Rachel Johnston, Amicia de Moubray, Sally Mather, Elspeth Moncrieff, Tony Thorncroft Cover Paul Catherall, Pallant, 2006 Linocut, Edition of 250 Commisioned by Pallant House Gallery Available at ÂŁ65 5
Roger Reed Chairman of the Trustees Introduces
Portrait by Anne-Katrin Purkiss
The end of spring 2006 gives life to a major milestone in the history of Pallant House Gallery: the re-opening of the lovely historic house and its exciting new wing. After some ten years, the dream of the Trustees, Friends and members of staff has been realised. The project has required imagination, patience, determination and, over all, hard work. No one imagined the road would be so long, but the reward is standing for all to see. The Gallery is now a major attraction for the nation and its opening will be one of the highlights in the visual arts calendar this year. A huge thank you is due to those who created the concept and those who fulfilled its demands. The success of the Appeal by the Friends, together with the day to day commitment of individual Friends and volunteers, has been crucial to our success. The generous funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and others has been vital. The architects, together
with the engineers, quantity surveyors and the project manager have produced a bespoke building that will display the collection to perfection. The names of our major benefactors – not in the least Sir Colin St John Wilson’s, the donor of the latest major addition to the collection - are displayed in stone and glass. In addition, some generous donors wish to remain anonymous, and it has not been possible to record in such fashion all those who helped make the project happen. To all of them, I express the Trustees’ appreciation and gratitude. Throughout the challenge the Director and staff have been magnificent and they are right to be proud of what has been achieved. There now follows the joy of unveiling the entire collection, with new works exhibited for the first time, to an eager public. I am sure you will enjoy your visit and hope you will return often as new exhibitions are displayed over the decades ahead.
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Portrait by Alex von Koettlitz
Stefan van Raay Director Interview by Elspeth Moncrieff
Elspeth Moncrieff: Why did you decide to leave your job as Senior Curator at Glasgow Museums and come down to Chichester? Stefan van Raay: I was attracted by the challenge of putting the Pallant House Gallery collection on the map. My brief was to transform it from an historic house with a good collection to an outstanding collection which happens to be in a beautiful historic house. When I arrived in 1997, I began building up a team, creating an education, outreach and exhibition programme and of course, building the extension was the underlying project. EM: Was the association with Colin St John Wilson (Sandy) already firmly established at this stage? SvR: Absolutely, Sandy was looking for somewhere to leave his collection where he could be involved in the architectural environment. However, we needed to apply to the National Lottery and they insisted we put the contract out to tender. Sandy had been involved with the Gallery for years and knew the site and the collection intimately. We felt that tendering was unnecessary and unfair. Two leading British architects withdrew from the competition in sympathy with Sandy once they understood the situation. He and his wife MJ Long gave by far and away the best presentation because they knew so much about the project and they were awarded the brief.
EM: So once you had the right architect your biggest challenge was to get planning permission? SvR: I think, because I am a foreigner, I had a kind of innocence about the whole British planning system. I never at any stage doubted that we would succeed. I did everything possible to achieve it including a fair amount of lobbying. The key opponents were well organised, a hard core of about twelve Chichester residents. So at every step we had to make sure that the positive side was being heard, which was tough work. I only realised the enormity of the achievement when we had a visit from the Historic Town Planners and Regional English Heritage Officers. There was considerable surprise and delight at our gaining permission for a contemporary addition to a Grade I-listed, Queen Anne house in the heart of the conservation area of a historic cathedral city. We did it by always believing we would succeed. EM: Were you always confident you would get a lottery grant? SvR: Yes, but the problem was I didn’t know how much to ask for. It was indicated we would receive in excess of £3.5 million so we pitched for £3.8. Later we were granted another £1.2 million and went on to raise £11 million in total which includes £1.8 million for an endowment fund to run the building. > 9
EM: What were your priorities for the design of the Gallery?
EM: Are you expecting controversy over the façade of the building?
SvR: We were restricted by the limitations of the site and the fact that we were adding on to a Grade I listed building. The site is very tight and we had to deal with strict planning laws about the height of the building, the amount of windows we were allowed and our neighbours’ light levels. I was only interested in taking on the project if we could build a contemporary design and the challenge has been to make this work with the historic building. I think we have come up with the best concept, a building which maximises the available space, which is very open and accessible; it has superb galleries which will set off the collection to the best possible advantage and outstanding public facilities so the Gallery will always be alive with projects and activities. I want this to be an accessible Gallery with its heart in the community; the outreach and education programmes are vital. This is not a specialised centre for art lovers only and I hope the open design of the building reflects that intention.
SvR: This project has been beset with controversy. The use of brick and glazed terracotta is designed to harmonise with the existing building and the side elevation of the new extension echoes the architecture of the street with its use of plaster and different building materials. I think the façade works very well within the restrictions of the brief.
The bookshop as you enter will become one of the major resources for new and second-hand books on Modern British art. Directly in front of you is the glass-fronted room for workshops and other activities so visitors can see what is going on. The library will be accessible on the ground floor with a dedicated reading room with space for ten readers. The restaurant is integral to the courtyard garden designed by Christopher BradleyHole and in the summer the French doors will be open and visitors can wander in and out. Ninety per cent of the collection will be on display and even the reserve collection will be accessible. It will be hung floor to ceiling in the lecture room. Where possible we have afforded views of the old building. With the extended garden, the back of the house can now be seen to maximum advantage and the use of recessed windows allows intriguing glimpses of different aspects of the historic building and the surrounding built-environment. It is important people see the building as a whole and not as listed building with a modern extension. The early part of the collection will be hung in the original building which has had a major face-lift. In terms of gallery design it is state of the art, a highly sophisticated building with a substantial geo-thermal heating and cooling system which will control temperature and air conditioning and an advance lighting system which combines top light with artificial light. The so called ‘floating ceilings’ conceal the plant which otherwise we would have to put in the floor thus reducing the height of the rooms. 10
EM: With the Wilson Gift added to the Hussey and Kearley Bequests, how important is the collection now? SvR: It is one of the best collections of Modern British art in the world, certainly in this country, after the Tate. Our holdings of Pop Art, for example, are very strong. There is also a unique depth to the collection because of the way Sandy acquired things: we have prints, drawings and archive material relating to many of the paintings. We even have Patrick Caulfield drawings which are completely unique; Caulfield never let anyone else have his drawings. The archive is of enormous importance and we have not really begun to assess this yet. There are personal letters, discussions with the artists, very rare early catalogues and a huge amount of material relating to one of the most formative periods of Modern British art. EM: Will your temporary exhibitions policy revolve around the collection? SvR: It will draw very much on the collection but it is a broad remit. There will be four major exhibitions a year as well as smaller prints and drawings exhibits and in-focus shows on aspects of the collection. At any one time I want four elements to be present in the Gallery: national, international, historic and contemporary. We are commissioning a series of contemporary murals for the staircase, the new one, after Paul Huxley’s staircase drawing, is Susie MacMurray’s wonderful installation of mussel shells lined with velvet. EM: How many visitors a year do you need for the Gallery to be sustainable? SvR: Our visitor attendance was 30,000 and we need to raise this to 50,000. This is a conservative figure. So many projects have failed on ridiculous revenue expectations, but I hope our revenue will exceed the projection.
Howard Hodgkin’s Grantchester Road, an interpretation of the interior of the Grantchester Road house which Sandy Wilson designed for himself in Cambridge. It is now the Wittgenstein Archive and a Grade-2 listed building. Howard Hodgkin, Grantchester Road, 1975 Wilson Loan (2004) © Howard Hodgkin
EM: A lot of people will visit the Gallery when it opens but how do you keep them coming back? Are you aware of the expectations of a local audience or is this not something that concerns you? SvR: I am not averse to using publicity to stay on the map. Our second exhibition in October, The Wonderful Fund, a collection of fairly cutting edge contemporary art curated by Vanessa Branson (sister of Richard) and Prue O’Day, will create its own momentum. The real challenge however is not to compromise on quality but to translate themes into a popular remit and present contemporary art in an approachable way. For example Poets in the Landscape (opening in March 2007), which focuses on Romanticism in British art, will look specifically at local aspects of the theme. EM: What have been your best and worst moments? SvR: Working with Sandy has been an experience of a lifetime. He represents British cultural history from 1945 to the present day. He is an immensely knowledgeable and intellectual individual. It is incredible that he is eighty-three and still working on projects of this calibre. Also, I have been lucky to work with a hugely loyal group of people who have supported the Gallery throughout, as well as the young team of staff I have built up - all of whom have remained with me through thick and thin. I have also loved living in Chichester, with the South Downs and the sea so close and I have been embraced by West Sussex in the most warm and generous way. The worst period was January to March
2005 when I felt a complete prisoner of this project. The Gallery was closed; we were running horribly late; we were losing all credibility. We were cancelling exhibitions we had organised three years previously, contacting all the lenders. People were saying, ‘Oh is the Gallery still closed, then you can’t have anything to do?’, I wanted to kill them. Then I realised my depression was rubbing off on the staff and I had to brace up, remain positive and above all project a highly positive public front when secretly we were all in despair. I have lived, slept and breathed this project for eight years and it has been the same for Mary Gordon Lennox, Chairman of the Appeal. There have been weeks when we have been up and down to London many a night raising awareness of the Gallery. It is now definitely on the map, ironically more so at a national than a local level. A big regret is that the project has taken so long, several people who have been so closely involved with it will never see it finished. These include my mother who used to ring and badger me every week, Stephen King, Nicky Gordon Lennox and Philip Stroud. EM: Do you feel you have achieved what you set out to do and it is now time to move on to new challenges? SvR: I want to leave the Gallery on a really healthy financial footing and that means raising a further £4million endowment fund for running costs. Once the Gallery is open I think it will be much easier to raise funds as we will have something concrete to sell. I really want to see how the Gallery runs and take it through the next stage of its development.
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Portrait by Anne-Katrin Purkiss
Sir Colin St. John Wilson, MJ Long and Rolfe Kentish The Architects Interview by Tony Thorncroft There has been no more interested spectator to the emergence of the new Pallant House Gallery than Professor Sir Colin St. John Wilson, better known as Sandy, and as the celebrated architect of an even greater structural challenge, the British Library. It was his wife MJ Long, along with her partner Rolfe Kentish, who were the chosen architects for a project which was greatly inspired by the fact that Sandy Wilson had agreed to give – and loan his unrivalled collection of British art of the second half of the 20th century to a revitalised, refurbished, reborn Pallant House Gallery. It was a perfect coming together of needs and desires: Chichester finally gets a modern cultural icon to balance its Georgian past and for Sandy Wilson “when the building opens I will see my collection for the first time.” There is very little space in his homes in London and on the sea at Bosham to show many of the 500 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures by the leading British Pop artists of the 60s and 70s such as Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton and Patrick Caulfield, along with major works by R. B. Kitaj, Eduardo Paolozzi, Lucian Freud and more, art which Wilson has accumulated over almost 60 years. Hence his excitement at viewing a lifetime’s obsession in a setting over which he was an influential adviser. Sandy Wilson will always be associated with the British Library, which absorbed 36 years of a distinguished career (which also included a professorship at Cambridge University), but his first and constant ambition was to be an artist. If he was to be frustrated in this dream he has spent his life among artists and “got works hot off the easel and out of friendship as much as for cash.”
That is the way it started back in 1947 when browsing through a London gallery. “I was admiring a collage when a voice said ‘you should have that’. It was Eduardo Paolozzi. I said I would give him all the money in my pockets which amounted to 37 shillings and 6 pence. When you get works of art that way you can never sell them.” The collage will be on loan at Pallant House Gallery, along with such landmark British art works as Richard Hamilton’s Swingeing London ‘67, Peter Blake’s The 1962 Beatles and a Kitaj family portrait of Sandy and MJ working in their studio. The passion for art and the profession of architect have nicely blended over a long career, not least through the commissions that Wilson, Long and Kentish have received to design artists’ studios. They have created three work spaces for Peter Blake; and Frank Auerbach, R.B. Kitaj, David Inshaw, Antony Gormley and Paul Huxley are among a côterie of leading artists who have looked to the team for new studios. Often the payment included another work of art. From small artistic spaces it was a natural step for Long & Kentish to create the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth. The original plan for Pallant House Gallery had been to build over the garden but in what Wilson describes as a “quantum leap of the imagination” the Trustees, inspired by David Hopkinson, decided on a major building initiative which would expand the exhibiting space six-fold. The fact that Wilson was “finding the ownership of the collection a major responsibility”, and was wavering between Chichester and the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge as its permanent home, helped to speed up the decision process. 13
Wilson says that his artist friends are delighted with the display of their work at Pallant House Gallery, and through his contacts, the Gallery has already secured additional gifts from Kitaj, Huxley and other artists. There is a resurgence of interest in the art of the period and it is very sympathetically displayed in the clean, naturally lit, galleries which are something of a Long, Kentish and Wilson hallmark. Although a minnow to a whale when compared with the British Library “out of the corner of the eye you can see one or two connections”, says Wilson, most notably the practical use of natural light from above. Pallant House Gallery also shares a more frustrating characteristic with the BL– a long delay in its completion. For the architects, the local pressure groups who protested at the demolition of a pastiche Georgian building of the 1930s next door to create room for the extension, were an expected hurdle in such a conservative town as Chichester, but the dire condition of the partition walls and the discovery of crumbling foundations, plus a medieval crypt, caused unexpected and much greater problems. “It could not have been more difficult” says Kentish, “working in a conservation area next door to a Grade I listed building in a largely residential district. But the Trustees have been bold and we have got the design we wanted”. The new windowless brick façade is dull to some eyes but in the original plan it was to have been white, which would have raised even more hackles, and the partnership believes strongly that art can only really be shown successfully against blank plain interior walls. They are no great fans of glass exteriors. The delays in the development took a toll but the support of the Pallant House Gallery director Stefan van Raay has pushed the building through to a successful if much delayed conclusion at a cost of £8.6m, with much of the money coming through lottery funding. The idea has been to work in sympathy with the protected 1712 building, although there is one fairly sizeable gallery in the extension, many of the rooms there balance in hanging space with those in the original house so that works can be moved around easily. Everything has been planned to the highest 14
international environmental standards so “if Stefan wants to show Rembrandts, they can safely hang here”. The museum will now be entered through a new ground level entrance into the extension to make things easier for disabled people and the Gallery is also topically “green” through the introduction of an innovative underground geothermal heating and cooling system. All the boring engineering plant facilities are buried in the basement, and the public spaces, such as the shop, café and the educational area are located on the ground floor so that the galleries above are flooded with natural light, which is reflected rather than direct to assist conservation. A lift connects between the new galleries and the old house which has also been given an interior facelift. The lecture theatre has been made large enough to ensure that most of Pallant House Gallery’s holding of art can be always on public display, even if it must be packed densely on the walls. The café, which leads on to the newly designed garden, seems set to become a favourite Chichester meeting place. Everything is neat and clean cut and carries the Long & Kentish hallmarks of providing plenty of wall space to display art in a natural light. The practice is now helping to create an extension for the Jewish Museum in London and on other cultural projects, such as visitor centres along the Dorset coast. For Sandy Wilson, who operates as an associate with Long & Kentish, the big challenge is to help modernise one of the most sensitive buildings in the country, the Royal Academy in Piccadilly, transforming the bleak underground accommodation which houses the RA School and improving access across the site. Having successfully overcome local opposition, and a difficult site, in securing Pallant House Gallery as the leading centre for Modern British art in the South of England, there is a reluctance to just walk away. Through generous gifts over the years the museum has a collection of 20th century British art unrivalled outside London.
RICHARD AVEDON, PRINT FOR SALE.
Arden and Anstruther Photographic Gallery, 5 Lombard Street, Petworth. www.ardenandanstruther.com Telephone 01798 344411
Building a New Audience for the Future Marc Steene Education and Outreach Officer
Shirley and Lizzie Photograph by Anne Beverton 16
The Learning Programme at Pallant House Gallery 2001 - 2006 1 July - 31 August 2006 A Studio Exhibition
The exhibition in the Studio at Pallant House Gallery contains the diverse and exciting outcome of a range of projects that took place between 2001 to 2006 many of which were part of Building Bridges, a two-year access project funded through the Regional Arts Lottery Programme (RALP) designed to involve local people in the new wing being built at Pallant House Gallery. The aim of Building Bridges was to create a sense of local pride in the new wing and to creatively involve and interest the local community in its development and future programme and to ensure that physical and intellectual access to the Gallery is as wide as possible. Building Bridges worked with groups and individuals, including people with learning difficulties, people with disabilities, looked-after children, school children, the elderly, prisoners, refugees and asylum seekers. The participants had the opportunity to work with skilled arts professionals, discover the plans for the new wing, explore the collections and produce artwork of a high quality. ‘ Building Bridges is the BEST, the GREATEST idea Pallant House Gallery has had ever! Keep it up.’
Partners in Art Partners in Art aims to help people who, for reasons such as disability, illness or injury, have difficulties in accessing the arts, the Gallery and their local community. On the scheme they are placed in partnership with a trained volunteer. Many of the partnerships have shown amazing commitment and energy in their ability to continue working without a venue and on hand support. The Partners have had to maintain the momentum and quality of their work using a variety of creative solutions such as, meeting in front rooms, day centres, organising exhibitions in local café’s and libraries and hosting coffee mornings. ‘ Since I’ve been partnered with Zoë my artistic confidence has grown. I have got back into thinking creatively again – an aspect of myself that I had lost touch with before the scheme. It helps generate lots of ideas for paintings and projects and provides me with a friend – I love the fact that we can gossip about everything while producing art!‘ With the re-opening of Pallant House Gallery, the partnerships will be able to make use of the Studio, stocked with art materials and equipment; they will have the opportunity to exhibit their work within the Studio as part of Partnership of the Month and be the first to take part in the Introduction to Arts Management course. ‘ We’ve built a friendship with regard to each other’s aspirations and hopes.’ Since starting in 2002 with 7 partnerships the scheme has developed to the extent that it now supports 17 partnerships and employs a part time administrator and coordinator. 17
The Book Project The Book Project involved the Wrenford Centre, a day centre for adults with learning difficulties, HMP Ford, the Judith Adams Centre, a multi-purpose day centre and a local artist.
Youth Project Young people from three youth clubs in West Sussex, the Westergate Youth Wing, Fernleigh Centre and the Chichester Boys Club worked with three artists exploring the theme of personal identity.
Creating a book in a partnership was the focus for the Book Project, a sharing of both personal information and creative ideas. The partners, who never met during the creative process, were placed in pairs and only communicated by sending pages of their book to each other and commenting on each other’s work, drawing their inspiration from Pallant House Gallery’s collections and the new wing project.
‘ It sounded fun, so people could see what I like... we do boring stuff at school…it’s about my life, the dodgy things that happen, parties, music and friends.’
The books when first exhibited provoked a lot of interest and feedback; the frank, funny and often moving poems, paintings and letters provided an insight into the shared personal journeys of the partnerships and the participants often marginalised position in our society.
The aim of the project was to encourage young people to engage in a creative activity that allowed them to reflect on their own identity, community and life. We also wanted the Youth Project to have an element of consultation as to how Pallant House Gallery could be a part of a young person’s social and creative network. The workshops used as a starting point Pallant House Gallery’s collection of self-portraits, portraits and images of celebrity by artists such as Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi.
‘ Who said art is boring?’ ‘ The project was about the other side of you, personality…we wouldn’t do anything like this at school.’ 18
Significant Objects Significant Objects history charts a unique progress in learning projects. Starting as a six week project in 2003 working with asylum seekers, it has grown to encompass; looked-after children, prisoners, a housebound readers group, the general public and most recently school children. The people involved were asked to consider what are or were significant objects in their lives and to try and recreate these on a small scale and the stories that inspired the objects were recorded. They were given the opportunity to work with a variety of materials, air-drying clay, balsa wood, fabric, paper and card. The theme of working on a small scale or in miniature is an approach Pallant House Gallery has used before in its outreach work and ties in with our own miniature art galleries, the 1934 Model Modern Art Gallery and the more recent Pallant House Gallery Model 2000. These Galleries contain miniature sculptures and
paintings, all by established artists from the past and present such as Duncan Grant and Antony Gormley. They give a unique, fun and exciting experience of what a gallery is like. Since receiving funding through Strategic Commissioning’s Cultural Entitlement strategy, Significant Objects has been developed into a schools resource and piloted with two local schools. The resource consists of a touring exhibition of the ‘Significant Objects’ with a range of teaching resources including schemes of work and audio, video and Power Point presentations. ‘The stories are amazing and it’s hard to know what they’ve been through. They are very exciting and I look forward to making mine.’
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Identity Identity builds on the work done as part of Significant Objects with asylum seekers. Its two overall aims were to create a piece of sculpture that celebrates the different users of the drop-in service at the Portsmouth Friendship Centre and to produce a video that records people’s experience of taking part in the project and of living in Portsmouth. Recruited from a national recruitment campaign, Zimbabwean sculptor and a filmmaker were employed to deliver the project. Over 40 workshops were delivered to over 30 participants who had the opportunity to make their own sculptures as well as participate in the creation of the final sculpture. They were introduced to the
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techniques of traditional Zimbabwean sculpture that employs the use of semi-precious stones in an exciting process that transforms the initially grey stone sculpture into a gleaming jewel-like finish. In making the documentary the filmmaker worked with asylum seekers who assisted with the filming and editing of the film. ‘It’s good. Something to do, innit? Identity is managed by APASR (Arts Project for Asylum Seekers and Refugees) chaired by Pallant House Gallery and including ASAP, Portsmouth City Council, Hermitage Housing, artists and asylum seekers.
Portrait by Anne-Katrin Purkiss
The Heart of the New Gallery The Community Artwork Rachel Johnston Artist Rachel Johnston speaks of her experience of producing the Community Artwork, one of the many audience development projects carried out as part of Building Bridges. The aim of the community artwork was to create a piece which reflected a ‘sense of place’, both in terms of Pallant House Gallery and the city of Chichester itself. The 350 tiles that make up the artwork were created during a series of workshops that took place from May to September 2003. Participants ranged in age from 1 to 90 years old! Workshops were held at Pallant House Gallery and a variety of community settings including local schools and day centres. The etched copper and zinc, ceramic and mosaic used for the tiles were chosen to give an interesting textural surface and a coherent visual impact, creating a whole from many parts. As the eye wanders over the surface of the piece all kinds of associations and resonances emerge.
Many visitors used the Pallant House Gallery collection as their starting point, taking motifs from the artworks on display. There are many recognisable examples of this, ranging from Lucian Freud’s self-portrait to landscapes by Graham Sutherland. The fabric of the building was used directly in some of the tiles: metalwork from the gate and the original front door key can be seen pressed into clay. The mirror plates, chains and fixings imprinted into clay tiles, represent the practical business of the gallery. Many of the tiles reveal the personal interests and concerns of individuals living in and visiting the area. They reflect careers, personal relationships, teenage aspirations and the world as seen by primary school children. Here, each tile has significance; the mark made by a small child is as valid as the work of a professional artist. The Community Artwork will be permanently displayed on the ground floor of Pallant House Gallery where there is free public access. 21
Works on Paper Simon Martin, Assistant Curator
Giulio Romano, Head of an Eagle, c.1526-28 Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council, 1985
The Prints Room As works on paper are not only physically fragile, but also vulnerable to light levels, humidity, and acidity, they require special conditions for storage and display. With a collection of almost 3000 works on paper, Pallant House Gallery needed a new solution to achieve the aims for accessibility and optimum care of the collection. The new Prints Room will not only house a programme of small exhibitions, but also provide storage facilities in controlled environmental conditions. The Prints Room will house drawings, watercolours, collage, etchings, engravings, screenprints, lithographs and work produced in many other print techniques. Together with the Library and Archive it will provide a major resource for the study of Modern British Art. Some highlights include John Piper’s successive designs for his Chichester Cathedral Tapestry; almost 300 prints by Eduardo Paolozzi including iconic portfolios such as ‘As is When’, ‘BUNK’ and ‘General Dynamic F.U.N.’; and over 200 prints by R.B. Kitaj, which are complemented by the archive of his correspondence with 22
Chris Prater of the Kelpra Prints studio, including designs and ideas for his published prints. The collection is not only composed of 20th century British work, but encompasses Old Master drawings by artists such as Giulio Romano, Tiepolo and Watteau; woodcuts and engravings by Dürer, Rembrandt, and Hogarth; 18th century watercolours and sketches by Cozens, Cotman and Gainsborough; costume and theatre designs by Léon Bakst and Alexandre Benois, as well as prints by modern European artists such as Albers, Alechinsky, Bonnard, Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Matisse, Picasso and Roualt. The Prints and Drawings Room is the only room on the ground floor of the new gallery to have air-conditioning and light levels that can be controlled to the ideal setting for protecting works on paper and is lined with glass showcases, beneath which are custom-built storage cabinets, in which artworks will be safely housed, out of their frames, in acid-free archival boxes. Artworks that are not currently on display can be viewed by request in the Library, with assistance from the Curatorial staff.
Sarah Deere examining ‘The Prisoner’ by Rudolf Schlickter. Photograph by Simon Martin
The Conservation Project In the past, picture mounts were often made with board containing acidic chemicals, which over time can be very harmful to the artwork, causing discoloration and decay of the paper fibres. For this reason, in readiness for the re-opening of the Gallery we embarked on a programme of assessment, conservation and re-mounting of the works on paper, which has been carried out with great commitment by Sarah Deere, the Gallery’s paper conservator. Artworks have received various sensitive treatments: lifting from acidic backboards, surface cleaning and washing to reduce acidity, dirt and stains, mending of tears and consolidation of pigments. In some cases the results have been remarkable, particularly André Derain’s ‘Nature Mort au Pichet de Grès.’ The works have been re-mounted with acid-free conservation-grade board in standardised sizes, so that the artworks are in optimum conditions to preserve them for the future. When artworks are displayed
outside the Prints Room in the main galleries, they will be shown in a set of custom-made oak frames. The programme would not have been possible without the generous support of the Pilgrim Trust, which has given £5000 towards the project, and two anonymous donors, to whom we are indebted. In addition, a number of individuals have ‘adopted’ artworks, to fund their conservation and remounting. Artworks that have been ‘adopted’ recently include Ethelbert White’s ‘The Railway Bridge’, Paul Nash’s illustrations from ‘Urne Buriall and the Garden of Cyrus’ and Brett Whitely’s ‘Pillsdon Hill, Dorset.’ The cost of adopting a work varies according to the treatment required in each individual case, ranging from £50 to around £400. If you are interested in participating in the ‘Adopt a Picture’ scheme please email s.martin@pallant.org.uk or call 01243 774557.
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Left Peter Howson, Suspicious Boy, 1994 Woodcut on paper, © The Artist Above Mark Golder and Brian Thompson Portrait by Anne-Katrin Purkiss
Contemporary Scottish Prints: The Golder-Thompson Gift Since 2001 Pallant House Gallery has been supported in the acquisition of over 80 prints by Scottish artists, through the generosity of Dr Mark Golder and Mr Brian Thompson. The Golder-Thompson Gift provides a unique view of the wealth of talent emerging from Scottish art schools and some of the best work produced in the four leading printmaking studios: Dundee Contemporary Arts, the Glasgow Print Studio, Edinburgh Printmakers and Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen. The selection of the works in the Gift involves the staff of the Gallery, as well as the donors, so that the Gift has developed as a result of what Dr Golder has described as ‘constructive differences of opinion.’ He has described collecting as being ‘simply a matter of joy – you light up inside – something in you responds to what you see. For me, collecting is an exercise to train the eye and the mind. The Scottish printmakers do an excellent job in that respect and I find it very interesting.’ 24
The Golder-Thompson Gift includes the work of leading Scottish artists including John Bellany, Elizabeth Blackadder, Stephen Campbell, Peter Howson, Ian Hamilton-Finlay, David Mach, Bruce McLean, Toby Paterson, Barbara Rae, David Shrigley and Adrian Wiszniewski. The prints in the Gift employ a range of techniques, and it represents one of the best collections of contemporary Scottish printmaking south of the border, which continues to develop in exciting new directions.
THE CANON GALLERY PETWORTH
Edward Bawden, The Private Road, Signed and dated, 1949
Donald Friend “Self portrait with Peter Kaiser in Portofino”
New Street, Petworth, West Sussex, GU28 0AS Tel & Fax 01798 344422 www.canongallery.co.uk enquiries@canongallery.co.uk
The Library Jock Johnston Pallant House Gallery has put its friends through an emotional cliff-hanger in the past, oh so many months. From excitement through expectation to impatience, to irritation, frustration and finally to despair: we have had them all! And now that the waiting is over the chief emotion left to be savoured is surprise; in fact a whole package of surprises. First there is a house re-born: a sleeping beauty kissed into fresh and vibrant life. Then there is the surprise of seeing again all those familiar pictures, so long kept from our view that we had almost forgotten them; and so many of them now sparklingly cleaned and brushed up in readiness for this fresh encounter. And then the spectacular new galleries themselves surprising in their spaciousness and in their sheer elegance for which the North Pallant façade has no chance of preparing us. But there is yet another very discreet but nonetheless amazing surprise that few of us can have expected or guessed at. Tucked away in the attics all this time there has been growing year on year, in the way Pallant House Gallery has always
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known best, through a mixture of generous gifts and inspired patronage, a collection of books, catalogues, pamphlets and ephemera on the fine arts that now constitutes a library of considerable distinction. Although strong on British 20th century art and the Gallery’s artists, the collection is wide-ranging in scope, embracing European and world art, architecture and the decorative arts. By bringing the library out of the closet to the ground floor of the new wing with its dedicated reading room, the Gallery now can offer to all its visitors and to a wider clientèle of students this resource of rare quality, enabling them to enrich their experience of what the Gallery in its wider purposes offers them: an encounter with the civility of Art. The Library will be run by two Gallery staff members, Pat Saunders, who will continue to be the Gallery’s archivist, and Gillian Birchnell. Jock Johnston is a Friend of the Gallery, a Volunteer Guide and advisor to the library team.
The Garden
In 2001 the Garden Committee as a sub-committee of the Friends of Pallant House appointed a selection committee for the choice of a designer for the new garden: Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox Chairman of the Friends and the Appeal Roger Higgins Chairman of the then Garden Commitee Professor Sir Colin St John Wilson Architect Lady Egremont Garden Designer John Brookes Landscape and Garden Designer Stefan van Raay Director Five designers were invited to present their past work and to present an approach to the project. Christopher Bradley-Hole was chosen unanimously. Since then he has been awared major international projects and year after year gold medals at Chelsea. In 2004 his garden was Best in Show at Chelsea.
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An Overview of the Collections Frances Guy Curator
Graham Sutherland, Portrait of Walter Hussey, 1965 Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council (1985) Š Estate of Graham Sutherland
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Pallant House Gallery is much more than an art gallery. It tells the story of a number of individuals, all passionate collectors of art who generously donated their lifetimes’ labours to the Gallery for the benefit of the public. Since Dean Walter Hussey’s gift of works by Henry Moore, John Piper, Ceri Richards, Graham Sutherland and others that led to its inception in 1982, the Gallery has attracted the interest of other benefactors, most notably Charles Kearley and now Sir Colin St John Wilson. The core of this ‘collection of collections’ is Modern British art but other artworks figure such at the Bow Porcelain of the Geoffrey Freeman Collection. Each group of works has been formed by different impulses and lends its own character to the collection, making the experience of Pallant House Gallery engaging, insightful and unique. Walter Hussey’s collection centres around the artistic commissions he instigated at Chichester Cathedral where he was Dean from 1955 to 1977. Offered the position by Bishop George Bell, himself an advocate of modern church art, Hussey’s commissions were founded on the tenet that “Whenever anything new was required in the first seven hundred years of the history of the cathedral, it was put in the contemporary style”. His bequest includes preparatory works for the magnificent altar tapestry and festival vestments by Piper, abstract collages by Richards for a set of copes and a version of Sutherland’s ‘Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalen’. Other works reflect Hussey’s former position at St Matthews in Northampton: a Crucifixion by Sutherland based on the major painting he commissioned in 1944 and drawings and small sculptures by Henry Moore whose controversial Madonna and Child at St Matthews in part provoked Sir Alfred Munnings’ infamous attack on modern art in his address to the Royal Academy in 1949. Many of these works were given as gifts through the friendships Hussey made with the artists he commissioned. Hussey started his collecting career after a trip to the theatre in 1932 when he was inspired to buy one of the production’s costume designs for Romeo and Juliet, and later he was to buy
Charles Kearley at Hat Hill Copse
other stage designs by Léon Bakst and Alexandre Benois. His taste was informed and eclectic, encompassing prints by Old Masters such as Dürer and Rembrandt, drawings by Tiepolo and Watteau and some fine examples of 18th century British watercolour by Cozens and Varley. The generous offer of his collection to the Chichester District made upon his retirement in 1977 fuelled the foundation of Pallant House Gallery since Hussey made the gift dependent on the restoration of the Queen Anne townhouse to display his artworks. When the Gallery opened in 1982, presenting Modern British art in an historic setting, the intimate space and stimulating juxtaposition of old and new inspired another collector to make a similar gesture. Charles Kearley’s bequest is remarkably complementary to that of Hussey, featuring many of the same artists but including works by a number of continental 20th century artists such as Paul Cézanne, André Derain, Fernand Léger and Gino Severini. Kearley inherited his father’s property development business and undertook a number of projects in the 1930s including flats by the architects Myerscough-Walker and Maxwell Fry that are recognised as important examples of modernist housing. Kearley took Fry’s openplan penthouse flat in Kensal House in Ladbroke Grove for himself and his need to furnish it prompted the start of his art collection. Many of his purchases were bought on the advice of the art critic R H Wilenski, a champion of Modern British art who helped Kearley develop his taste. With a budget of around £700 a year spent mostly 29
at auction houses, the collection grew to include key works such as John Piper’s painting of a bombed-out church in Bristol, commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee, and Ben Nicholson’s ‘1946 (still life – cerulean)’, a work showing the influence of the Cubists and, in particular, Juan Gris. Kearley’s house at Hathill Copse just outside Chichester, which he commissioned architect John Lomax to build in 1975, now the home of the Cass Sculpture Foundation, was a perfect setting for his collection. His approach had an aesthetic sense of purpose and the artworks complemented the modernist interior and vice versa. With no immediate family to whom to leave his collection, his gift to Pallant House Gallery, made through The Art Fund in 1989, was prompted by nothing more than an interest in the public good. Although comprising only twenty works, the bequest made by Doreen Lucas in 1995 of her husband’s collection of Modern art contains many important works. Norman Lucas was headmaster of Midhurst Grammar School and collected works by artists connected with the area, such as Ivon Hitchens and Kit Barker, as well as sculptures by Denis Mitchell and John Milne and studio pottery, including examples by Norah Braden, Michael Cardew and Bernard Leach. The Geoffrey Freeman Collection of Bow Porcelain is probably the most comprehensive record of the output of this London factory, consisting of over 300 key examples produced between the years 1747 and 1776. Freeman began collecting late in his life with the sole intention of developing a historically important body of work, undertaking extensive research and co-authoring a book on the subject. The Bow Factory was the largest in England and the first to specifically produce porcelain, aiming to compete with Chinese and European imports. Its output would have been used in households such as Pallant House and the collection was loaned to the Gallery and subsequently offered as a bequest on the death of Freeman’s widow Norah in 1999. The Wilson Gift, also the result of a passion for collecting that Professor Wilson likens to ‘a lifelong addiction’, is an important step in 30
Portrait of Dr John Birch by Anne-Katrin Purkiss
the Gallery’s development, not only for the collection but for the building itself. Wilson’s obsession initially focussed on his contemporaries and friends, many of them associated with the Independent Group and the Institute of Contemporary Arts where he was an influential contributor. He bought works by Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi and others at the start of their careers, celebrated in Room 14 where there is a display marking the 50th anniversary of ‘This is Tomorrow’, the Independent Group’s landmark exhibition. Importantly for the Gallery, Wilson’s collection not only includes an important group of works by Sickert but exceptional examples of British Pop art and post-war figurative art, thus enabling the Gallery to present an almost comprehensive overview of 20th century British art. However there are already plans for future growth. The initial exhibition, ‘Modern British Art: The First 100 Years’ includes a trail called ‘Promised’ consisting of works that will come to the Gallery in the future. Sometimes representing only a proportion of the overall gift, these artworks have been loaned by individuals who have chosen Pallant House Gallery as the eventual recipient of their generosity. Included are examples from the collection of Dr John Birch, already on loan to the Gallery, that form a link with Hussey’s initial gift. In 1958 Hussey appointed Birch as Organist and Master of the Choristers at Chichester Cathedral. As a result of their friendship and through Hussey’s direction, Birch also began to collect Modern British art, naturally reflecting his mentor’s taste.
William Coldstream, Portrait of Colin St John Wilson, 1982-83 Wilson Loan, © Andrew Margetson
The collection includes theatrical designs from Chichester Festival Theatre and works by artists including Edward Bawden, Jacob Epstein, Duncan Grant, Ivon Hitchens, John Minton, Paul Nash, John Piper, Ceri Richards and Edward Wadsworth. Also on display in the Prints Room are works from the Golder-Thompson Gift, a collection of Scottish works on paper being developed through a fund provided by two supporters of the Gallery. This alone numbers over 80 items and includes work by established contemporary Scottish artists such as John Bellany, John McLean and Adrian Wiszniewski, and newcomers Christine Borland and Toby Paterson. The fund is an ongoing annual donation and there are plans to expand the scope of the purchases to encompass Scottish prints from the first half of the century. Finally ‘Modern British Art: The First 100 Years’ contains some highlights from two other significant art collections in West Sussex that were founded as the result of an infatuation with collecting: an internationally important group of Surrealist art based at West Dean, built up by the patron and eccentric Edward James; and a teaching collection of post-war British art formed by two contemporaries of Hussey’s, Betty Murray and Sheila McCririck of the Bishop Otter College
in Chichester. Again, these reflect the extraordinary commitment of individuals who have dedicated their lives to collecting and the wealth of high quality examples of British and international art that is held in West Sussex, of which the collections at the new Pallant House Gallery form the cornerstone. The first exhibition will be an opportunity to celebrate this and to thank those people who have selflessly offered the products of a lifelong obsession for the enjoyment and benefit of the public. Kit Barker Archive The Gallery has recently benefited from an interesting and important archive of catalogues and letters representing Kit Barker, an artist who lived in West Sussex at the end of his life, but who spent much of his early career in Cornwall and then New York and San Francisco where he mixed with an influential circle of artists, writers and critics. We are very sad to report that shortly after this generous gift was made by the artist’s widow, Ilse Barker died suddenly at their home in Midhurst. Ilse herself was an author writing under the name of Katherine Talbot, and was very much part of the same artistic milieu. She was a very lovely lady and a dear Friend and supporter of the Gallery.
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Gallery Pangolin Modern and Contemporary SCULPTURE and SCULPTORS' DRAWINGS
Second Stranger 1956 Lynn Chadwick
Gallery Pangolin · Chalford · Glos · GL6 8NT · UK · T: 00 44 (0)1453 886527 · E: gallery@pangolin-editions.com
Room by Room A Guide to Pallant House Gallery
34 Rooms 1-3 An introduction to Pallant House Gallery and the Historic Collections 36 Room 4 Britain and Post Impressionism 1860-1925 38 Room 5 Landscape and Still Life Painting Between the Wars 39 Room 6 Surrealism in Britain 40 Room 7 Church Patronage in Post-War Britain 42 Room 8 Eric Gill in Ditchling 43 Room 9 Britain and International Modernism 44 Room 12 The Impact of World War II 47 Room 13 Post War Abstraction 48 Room 14 The Independent Group 50 Rooms 15, 16 Post-War Figurative Art 52 Rooms 10, 17 British Pop and Prints 55 Contemporar y art in the Gallery 56 Making ‘Shell’ Artist Susie MacMurray on her installation on the staircase of the Queen Anne townhouse 61 Room 11 The Reserve Collection
Rooms 1 and 2 An Introduction to Pallant House Gallery
Above Francesco Fanelli, The Askew Cabinet, c.1640 Presented by Mr Ian Askew through The Art Fund (1986) Above Right Lambert Barnard, Queen Thamoris of the Massagetae from the Amberley Panels ‘Heroines of Antiquity’, c.1526 Chichester District Council, purchased with support of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (1983)
The Heroines of Antiquity look down on you as you enter the first room in the Gallery. Painted in the early 16th century, the portraits were commissioned for the residence of the Bishops of Chichester at Amberley Castle. Eight panels have survived, one of the most complete being the portrait of warrior Queen Thamoris of the Massagetae.
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The remarkable carved oak staircase in the Entrance Hall was possibly the most costly feature of Pallant House when it was built in 1712. An early portrait of Henry Peckham who co-built the House with his wife Elizabeth, hangs above the fireplace.
Room 3 The Historic Collection
Above Gawen Hamilton, The Rawson Conversation Piece, c.1730 Purchased with support of The Art Fund, and the V&A Purchase Grant Fund (1994) Above Right Circle of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of a Young Gentleman Reading, believed to be William Beckford, c.1780 Presented by Miss Jean Courtauld (1985)
This room highlights work from the Gallery’s historic collection: landscapes and still-life paintings by the Smith brothers of Chichester; The Rawson Conversation Piece by Gawen Hamilton featuring a typical early 18th century interior; portraits by Romney including that of William Hayley, poet and resident of nearby Eartham; and a remarkable oil painting by Hogarth.
Display also includes: Anon British 17th century, Dummy Board Figures of John and Anne Churchill William Hogarth, The Beggar’s Opera, Act III, 1729 George Romney, Portraits of Lord and Lady Gough, 1783 George Smith, Winter Landscape, c.1765
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Room 4 Britain and Post-Impressionism 1860-1925
Left Walter Sickert, Jack Ashore, c.1912 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © Estate of Walter R. Sickert. All Rights Reserved, DACS Above Ivon Hitchens, Curved Barn, 1922 Presented by the artist (1979) © Estate of the Artist
The story of Modern British Art begins with Walter Sickert who revolutionised Victorian and Edwardian art with his paintings and etchings of what he called the ‘magic and poetry’ of everyday life, focussing on seedy bed-sits, Cockney music halls and the urban landscapes of the French town of Dieppe. The room explores the cross-Channel influence of European Post-Impressionist artists on the British avant-garde and includes Paul Cézanne, André Derain, Albert Gleizes, Henri Hayden, Aristide Maillol, Jean Metzinger and Gino Severini alongside David Bomberg, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Mark Gertler and Matthew Smith.
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Display also includes: Walter Sickert, Maple Street, c.1915 Aristide Maillol, Leda, 1900 André Derain, Nature mort au Pichet de Grès (Still life with Stoneware Jug), 1910 David Bomberg, Players Ghetto Theatre No.2, 1919 Roger Fry, Southern France, n.d. Mark Gertler, Near Swanage, 1916 Paul Cézanne, Les Grands Baigneurs, c. 1896-97
Left Gino Severini, Danseuse No.5, 1915-16 Kearley Bequest through The Art Fund (1989) © ADAGP, Paris and DACS London Above Spencer Gore, The Garden Path, Garth House, 1910 Hussey Bequest Chichester District Council (1985) © Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK
Duncan Grant, Bathers by the Pond, c.1920-21 Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council (1985) © 1978 Estate of Duncan Grant. Courtesy Henrietta Garnett
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Room 5 Landscape and Still Life Painting Between the Wars Left Paul Nash, Wittenham, 1935 Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council (1985) © Tate, London Below Left Eric Ravilious, New Bungalow, c.1930 Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council (1985) © Estate of Eric Ravilious, all rights reserved, DACS Below Right Christopher Wood, Lemons in a Blue Basket, 1922 Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council (1985) © Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK
Much of British art in the inter-war period is characterised by a return to traditional subjects and a mood of nostalgia illustrated here by Paul Nash’s romantic watercolour of Wittenham Clumps and the still-life paintings of Christopher Wood and Henry Lamb. Even David Bomberg rejected his former Vorticist style in favour of a softer approach in his view of Jerusalem.
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Display also includes: Ethelbert White, The Railway Bridge, 1925 Henry Lamb, Plums on a Dish, 1939 Matthew Smith, Landscape, near Cagnes, c.1935 David Bomberg, The South East Corner, Jerusalem c.1926 John Nash, Park Scene, 1936
Room 6 Surrealism in Britain
Left Eileen Agar, Self-Portrait, 1938 On loan from a private collection © Artist’s Estate Above John Armstrong, The Open Door, 1930 On loan from a private collection © Artist’s Estate
This room with its four-poster bed explores Surrealist dream-worlds and fantastical visual imagery from the unconscious mind, featuring the work of artists such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Man Ray and Leonora Carrington which were collected by the legendary Surrealist patron Edward James who lived at West Dean near Chichester, as well as works by British Surrealists such as Eileen Agar, John Armstrong, Edward Burra and John Tunnard.
The display includes: Man Ray, Portrait of Edward James, 1937 René Magritte, Le malediction, 1937 Leonora Carrington, Portrait of the late Mrs Partridge, 1947 Salvador Dalí, Lobster Telephone, 1938 Edward Burra, The Duenna, 1930
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Room 7 Church Patronage in Post-War Britain
Left Graham Sutherland, The Crucifixion, 1947 Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council (1985) © Estate of Graham Sutherland Above Geoffrey Clarke, God as the Centre of Nature,1953 Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council (1985) © Geoffrey Clarke
This room tells the story of Bishop Bell and Dean Hussey, patrons of contemporary church art. Bell supported Jewish émigré Hans Feibusch from whom he commissioned the Baptism of Christ for Chichester Cathedral. Works commissioned by Hussey include the Madonna and Child by Henry Moore for Northampton and Graham Sutherland’s Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalen and Piper’s tapestry for Chichester.
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Display also includes: John Piper, The Head of Christ Graham Sutherland, The Eagle of St John (Study for Coventry Cathedral Tapestry) Hans Feibusch, Baptism of Christ, 1950-51 Henry Moore, Maquette for the Northampton, Madonna and Child,1943 Graham Sutherland, Portrait of Walter Hussey, 1965 William Coldstream, Dr Bell, Bishop of Chichester, 1954
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Room 8 Eric Gill in Ditchling
Left Eric Gill, Christ the King, c. 1935 West Sussex Record Office Above Eric Gill, Ascension, 1918 West Sussex Record Office
Eric Gill, who had studied at Chichester’s Theological College before training as a calligrapher and stonemason, moved to Ditchling in 1907 where a community of artists formed around him who were influenced by his Roman Catholicism and strong stylistic approach to engraving and carving. Many of these works have been borrowed from the West Sussex Records Office where there is an archive of Gill’s work and letters.
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Display also includes: Eric Gill, Gingerbread Madonna and Child, 1919-20 Eric Gill, Ariel Learns Celestial Music (Study for Broadcasting House Reliefs), 1931 David Jones, Leopard, 1930 Eric Gill, Paris Girls, 1926
Room 9 Britain and International Modernism
Left Edward Burra, Market Day, 1930 On loan from a private collection © Estate of the Artist, c/o Lefevre, London Above Ben Nicholson, 1946 (still Life- cerulean), 1946 Kearley Bequest through The Art Fund (1989) © Angela Verren Taunt
This room explores the connections between British artists and the work of European modernists including Paul Klee, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso. It includes the remarkable 1934 Model Modern Art Gallery housing over 20 original miniature artworks by artists including Vanessa Bell, Frank Dobson, S.W. Hayter, Augustus John, Paul Nash, John Skeaping and Edward Wadsworth.
Display also includes: Edward Wadsworth, A Limestone Quarry, 1942 John Piper, Three Bathers Beside the Sea, 1934 Henry Moore, Suckling Child, 1930 Fernand Léger, L’Engrenage Rouge (Nature Morte en Rouge et Bleu), 1939 Wyndham Lewis, Figures in an Interior, 1934 Pablo Picasso, Femme nue assise et trois têtes barbues (Seated Nude and Three Bearded Heads), 1934
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Room 12 The Impact of World War II
Above Henry Moore, Two Sleepers, 1941 Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council (1985) © Reproduced by permission of the Henry Moore Foundation Right John Minton, Landscape near Kingston, Jamaica, 1950 Hussey Bequest, Chichester District Council (1985) © Royal College of Art
Artists commissioned as part of the war-artists scheme of World War II are represented here including John Piper and Graham Sutherland, and Henry Moore’s drawings of Londoners made in the Underground shelters. After the War many artists became reflective in mood or turned abroad for inspiration, as with John Minton who revelled in the lush tropics of Jamaica.
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Display also includes: Jack Butler Yeats, The Ox Mountains, 1944 Ivon Hitchens, Flowers, 1942 Graham Sutherland, Thorn Head, 1947 Keith Vaughan, Bathers on a Beach, 1948 Lucian Freud, Self-Portrait with Hyacinth, 1947-48
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Room 13 Post-War Abstraction
Ivon Hitchens, Red Centre, 1972 Kearley Bequest through The Art Fund (1989) © Estate of Ivon Hitchens
In the 1950s and 1960s many British artists produced non-representational work, influenced by the American Abstract Expressionists and European ‘Tachists’ such as Sam Francis and Jean Paul Riopelle. The painterly abstraction of Prunella Clough, Patrick Heron, Ivon Hitchens and William Scott contrasts with the hard-edge abstracts of Paul Huxley, Mark Lancaster, Victor Pasmore, Jack Smith and William Tucker.
Display also includes: Prunella Clough, Brown Wall, 1964 Alan Davie, OM No.10, 1972 Barbara Hepworth, Single Form (Nocturne), 1968 Anthony Hill, Relief Construction, c.1956-60 Patrick Heron, Black and White: April, 1956 Jack Smith, Inner. Outer, 1965 Denis Bowen, Colonel Glenn, 1962
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Room 14 The Independent Group
Nigel Henderson, Screen, 1949-52 and 1960 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © Estate of Nigel Henderson
The forerunners of Pop Art, the Independent Group analysed 1950s culture in the widest sense, breaking down barriers between fine art and mass media imagery, taking inspiration from advertising, sci-fi comics, mechanics, abstract painting, and architecture. The room marks the 50th anniversary of their seminal exhibition ‘This is Tomorrow’ in 1956.
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Display also includes: Richard Hamilton, Interior Study [c], 1964 Richard Hamilton, Hers is a Lush Situation, 1958 Eduardo Paolozzi, Standing Figure, 1953 Eduardo Paolozzi, Evadne in Green Dimension, from BUNK, 1952/1972 Eduardo Paolozzi, Contemplative Object, from 'This is Tomorrow', c.1951
Michael Andrews, Portrait of Roger Daltrey, (15.3 x 15.3 cm), 1981
IMPORTANT PAINTINGS Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Tony Bevan, David Bomberg, William Coldstream, Alan Davie, Peter de Francia, Derrick Greaves, Patrick Heron, Leon Kossoff, Robert Medley, Rodrigo Moynihan, Walter Sickert, Jack Smith, Stanley Spencer
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Rooms 15 and 16 Post-War Figurative Art
Left David Bomberg, Last Self-Portrait, 1956 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © Colin St John Wilson Above Michael Andrews, Colony Room 1, 1962 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © June Andrews
There has been a strong figurative tradition based on perception in British post-war art. The close observation of William Coldstream’s portraits and nudes contrasts with David Bomberg’s expressionist search for ‘the spirit in the mass’ in his moving Last Self-Portrait and the textural work of Frank Auerbach. Michael Andrews’ iconic Colony Room features a cross-section of these artists in the infamous Soho drinking haunt while the politically engaged art of Peter de Francia, such as his powerful triptych A Diary of Our Times which represents a torture scene from the Algerian War, provides a counter to the visionary paintings of Victor Willing.
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Display also includes: Frank Auerbach, Oxford Street Building Site, 1959-61 William Coldstream, Portrait of Colin St John Wilson ,1981-83 Michael Andrews, Thames Painting: The Estuary, 1994-95 Peter de Francia, A Diary of Our Times, 1974 R.B. Kitaj, Girl Braiding Her Hair, 1999 Victor Willing, Self-Portrait at 70, 1987 David Bomberg, Tajo and Rocks, Ronda (The Last Landscape), 1956-57
Left Victor Willing, Swing, 1978 Wilson Loan © Estate of the Artist Below Peter de Francia, The Ship of Fools, c.1972 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © Peter de Francia
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Rooms 10 and 17 British Pop Art and Prints
Left Peter Blake, The 1962 Beatles, 1963-68 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © The Artist Above Patrick Caulfield, Portrait of Juan Gris, 1963 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © Patrick Caulfield
The Wilson Gift features iconic works by the new generation of artists that emerged fresh from art school in the late 1950s and early 1960s to make a lasting impact on the British art scene. Peter Blake reflects a prevailing passion for Americana and popular culture that gave birth to British Pop art. Patrick Caulfield experimented with household paints and helped to elevate screen-printing from a commercial to a highart medium. Richard Hamilton’s Swingeing London ‘67 documents the arrest of Mick Jagger for the possession of drugs in nearby West Wittering and Colin Self’s painting Waiting Women and Two Nuclear Bombers is another social comment, this time about Cold War politics and the nuclear bomb. 52
Display also includes: Peter Blake, Girls with Their Hero, 1959 Peter Blake, Siriol, She-Devil of Naked Madness, 1957 Patrick Caulfield, View of the Chimneys, 1964 David Hockney, Kaisarion with All His Beauty, 1961 Colin Self, Figure No.2 (Triptych), 1971 Eduardo Paolozzi, Wittgenstein in New York, from 'As Is When', 1965 R.B. Kitaj, Specimen Musings of a Democrat, 1961 Howard Hodgkin, Grantchester Road, 1975 Jann Howorth, Mae West Dressing Table, 1965 Claes Oldenburg, London Knees, 1966-68
Left Joe Tilson, 1-5 (The Senses), 1963 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © The Artist Below Right Richard Hamilton, Swingeing London ’67, 1967-68 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © The Artist Bottom Colin Self, Waiting Women and Two Nuclear Bombers (Handley Page Victors), 1962-63 © Colin Self (DACS)
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Michael Craig-Martin 13 May – 3 September 2006
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Portrait (grey), 2006, Transparence (blue), 2005, Acrylic on aluminium panel
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Contemporary Art in the Gallery
Above Andy Goldsworthy, Hearth Stone, 2002 Purchased with the assistance of the Friends of Pallant House, The Art Fund and the Resource/V&A Purchase Grant Fund (2003) © Andy Goldsworthy Above Right Joy Gregory, Cassandra, from the Heroines of Antiquity, 1999-2000 Commissioned by Pallant House Gallery, through the Arts Council England South East ‘Making Art Matter’ Scheme © Joy Gregory
Contemporary artworks are displayed around the Gallery, such as Langlands & Bell’s The Ministry (Health and Education) on the main staircase of the new wing. Other works respond to the architecture and collections, such as Andy Goldsworthy’s Hearth Stone and Susie MacMurray’s Shell in the Entrance Hall, and Joy Gregory’s photographic series Heroines of Antiquity which were commissioned in response to the 16th century Amberley Panels.
Contemporary artworks include: Langlands & Bell, The Ministry (Health and Education) ,2002 Dhruva Mistry, Regarding Guardian 2, 1985 Judy Clark, Imaginary Friends, 1998 Wendy Ramshaw, Maquette for Pallant House Gallery Gates, 2004 Susie MacMurray, shell, 2006
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Making 'shell' Susie MacMurray Talks About Her Installation
Photograph by Anne Katrin-Purkis
When I first visited Pallant House Gallery I wasn’t sure what I would find. Photographs can only give you a partial clue to what a space will feel like. My installations often bring together associations and ideas connected to materials with the history or atmosphere of the site I’m working with. It’s not always just the formal histories that draw me. Often it can be some quirky little detail that sparks off a train of exploration. In the case of Pallant House it was just that. Frances Guy had been showing me round, chatting about the history of the place, telling me all about the Peckhams and how the house came to be built. Elizabeth Peckham particularly fascinated me. How poignant it was that she threw herself so wholeheartedly into building such an impressive house, while her marriage turned out to be an equally spectacular disaster. It seemed as though the Peckhams must have channelled all the passion that was missing from their relationship into making their beautiful building. But then, as we stood on the staircase discussing the ongoing construction of the new wing,
Frances happened to mention in passing that lots of shells were found in the ground when the builders were digging the foundations – the remnants and detritus from the mediaeval buildings on top of which the original house was built. I went home, armed with books on the collection, the history of the house and a real sense of how remarkable it must have been to walk in off the mediaeval streets of Chichester and encounter that dramatic entrance hall and staircase. What a statement! No expense was spared. The house itself seemed like a vessel lined with aspirations; a container to express passions perhaps unfulfilled in the less concrete areas of the Peckham’s lives. It is the hard shell that remains as its occupants live their messy human lives and then pass through. Installation is always a process of negotiation, of feeling your way along. With sculpture or painting it is often possible to consider a subject in isolation. 57
Susie MacMurray and her assistants Photograph by Anne-Katrin Purkiss
Site-specific work, particularly in a historic space, requires the artist to be sensitive to the building on a number of levels. Of course to the history and ideas, but also more practically, ways must be found to make the work with integrity while conforming to ever more rigorous health and safety standards and taking care not to do anything that will damage the fabric of the building. Then there is sourcing materials. I’m my own worst enemy in that I often use things that can’t be easily bought or made. To get 20,000 joined, partially open mussel shells required weekly trips to a local fish restaurant in Chester to collect their rubbish. For over 3 months I spent 3 days a week sorting, discarding, scraping, bleaching, boiling and stacking what I calculated should be enough shells to cover two walls of the stairwell. Finding 100 metres of the most opulent red silk velvet possible was comparatively straightforward, involving internet research and a trip to Berwick Street in London to haggle with different shops to get the best price. Realising an installation of this type is a real team effort. I was incredibly lucky to have five dedicated helpers, three of whom were degree students doing work placements. We stayed in a self-catering cottage outside Chichester and worked predominantly 14-hour days to complete the piece in a week. Guidelines were 58
marked with a spirit-level; each shell was painstakingly attached with a low temperature glue gun and then stuffed with a 3-inch square of velvet. It was a labour of love, in a way akin to the obsessive attention the Peckhams lavished on the house when it was first built. As I write I have not yet seen the finished installation as it will be when the Gallery re-opens. We left to return to Manchester whilst the scaffolding and protective plastic sheeting were still in place. Even with only a partial view I am pleased with how richly the work inhabits the space and with the affinity it has with the many local flint walls so distinctive to Chichester. I hope it will function as site-specific response not only to the house, but also to the wider local landscape. When it comes to dismantling the piece in a year’s time, the shells will be gently popped off the walls and stored for possible future use. Some will break, but enough will survive. The velvet will fade in the sunlight during its year in-situ and will have to be discarded, but that is an appropriate metaphor. The walls of the stairwell will be re-lined and re-painted, and it will be as if shell had never existed. The house will go on. A book on 'shell' peice with a text by Dr. Catherine Harper is published by Pallant House Gallery priced £5.95
Room 11 The Reserve Collection
Clockwise from top left Howard Hodgkin, The Vist, 1963 © Howard Hodgkin Graham Sutherland,, Landscape in the South of France, c.1950 © Estate of Graham Sutherland Kit Barker, Gathered Reeds, Grande Brière, 1969 © Ilse Barker Derrick Greaves, Flower Piece, 1969 Presented by an anonymous donor (2003) © Derrick Greaves Frank Auerbach, To the Studios, 1977 © The Artist, Courtesy Marlborough Fine Art
The displays in the Lecture Theatre are of artworks in the Gallery’s collection that are not included in the first exhibition, due to the fact that they are not chosen for the stories in the other rooms. These include a body of work by Ivon Hitchens who had a studio in nearby Petworth and was inspired by the landscape of West Sussex; more paintings by some of Britain’s best known artists including Frank Auerbach, Patrick Caulfield, Duncan Grant and Graham Sutherland; and examples from the Gallery’s collection of Studio Pottery.
The display includes: Kit Barker, Llanmadoc, Gower, 1965 David Bomberg, Talmudist, 1953 Prunella Clough, Disused Land, 1999 Duncan Grant, The Gazebo, Charleston, 1940 Ivon Hitchens, November Revelation, 1073
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Art books to complement your collection
Hbk 0 85331 824 7 £35.00
Hbk 0 85331 917 0 £35.00
Hbk 0 85331 802 6 £42.50
‘Comprehensive, well illustrated, meticulously researched... this study is a welcome arrival.’ Artists & Illustrators Magazine
‘This is a beautiful book on a great artist… this is the monographic survey the artist has long deserved.’ The World of Interiors
‘an attractive, informative and (an increasing rarity these days) well-written account of Nicholson’s life and work.’ Modern Painters
Pbk 0 85331 944 8 £25.00
Hbk 0 85331 918 9 £35.00
Pbk 0 85331 880 8 £19.99
Hbk 0 85331 759 3 £19.99
Available from the Pallant House Gallery bookshop or direct from the publisher www.lundhumphries.com
The Bookshop Nick Higbee
Some years ago, Pallant House Gallery asked Chichester Gallery Art Books, who have been selling art books for over fifteen years, whether we would be interested in helping set up the gallery shop. From the beginning we all had an idea of the type of shop we had in mind: a unique bookshop which modelled itself on the famous art book shops of the past such as Zwemmers in London, a shop which stocked both new, out of print and remaindered titles, and was able to offer a range of books and art magazines which complemented and reflected the importance of the Gallery’s own collection. The new shop will primarily focus on books on Modern British Art, though it will also cover international contemporary art. We hope to be able to offer the most comprehensive range of books on Modern British Art outside of London and possibly in the country. Pallant House Gallery Bookshop will also stock artists’ books. These are art objects in the form of a book, usually printed in limited numbers. We will be 64
working closely with Ron King and his Circle Press, who have been making beautiful books for the past thirty-five years. The Gallery Bookshop will also be working closely with other artists, and will be specially commissioning prints and multiples. We are particularly excited to have had a piece specially created by Peter Blake for the opening of the shop and Gallery, as well as two pieces by younger artists, Paul Catherall and Susie MacMurray. The enormous growth of the art market over the last fifty years has been reflected in a massive increase in the number of art books being published. Every month hundreds of new books and catalogues are published throughout the world and every month many of them go out of print. The demand for out of print books is such that they fetch extraordinarily high prices. This is the case for books on Modern British Art, a growth area in publishing in recent years. The recent Royal Academy exhibition catalogue on Frank Auerbach published only in 2001 at around £25 is now selling for over £100, whilst the complete catalogue of the prints
The Bookshop Managers Caroline Down and Mark Griffiths
of John Piper published in 1996 would cost (if you could find a copy) over £500! To the average book buyer these prices seem incredibly high. However, they must be seen in context with the prices these artists fetch in the art market. If you see a painting or print at an auction or gallery, and you want to verify its provenance, you would need to check up with the most authoritative and up-to-date book on the artist. This applies to all artists whether Old Masters or Modern. The standard work on Sisley published in 1959 exceeds £2,500 and that on Bonnard £3,500. That is why it is always best to buy important art books as soon as they have been published. With the benefit of digital technology, the price of these specialist books has come within the reach of the average book buyer. We would recommend any one interested in Modern British Art to buy the major recent study on William Scott by Norbert Lynton – priced at £39.95 or the new study of the Complete Paintings of Edward Wadsworth by Jonathan Black at only £35. Both these books will become collectors’ items once they go out of print.
Portraits by Anne-Katrin Purkiss
The shop will also be selling a wide range of “remaindered” art books. For example we will be offering most of the books from “The British Sculptors and Sculpture” series at reduced prices. The series includes major studies on sculptors such as Robert Adams, Frank Dobson, Leon Underwood and Kenneth Armitage. Each volume was originally published at £60.00. Our price for each volume will be £35.00. Other books we are offering will be the recent study Modern Life & Modern Subjects. British Art in the Early Twentieth Century by Lisa Tickner. Published at £40.00 we will be selling copies at £9.95! Pallant House Gallery Bookshop will hopefully be a focal point for all those interested in art and art books. The shop will also offer a mail order service, and provide up to date information on all relevant publications on Modern British Art through the Pallant House Gallery website.
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Artists’ Books and Circle Press Emma Hill
Ronald King, Alphabet II, 1983 © Ronald King
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The following article by Emma Hill was written on the exhibition 'Cooking the Books' by Ron King and Circle Press at the Yale Center for British Art, USA in 2002. Pallant House Gallery will be showcasing work by Circle Press in the new bookshop. Ron King’s retrospective at the Yale Center for British Art celebrates a remarkable career that spans 35 years of making, collaborating and publishing. The artist emerges from this show like a many visaged character from one of his books - playful, complex and possessed of a distinctive voice. Cooking the Books shows King’s major publications since 1967 alongside working drawings and maquettes from his recently donated archive. It consolidates his reputation as a major innovator of the artist’s book and a significant influence in establishing the legitimacy of screen-printing as a medium for artists during the 1960s in Britain. The exhibition also reflects Kings’ important role as an artist-publisher through exhibits of other artists’ books, published by his Circle Press. The imprint was formed to bring together a group of like-minded people interested in book art and collaborators have included John Christie, Derrick Greaves, Tom Phillips, Birgit Skiöld and Ian Tyson, amongst over 100 artists and writers published. King’s approach has always been nonprescriptive, practical and generous. Circle Press has an authentic sense of artist-authorship, taking their forms and visual language from the individuals involved. In King’s most recent bookwork Tabernacle the poet Roy Fisher describes one man’s ‘magnetic attraction to sleeping books’. His reference is a literal one, for King has uncovered, through a series of chance findings and strange coincidences, a family lineage in printing and publishing, which can be traced back to 1735, and to which he pays a dark and eloquent tribute in this book. Whatever the influences are that have led or compelled King to make bookworks, he has
Ronald King, King James Bible, The Song of Soloman, 1968 (second edition 1990), © Ronald King
found a structure which enables him to show, as he himself describes it, ‘the whole world in a contained space’. The world he reveals overflows with sensation, continually in flux; and he has pushed the possibilities of the book form to arrive at works that express, in their graphic language, his multifaceted experience of consciousness. Ron King resists the idea of a signature style or an ‘instantaneous visual Trademark’ and his methods include spare, minimal cut-outs in the Alphabet books, the wonderful embossed wire ‘drawings’ of Turn Over Darling, to the vastly complex, sculptural theatres of The Left Handed Punch and Anansi Company. From his first works, which combined letterpress text with the speed and fluidity of screenprint, through his attempts to ‘lift’ his characters from the page in his pop67
up books and puppets, towards the sculptural printer’s chest which house Tabernacle, King has always tried to find a medium and structure that best suits the ideas behind each book rather than to impose a pre-given working method. Andrew Lambirth’s catalogue text rightly draws attention to King’s strength as a collagist. King draws with collage and has used a method of developing paper stencils from cut-up images, culled from magazines and photographs, to create symbols, masks and characters. He is a remarkable teller of visual stories and collage allows him to unite disparate elements and layer up narrative to communicate the different languages and voices of his characters. In the seminal Left Handed Punch, King presents a version of the world seen as an anarchic play, full of humour and violence. Reprinting passages of an anonymous comical tragedy published by Routledge & Sons in 1860, he imposes Roy Fisher’s wry off-stage commentary as hand-written text within the book. The device allows different viewpoints from which to respond to the mayhem of the dramatis personae’ who are made as articulated puppets attached to the page. The fragmented nature of collage is perhaps an understandable approach from an artist whose own cultural background encompasses the very different influences of a multi-lingual early childhood in Brazil and the effects of an adolescence spent in an English boarding school. King’s work, as Ian Tyson wrote in 1972, has always been concerned with identity, the public and the private, the mask of personality. Looking through the early publications, it seems no surprise that he has aligned his own visual language to great texts which explore the nature of man: Chaucer’s Prologue to The Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Each of these works is animated, in different ways, by graphic representations of characters who take on a kind of totemic significance. The photographic screenprints of Macbeth are particularly important in examining the genesis of the later work. The images are mask-like and sculptural on the page. They have a human presence and yet are make entirely from images taken from inanimate visual sources. Each is activated by particular photographic references which personify the character - Lady Macbeth’s 68
light bulb balls, the terrifying leather helmet of the Murderer, or the Porter assembled from a pipe, a pouch and tobacco leaves. King’s characters have weight and personality but they are an assemblage of fragments. ‘He processes the metamorphoses of images to an abstraction of visual morality or literary idea and consequently the opulence of a chance fragment or a mundane object becomes an analogy of the human condition when represented in his terms’ (Ian Tyson). One of King’s most abstract works is Bluebeard’s Castle where the sense of human presence is communicated solely through the voice of the text and through the form of the book itself. Interested in using pop-ups, he found, in this story, an idea which would make sense of a series of sculptural structures - the seven secret chambers of Bluebeard’s castle. The books was King’s first collaboration with Roy Fisher who recognised that the subject was already represented in the series of visual encounters King had created, in maquettes of divided rooms and sculptural forms springing from the opening of folded pages. Fisher’s contribution to the books has often been to provide a focus for the intense, theatrical flamboyance of King’s visual imagination. In Bluebeard’s Castle his text is haunting and austere, fully realised by the artist’s graphic language. King, this exhibition shows, is an artist who combines the most dextrous graphic skill with chance and collaboration, to make art that is integrated and audacious. His books have a magician’s sleight of hand. Whether it is a paper flower that opens to reveal a poem of intense eroticism, or a printer’s chest that holds a family’s history, he makes the enormously complex look simple. Emma Hill is the director of the Eagle Gallery (EMH Arts), 159 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3AL, UK. Tel: +44 (0)20 7833 2674 First published in Printmaking Today, 2002. We are very grateful to the author and initial publisher for allowing us to reproduce this text.
Pallant Publications Modern British Art at Pallant House Gallery This beautifully designed book explores key themes in twentieth century British art history with reproductions of a staggering display of works by: Frank Auerbach, Ben Nicholson, Peter Blake, David Bomberg, John Piper, Patrick Caulfield, Ceri Richards, Lucian Freud, Bridget Riley, Richard Hamilton, Barbara Hepworth, Graham Sutherland, Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Paul Nash and many more. Based on one of the most important collections of Modern art in Britain at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester and written by its Director and curators, this is far more than a book on a collection but a scholarly and fascinating contribution to the history and evolution of Modern art. Paperback £12.95 Hardback £25
Oil Paintings in Public Ownership: West Sussex Public Catalogue Foundation Public Catalogue Foundation book on West Sussex includes every oil, tempera and acrylic painting in public ownership in West Sussex. It illustrates more than 300 paintings from the Pallant House Gallery collection, as well as an informative essay on the history of the Gallery. Essential for anyone interested in Pallant House Gallery and indeed, paintings in West Sussex, purchases of this book from the Gallery will benefit the painting conservation fund as the total cover price is retained by us. £15.00 Both titles are available from the Bookshop at Pallant House Gallery.
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Art for All Andrew Churchill, Marketing & Commercial Manager introduces the new multiples and prints commissioned by the Gallery
Peter Blake - pop art 4 enamel badges (36mm x 36mm each) Boxed, signed and numbered From an edition of 2000 £25
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Following the phenomenal success of Bobbie Rainbow, the print Blake created for the Gallery in 2002, we are delighted that he has created a new multiple for us. The designs of the four badges will be familiar to anyone interested in the Pop Art of Peter Blake, including his cover for Paul Weller’s Stanley Road album. Blake has used badges in his work for more than 40 years, the most famous example being ‘Self Portrait with Badges’ held by Tate. Despite this he has, until now, never designed his own badges and he relished the opportunity of doing so for us.
paul catherall - pallant 4 Colour lino print (38cm x 28cm) Signed and numbered From an edition of 250 £65
Paul Catherall’s prints contain a healthy acknowledgment of the past. Posters of the 1930s and 1940s and William Nicholson are all influences but the images, partly due to their resolutely modern subject matter, never sink into nostalgia. Using a traditional print media need not lead to mimicry or sentimentality. He trained as an illustrator rather than a printmaker and Catherall continues to take on commercial work as well as pursuing his own prints. He does not see this as an unwanted distraction, rather the two practices inform each other. Known for his depictions of some of London’s best buildings he came to make his own print of the Trellick Tower only after using it as part of a series of advertisements designed to encourage voting in the Mayoral elections. The choice of buildings has varied and includes an equal number of most hated and best loved, but in the end, there has to be something about the building which captures his interest, after a period of observation, photography and drawing. For his print, to celebrate the opening of the new Pallant House Gallery, Catherall has decided to focus on where the two buildings meet, surely the biggest challenge of the project, with a print that could be interpreted as an abstract design. Perhaps appropriately for a print of a building that has been the subject of intense discussion and dispute, the previous buildings Catherall has focussed on have themselves been subject to a split in opinion: the Southbank, the Trellick Tower and the ‘Gherkin’ have all divided opinion and no doubt will continue to do so. If anything, Catherall’s prints are an advocation of bold contemporary design, remembering that even St Paul’s Cathedral was contemporary once.
Top Paul Catherall, Pallant, 2006 Above Paul Catherall in his studio Portrait by Anne-Katrin Purkiss Opposite Page Top Peter Blake in his studio Portrait by Anne-Katrin Purkiss Opposite Page Bottom Peter Blake, Design for POP ART badges, 2005
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Susie MacMurray - Shell Silver-plated mussel shell lined with velevet Boxed, signed and numbered. From an edition of 250 £75
To accompany the major installation on the staircase of the historic house, the artist has created a multiple for sale at the Gallery. Using the same velvet which lines the shells in the installation, this time the shell is on it’s own, but silver-plated. This beautiful object is mounted into a display box. There is more on the artist’s work in this issue of the magazine.
Still available We have limited numbers of the original multiples designed for the Gallery. Peter Blake’s Bobbie Rainbow is priced at £100 and Langlands and Bell’s Frozen Sky is £50.
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Eduard B.A.S.H 1971 Victor Pasmore 83 x 60 For an ecology of the mind Edition 1994 Etching from an edition of 90 Signed 112cm x 41cm There a Signed, numbered and dated by the artist in pencil colourw Offer Price £750 please s when o Special Please visit our website to view our range of work from Modern British artists: £225 in Terry Frost, Mary Fedden, Sandra Blow, Kyffin Williams, Eduardo Paolozzi, Patrick Caulfield, Peter Blake and many more… www.mannroquero.com – 07710 824133 - 0208 1330041
To order or for more information Email: steve@mannroquero.com Answerphone: 01223 512512 (prompt reply)
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West Dean warmly congratulates Pallant House Gallery on the completion of their new galleries
Graduate and Postgraduate Diplomas SCULPTURE, PAINTING & DRAWING, TAPESTRY leading to MA VISUAL ARTS (validated by University of Sussex)
Some bursaries available. For the Diploma prospectus contact: T +44(0)1243 818299 / 811301 E diplomas@westdean.org.uk West Dean College, Chichester, West Sussex, PO18 0QZ WWW.WESTDEAN.ORG.UK
The Pallant The Restaurant
All those who are looking forward to coming to view the amazing works of art at Pallant House Gallery, have now got the opportunity to excite their taste buds as well. The Gallery now has a restaurant, called, not surprisingly, The Pallant. The Restaurant The Pallant will be open to the public whenever the Gallery is open, serving morning coffee and light eats, a contemporary lunchtime menu, using local suppliers and a traditional afternoon tea menu, with a modern slant. In the summer months, visitors to the Gallery can soak up the rays in the newly landscaped garden, with views of the back of Pallant House and the new gallery, while enjoying their meal. The Pallant will be available for private parties in the evening, while the Gallery itself can be hired for larger events. The Boss The moving force behind this new venture is Peter Combes, who has had many, many years experience running his own company providing outside catering and event organising for both private and corporate clients. His company regularly organises events for private clients who want small, top-quality, intimate dinner parties, for the bride’s mother who wants ‘something special’ for her daughter’s wedding reception, or for the company reception, entertainment and dinner for a couple of thousand. He will put all that experience into motivating a young, but extremely keen, team who have just been appointed to make The Pallant the place to go in Chichester.
The Manager We are very pleased to appoint Lindsey Mellor as manager of The Pallant. She has had lots of experience in a management capacity, nearly all of it in the catering world. As well as her undoubted experience, despite having to cope with a ‘The Apprentice’-style selection process, she impressed us with how eager she was to get started and she obviously can’t wait to get the show on the road. The Chef Jonathan Ward is a young thrusting chef who is very much a local boy. After leaving Chichester High School he has had various appointments in his climb up the ladder of experience even the ‘experience’ of working for Gordon Ramsay! We all look forward to enjoying his artistic culinary creations.
Patrick Caulfield, Reserved Table, 2000 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund, © Patrick Caulfield
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smartgallery
A new gallery showing contemporary paintings, ceramics and sculpture 24th Sept to 4th Nov 12.00-6.00pm Tuesday-Saturday or by appointment
Paintings by Holly Frean Ceramics by Carolyn Genders Paul Jackson Christy Keeney Chris Lewis Annabel Munn smartgallery, Dumpford Farmhouse, Trotton, Petersfield, Hants GU31 5JN Tel 07767 268895 info@smartgallery.org.uk www.smartgallery.org.uk
Magic Realities Simon Martin Assistant Curator
An exhibition by Pallant House Gallery marking the creative partnership of Mary Fedden and her husband Julian Trevelyan opens in Petworth this summer. Simon Martin, Assistant Curator talks to Mary Fedden in her studio beside the River Thames.
Above Props and finished paintings in Mary Fedden’s Studio Photograph by Simon Martin
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Right Julian Trevelyan, The Harbour (Schools Print), 1946 Presented by Mr Lewis Croome (1989) © Mary Fedden
Artists studios are always fascinating places, but Durham Wharf is simply enchanting. Set on the banks of the River Thames at Chiswick, it was the home and studio of the artists Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan throughout their marriage, and since Trevelyan’s death in 1988 Fedden has continued to live and work there. Now in her nineties, she is one of the best-loved Royal Academicians whose instantly recognisable paintings are firm favourites each year at the R.A. Summer Exhibition. Durham Wharf does not seem to have changed much since Fedden and Trevelyan married in 1951. From the outside it looks rather like an abandoned boatshed, but passing through the sea-blue gate is like entering a world entirely of its own, somehow ageless, yet at the same time vibrant and alive with a quirky sense of creativity and lively intellect. All around are curious and eye-catching objects: folk art, studio pottery, Staffordshire dogs, bold Indian textiles, and books on art and poetry - much as one might expect for the home of an artist known for paintings of domestic still- life arrangements. As she gazes out of a window that is literally framed by Trevelyan’s cancelled etching plates, transformed and reused to create a decorative panel, Fedden tells me, “I never get tired of looking at the river.” Considering that she has such a marvellous view from her window, Fedden rarely paints from the motif, perhaps because the river and its traffic were her husband’s artistic territory and formed the subject of many of his innovative prints and paintings. “I’m happier painting still-life than landscapes. It’s more natural to me to do it,” she explains. Julian Trevelyan has deservedly been described as ‘the quiet driving force behind the etching revolution of the 1960s.’ A brilliant teacher, he inspired a generation of post-war British artists to explore the potential of printmaking - amongst his students at the Royal College of Art were David Hockney, R.B. Kitaj and Norman Ackroyd. When Trevelyan discovered the Wharf in 1934
he had recently returned from Paris where he’d trained at S.W. Hayter’s great etching studio ‘Atelier 17’, working alongside such luminaries as Max Ernst, Oskar Kokoshka, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. Between the home and the studios is a tumble of English cottage garden flowers, perhaps destined to be immortalised in paint: geraniums, honeysuckle, lupins, nasturtiums, poppies, roses, and the less familiar ‘Hitchens plant’, given to Trevelyan by Ivon Hitchens in the 1930s. This gentle scene seems a world away from the days of the highspirits of their annual Boat Race parties which were attended by an extraordinary mix of their friends from London’s artistic and literary circles including Ceri and Frances Richards, Cecil and Elizabeth Collins, Kathleen Raine, Julian Huxley, F.E. McWilliam, Bertrand Russell, Feliks Topolski, Stephen Spender, Robert Medley and Rupert Doone. Fedden describes trips to St Ives, staying with Patrick Heron and meeting artists such as John Tunnard and Barbara Hepworth: “a very austere lady, rather frightening.” It is not easy to imagine the meeting of the formidable sculptress and Fedden, whose paintings represent a softer, domestic strain of English Modernism. Mary Fedden’s consciously stylised work is an intelligent response to the work of artists she greatly admires: Paul Nash, early Ben Nicholson and his first wife Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, and the sense of pattern and form in the work of Europeans such as Pierre Bonnard, Henri Hayden, Henri Matisse and Giorgio Morandi, whom she and Trevelyan once visited for tea during one of their holidays in Italy. 79
the Royal College about 50 years ago. I hadn’t seen him for years and he saw this little bottle he’d given me in one of my paintings, so he wrote to me and said, ‘You’ve still got that sake bottle!’”
Mary Fedden in her studio Portrait by Anne-Katrin Purkiss
“I liked him very much, but I don’t know how he could spend his whole life painting bottles,” she comments. Her distinctive ‘staging’ of objects, has its roots in her training at the Slade in the 1930s, where she was taught by the Russian stage designer Vladimir Polunin who had worked for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. For a period during the Thirties and Forties Fedden painted sets for Sadler’s Wells and the Arts Theatre, but she confesses, “You’ve got to be too accommodating in the theatre. You’ve got to please actors and producers, and design clothes… I wouldn’t have been at all accommodating.” Although Fedden’s paintings depict arrangements of objects, each element is painted separately. “I don’t make a composition,” she explains.” I just have objects here and I put them on the canvas and if they don’t work I change them. I never put them together before.” She points to a work on her easel: “This one is all fruit, but I’ve got lots of objects lying about in the studio, all sorts of things and I use them over and over, all the time. I’m very fond of them. I suppose it’s because you can put anything together and make a still-life.” You don’t have to look far to see the mute stars of her paintings. All around her studio are recognizable objects, like familiar friends, each chosen for its beauty or personal significance: pebbles, shells, brightly coloured gourds, feathered baskets with mottled birds eggs, jugs, bottles, teapots and even a little tin of Hopjes – a Dutch brand of toffee that was Trevelyan’s favourite. “Almost everything I’ve got relates to somebody,” she tells me. “In fact, in a little painting I’ve got in the Summer Show in the Royal Academy there’s a little sake bottle which was given me by an ex-student of mine at 80
Drawing forms the basis for Fedden’s paintings. “I have mountains of sketchbooks,” she tells me. “Sometimes out of twenty drawings one of them might turn into a pain ting. I can’t do without them. I also do big drawings as objects in themselves, but mostly I just scribble away.” The opportunity to draw often comes during holidays. “Julian and I both taught at the Royal College and as soon as term ended each summer we tended to go abroad. We went to India, Russia, Africa, America, nearly every island in the Mediterranean – Crete, Sardinia, Sicily. We were great travellers…” Trevelyan’s presence is still tangible in the studios: above a cabinet there is an odd papier-mâché horse’s head, a relic from his last involvement with the Surrealists: the 1938 May Day procession for which he, Roland Penrose and others had marched through London wearing masks of Neville Chamberlain made by the sculptor F.E. McWilliam, followed by an ice-cream tricycle on which was rigged a superstructure of wirenetting culminating in the aforementioned horse’s head. However, she often actively assisted in the printmaking process, and when she shows me his etching press she explains, “Julian always said it was exactly the same design that Rembrandt used. I used to turn the handle for him. It was very good exercise!” “It’s a lovely studio,” Fedden enthuses as she turns to go back to the house with her cat, ‘an affectionate darling,’ at her feet. “People think it’s far too big for me as I’m too old, but I fill every inch of it.” She still works there everyday, and yet it seems that something of Trevelyan’s creative spirit is still there too. Magic Realities: The Artistic Marriage of Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan The Exhibition Room, Petworth House 15th July-2nd August 2006 11-5pm (closed Thursday and Friday) There is a Friend’s visit to this exhibition on Wednesday 26 July.
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BRIGHTON 2006 ART FAIR
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FRIDAY 29 SEPTEMBER - SUNDAY 1 OCTOBER� CORN EXCHANGE
CHURCH STREET
BRIGHTON
Forthcoming Exhibitions
7 October 2006 7 January 2007 The Wonderful Fund: Collecting Art for the New Millennium
31 March10 June 2007 Poets in the Landscape: The Romantic Spirit in British Art
A collection of international visual art by more than 64 artists including Richard Billingham, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Julian Opie, Grayson Perry and Gavin Turk. The exhibition is part of an international tour to Morocco, Holland and the U.K. initiated by Pallant House Gallery.
‘Poets in the Landscape’ explores the creative links between poetry, the pastoral vision and British art in the work of Romantic artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the ‘Neo-Romantic’ artists of the mid-20th century.
The Wonderful Fund was developed by curators Vanessa Branson and Prue O’Day for the Londonbased collectors group with an ambition to support young artists and reflect the events and attitudes of the first five years of the new Millennium. It touches on many subjects and themes including the responses to international terrorism and the Afghanistan war, to more personal accounts of contemporary culture. It is unashamedly subjective and embraces a rich variety of media and artists.
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Taking as its starting point William Blake’s visionary period in Sussex, when he was working for the Chichester poet William Hayley, the exhibition features the poetically inspired art of Blake and his Romantic contemporaries and followers, including Edward Calvert, John Flaxman, Samuel Palmer, George Romney and Joseph Wright of Derby. It considers Blake and Palmer’s influence on the ‘Neo-Romantic’ artists and poets whose work embodied a search for a ‘Paradise Lost’, including Michael Ayrton, Cecil Collins, John Craxton, David Gasgoyne, Geoffrey Grigson, John Minton, Ceri Richards, Graham Sutherland, Dylan Thomas and Keith Vaughan.
20 January18 March 2007 William Roberts: England at Play A unique figure in the history of Modern British art, William Roberts (1895-1980) created distinctive paintings throughout his career that focus on the leisure pursuits of the English working class- in parks, cafés, the cinema, the pub, the races and the seaside. His work captured the idiosyncrasies and social interactions of the English with humour and affection, and provides a panorama of modern life in England. This exhibition features major paintings from the 1920s to the 1970s, which chart both Roberts’s artistic development from his English Cubist origins to the monumental rounded figures of his mature work, and the way in which life in England changed dramatically in the 20th century.
Above William Roberts, Sunbathing, 1936 On loan from a private collection © Estate of John David Roberts Reproduced by permission of the William Roberts Society Centre John Minton, Landscape with a Harvester Resting, c.1945 Promised as a future gift (Dr John Birch Collection) © The Artist, Courtesy Maureen Paley, London Far Left Wolfgan Tillmans, Jarvis, 1998 © The Artist, courtesy Maureen Paley, London
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Portrait by Alex von Koettlitz
Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox Chairman of the Appeal and Friends Interview by Amicia de Moubray
One of the many remarkable aspects of the re-opening of the new Pallant House Gallery is the astonishing amount of money raised by the Fund Raising Appeal Committee under the very able Chairmanship of Lady Nicholas, who is also Chairman of the Friends of Pallant House. Initially her brief was £6 million, but to date the total raised is £11 million which includes a generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and some public money. Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox was an inspired choice to head up the appeal committee, energetic, extremely charming and dynamic she has worked indefatigably ‘I’ve used every opportunity I could to blast on about the gallery. These days there is so much competition with hundreds of other equally deserving causes’. Modestly she says ‘I think we are quite pleased with the result’. She adds ‘We are very proud not to have employed a professional fund raiser. It just shows what a small dedicated staff can achieve. They are all fantastic’.
Stefan van Raay describes Lady Nicholas ‘As very hands on and professional’. It can’t have always been an easy role. At times it must have felt like ‘selling a hot balloon’ says van Raay. ‘The delays meant a lot of re-organising and a lot of fund raising to keep the show on the road’. ‘Obviously it was extremely difficult as the Gallery was largely out of action for any fund raising events. The fire regulations prevented more than 50 people in the building at any time’ says Lady Nicholas. It was important to get across that ‘Pallant House is not just a little provincial gallery, it is a much bigger thing’. Pallant House Gallery is clearly held in great affection by many people as the Friends’ loyalty over the last few years testifies. Although the Gallery was closed for much longer than anticipated ‘it is extraordinary that we didn’t lose any Friends. They all care passionately about the place’ says Lady Nicholas. The Young Friends have even quadrupled their membership from 22 to 122. 85
This is a terrific achievement. Their unswerving allegiance will be rewarded in the exciting programme of forthcoming events. The fund raising campaign has been marked by a series of highly original events encapsulating the ethos of Pallant House and its strong commitment to the new. It is not surprising that they clearly captured the imagination of the Gallery’s supporters. For example £22,000 was raised as a result of a sponsored walk over the South Downs behind West Dean and Cocking Hill following the trail of 13 chalk stone markers by the celebrated environmental artist, Andy Goldsworthy. Another inspired idea was the A4 Art Auction. Stefan van Raay wrote to 40 artists asking them to produce an A4 sized picture to donate in aid of the fund raising appeal. Happily the majority of the artists accepted including Peter Blake, Julian Opie, Antony Gormley and Mary Fedden. Initially the pictures were exhibited at Gallery 27 in Cork Street for a week. ‘It was amazing more than a 1,000 people came to the gallery’ says Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox. Next the pictures were put on display at Bonham’s for two days during the viewing of their Modern Art Sale. Princess Alexandra attended a reception helping to promote both the auction and the Gallery. Lady Nicholas is a Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess. Finally the pictures were auctioned by Bonham’s for over £40,000. Probably the most unusual and boldest of all the events was an evening drinks party attended by several hundred people in the ultracontemporary Rolls Royce factory, just outside Chichester designed by Nicholas Grimshaw. The unlikely combination of the production line and the stunning building created a surprisingly glamorous ambience to a venue which will long be remembered by all those present. The Gallery has lent some works on paper to the VIP room at the Rolls Royce factory. Thousands of people have given money to Pallant House Gallery, the majority will remain anonymous but those who have given £1,000 are commemorated with their names etched in glass panels on the main staircase whilst those who have 86
Pallant House Gallery Appeal Event at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd, Goodwood,Tatler, March 2006
donated £10,000 have their names etched in stone. £85,000 was raised in the last few weeks before the opening. Lady Nicholas had the inspired idea of writing to the above donors asking them to match their original contributions. Now less than £100,000 remains to be raised. ‘One of the great bonuses of the new gallery is the space that it provides as a venue, seating 150 people with a maximum capacity of 600’. This augurs well for future fund raising events. As everyone well knows galleries can never afford to sit back on their laurels. ‘We hope to double the number of Friends’ says Lady Nicholas with customary brio. In the 1960s when Walter Hussey, the celebrated Dean of Chichester was commissioning pieces to be performed in the Cathedral, people used to say ‘You must go to Chichester, the music is so exciting. As from 1 July the refrain will be ‘You must go to Chichester, Pallant House Gallery is so exciting’. Thanks to Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox and all those connected with the Appeal Committee, the Friends and the Gallery staff, this will surely be the case.
Friends Membership Beth Funnell Honorary Membership Secretary Subscriptions Increase The subscriptions to the Friends will go up on 1 July as agreed at last year’s AGM. It will be the first increase since 1999 and as I’m sure you will all appreciate costs have risen considerably in that time. We now have a wonderful new Gallery of which we can be justly proud and financial support from the Friends will be crucial to its long-term well-being.
Gift Aid – A Rare Gift Gift Aid is a gift from the Chancellor of the Exchequer and gifts don’t come rarer than that. So, if you pay tax and have not yet signed up for Gift Aid, please do so. We get 28p from the Inland Revenue for every £ you give us. That means a single subscription of £24.00 becomes worth £30.77 and it all mounts up. Last year we collected an extra £4,300 for subscriptions alone.
We shall continue to keep our costs to a minimum. The Friends’ organisation is run predominately by volunteers with support from a few paid part-time staff so that money from your subscriptions goes to support the Gallery.
You must pay an amount of Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax at least equal to the tax that that we reclaim on your donations in the appropriate tax year. (Currently 28p for each £1 you give). If your circumstances change, or you no longer wish to Gift Aid your subscriptions or donations, please tell us.
The new annual rates are: Friend £24 Joint and Family £37.50 Student Friend £10 (£20 for 3 years) Young Friend (under 16) £10 Gallery Club £300 minimum Patron of the Friends £1,000 minimum These increases do not affect Life Members
If you would like a Gift Aid Declaration form, please contact me at the Friends’ office
Help us Keep Costs Down Pay by Standing Order We want to make sure that as much of your money as possible is used to support the Gallery. This means keeping the costs of running the Friends to the minimum. You can help us hold our administrative costs down by paying by Standing Order; it may also be more convenient for you. From 1 July for one year, we are offering a discount of 10% off one year’s subscription if you sign a Standing Order form. You do not need to do anything at the moment. We will send you a form with your next renewal letter. Of course, you could help us even more by signing a Standing Order form but forgoing the discount.
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Your Gallery Needs You! We as Friends are all so proud of Pallant House Gallery; the wonderful collections that have been bequeathed or loaned and of course the professionalism and energy of our Director and his staff. There is however “a price to pay” since the operational costs of such an enlarged Gallery have increased substantially. We are indebted to the many Friends who have kindly made lump sum contributions over the years together with legacies received from individual estates. There are now additional ways you can help us meet our running costs by becoming a member of one of the following: GALLERY CLUB In addition to the Friends benefits, as a Gallery Club member you would also receive: • Invitations to private views. • Invitation to an exclusive annual reception • with the Director and Curators. The minimum subscription is £300 per annum. PATRON In addition to the benefits of the Gallery Club you would also receive: • Invitation to the Director’s Annual Dinner with • a distinguished guest speaker. • Inclusion in list of patrons of the year. The minimum subscription is £1,000 per annum. Subject to meeting the eligibility of Gift Aid requirements the Gallery will benefit by a further 28p in the £. Further details can be received from: Keith Mitchelson (01243) 531615 (01903) 214640 kdmitchelson@btinternet.com
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Introduce a Friend and Enter a Prize Draw It is a very exciting time for the Friends. We now have a wonderful new Gallery and a beautifully restored house and we want to attract as many new Friends as possible. We’ve set ourselves a target of a 50% increase in membership in the first year of opening , that is 800 new Friends. Perhaps, we can achieve more then 1000 new members. We are confident that people will want to be part of this splendid centre of British Art but you can help too. Tell your friends. Invite them to join and we’ll enter your name into in a prize draw to be drawn at the Friends Christmas party later this year. The prizes will be £100 for the first name drawn out, £75 for the second and £50 for the third. The prizes have been sponsored by The Investment Solutions Group of Companies and we are very grateful to Keith Mitchelson for his generous support. We have waited so long for the reopening of Pallant House Gallery, help the Friends make its opening year a fantastic success.
A Good Companion Tribute to Stephen King Maggie and John Pollock Our introduction to Stephen King was purely social. He and his wife Sally, with their two small children Sam and Matty (long before their daughter Sophy was born), had rented one of the Yachtsman’s Cottages in Bosham for their summer holidays. We were their immediate neighbours with a similar family structure. It was the summer of 1965, long before climate change was invented and one feared to be drowned by drought! Sally and Stephen were taking sailing lessons and his parents made up the party and were in attendance as baby-sitters. The long evenings, the warm weather, the barbecues and congenial chatter with interesting people was a perfect recipe for forming a lifelong friendship, now so sadly terminated by Stephen’s untimely death. Others, better informed friends, will pay tribute to Stephen’s career in advertising, his commitment to the arts and dedication to good causes. All these facets of his personality gradually became revealed in his conversation that summer. Here was a ‘great’ man in the best sense of the word. So you will forgive us, perhaps, for our memories of him as a ’great’ person who has given us, and we are sure many others, the treasure of his remembrance.
Portrait by Anne-Katrin Purkiss
Stephen King was a member of the Friends Executive Committee from 1999. He also provided invaluable support and advice on marketing, applying the years of experience gained from being at the forefront of developments in the advertising industry to a cause he was passionate about. He will be greatly missed by all at the Gallery. 89
Friends Events: Past, Present and Into the Future Julia Cooper, Chairman of Events
From 1982, when the Gallery opened to the public, an Events Committee was established by the Friends to initiate and organise a wide-ranging programme of arts-related talks and cultural visits for the interest and enjoyment of members. This enterprise, under the direction of a hard-working volunteer committee, has gone from strength to strength. Talks by distinguished speakers, visits to art galleries, museums, special exhibitions, sculpture parks, country houses and gardens and a vineyard, together with cultural tours within the United Kingdom and abroad, have all been undertaken and been much appreciated by those participating. Often, too, we have been able to access venues of unique interest not normally open to the public always an intriguing prospect.
In collaboration with the Education and Outreach department of the Gallery, some events are organised specifically for the Young Friends, including workshops and family days. We aim also to hold events which may be of particular interest to Student Friends.
The programme of events is ongoing throughout the year and offers plenty of opportunities for the Friends to meet socially and informally. Our annual Christmas Party is one such occasion, when demand for tickets is always high. We take great pleasure in welcoming new Friends and getting to know them through our events.
From the re-opening of the Gallery, the Chairmanship of the Events Committee will be in the extremely capable hands of Mrs Jillie Moss. We welcome her most warmly and wish her and her committee well in their stewardship of the events programme.
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All events are listed, along with a booking form, in the Gallery Magazine, which is sent automatically to all Friends quarterly. The magazine will also be on sale in the Gallery Shop. With the re-launch of the Gallery, space and facilities will be vastly improved, making this an especially exciting time for events at Pallant House Gallery. We shall look forward to meeting as many of you as possible and are always delighted to receive suggestions for future events.
Events Guided Tours of the Gallery Pallant House Gallery now offers a programme of special interest themed tours of the collection, enabling visitors to focus on different aspects of the collection. These tours are led by our team of twenty volunteer guides. The following tours are an exclusive opportunity for Friends of Pallant House to be the first to sample the new programme of guided tours. Highlights of the Collection Pallant House Gallery has one of the best collections of Modern British Art in the country, together with historic, international and contemporary art. This tour will explore the Queen Anne townhouse and new galleries, highlighting some of the treasures in the collection. Free of charge, but please book in advance. There will be two tours on each of the days below, at 11am and 3pm. The tour takes approximately 50 minutes Wednesday 5 July, Thursday 6 July, Wednesday 12 July, Thursday 13 July
Specialist Tours Portraits: Images and Identity Wednesday 9 August 10.30am – 12 noon, to include coffee Thursday 10 August 3pm – 4.30pm, to include tea
Landscape and Modernity Wednesday 16 August 10.30am -12 noon, to include coffee Thursday 17 August 3pm - 4.30pm, to include tea This tour highlights the changing way landscape has been depicted in art from the 18th century pastorals by the Smith Brothers of Chichester to contemporary environmental sculpture by Andy Goldsworthy. Tickets: £4
Still Life: The Language of Objects Wednesday 13 September 10.30am – 12 noon, to include coffee Thursday 14 September 3pm – 4.30pm, to include tea The tour will explore how artists have used still life as a means of expression and experimentation. It will include historic still life paintings, and consider the symbolism and significance of particular objects, ‘memento mori’ and the way still life has been used as a vehicle for artistic innovation in the 20th century. Tickets: £4
Pallant House Gallery’s permanent collection includes many portraits from the 16th century to the present day. The influence of such movements as Cubism and Expressionism, and the contrasts between the close observation of artists such as William Coldstream and the tactility of Frank Auerbach will also be examined. Tickets £4 Lucian Freud, Self-Portrait with Hyacinth in Pot, 1947-48 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © Lucian Freud
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Gallery Talks
Friends Visits
Eric Gill and Chichester Fiona MacCarthy Thursday 27 July at 6pm Lecture Room, Pallant house Gallery
Magic Realities: The Artistic Marriage of Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan, at Petworth House Wednesday 26 July 1.30pm to 6pm approx.
Fiona MacCarthy has been highly acclaimed for her critical biography ‘Eric Gill’. Gill was a sculptor, wood-engraver and typographer of genius, and a man of startling contradictions in his personal life. This talk traces Gill’s development from his early years in Chichester.
The Magic Realities exhibition has been organised by Pallant House Gallery as part of the 2006 Petworth Festival. It explores the creative partnership of the artists Mary Fedden RA and Julian Trevelyan RA, who were married in 1951. There is an article about this exhibition in this magazine.
Tickets: £7 including wine Book signing: Following the talk, Fiona MacCarthy will sign copies of her biography of Eric Gill.
British Pop Art Marco Livingstone Thursday 14 September at 6pm Lecture Room, Pallant House Gallery
Simon Martin, who has curated Magic Realities, will give an informal talk about the lives and work of the artists. After visiting the exhibition there will be free time to explore the antique shops and private galleries of Petworth. More information will be supplied with your ticket. Tickets: £12 (includes entry to the exhibition and Petworth Pleasure Grounds, but not to the main house)
Marco Livingstone is an art historian and independent curator who has written extensively on Pop Art and more widely on contemporary painting, sculpture and photography. Tickets: £7 including wine Book signing: Following the talk, Marco Livingstone will sign copies of his book on Patrick Caulfield.
Above Mary Fedden, The Yellow Truck, 1960 Estate of Lady Charlotte Bonham-Carter, through The Art Fund ( 1991)© Mary Fedden Left Peter Blake, Girls with their Hero, 1959-62 Wilson Gift through The Art Fund © Peter Blake
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Gallery Highlights Tours
Office Use
Number of Tickets
BOOKING FORM
Cost
Living with Modernism 2 Willow Road and Highpoint One Tuesday 8 August 8.30am to 6.30pm approx
Wednesday 5 July: 11am
Wednesday 5 July: 3pm
Thursday 6 July: 11am
Thursday 6 July: 3pm
Wednesday 12 July: 11am
Wednesday 12 July: 3pm
Thursday 13 July: 11am
Thursday 13 July: 3pm
This Tours are Free
A rare opportunity to view some of the finest examples of domestic Modern Movement architecture in Britain; this visit begins with 2 Willow Road in Hampstead, home of the architect Ernö Goldfinger. Now a National Trust property, it is complete with its original furnishings and an outstanding collection of modern art. There will be a short film about Goldfinger, followed by a tour and then an opportunity to view an exhibition about Goldfinger’s involvement in the seminal exhibition ‘This is Tomorrow’ in 1956.
Specialist Tours Portraits £4
Thursday 10 August: 3pm
Wednesday 16 August: 10.30am
Thursday 17 August: 3pm
Tickets: £30
Still Life £4 Wednesday 13 September: 10.30am
Thursday 14 September: 3pm
Interior of 2 Willow Road Photograph by Simon Svard
Wednesday 9 August: 10.30am
After a brief stop to view the exterior of Lawn Road Flats (1933-34) in Hampstead, designed by Wells Coates, we will visit Highpoint One in Highgate, designed by Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton (1933-34). We have arranged an exclusive visit to a private apartment.
Landscapes £4
Gallery Talks Eric Gill and Chichester Thursday 27 July £7 British Pop Art Thursday 14 September £7
Tate Modern - Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction Tuesday 26 September 8.30am to 6.30pm approx
Friends Visits Petworth: Fedden & Trevelyan Wednesday 26 July £12
This exhibition follows Kandinsky’s intriguing journey from figurative landscape painter to modernist master. Over 50 paintings and 30 works on paper will be presented, many of them for the first time in the UK, making this an unmissable opportunity to see so many of this modernist master’s most influential works together.
Living with Modernism Tuesday 8 August £30 Kandinsky Exhibition Tuesday 26 September
Tickets: £27 or £25 (concessions)
£27/£25(concessions)
Further information about these visits will be provided with your tickets.
Total Cost
MORE EVENTS OVER THE PAGE > 93
PAYMENT DETAILS
CHEQUE PAYMENTS Cheques should be made payable to Friends of Pallant House. Please leave the actual amount open in case we are not able to provide all the tickets you request. For security “Not above £.........” can be written in the lower left-hand corner and we will advise you of the amount for your cheque. Please cut off the completed form from the Pallant House Gallery Magazine and send, with a stamped addressed envelope and payment to: Mrs Win Kitchener Friends Office Pallant House Gallery 9 North Pallant Chichester PO19 1TJ
Your Details Mr / Mrs / Miss / Ms First Name Surname Address
This is Tomorrow: 50th Anniversary Conference Saturday 23rd September 2006 11am – 4.30pm The Lecture Room, Pallant House Gallery The seminal exhibition ‘This is Tomorrow’ took place at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in August-September 1956. One of the most influential exhibitions of the 20th century, it included 12 ‘environments’ each of which were created by a group of artists, architects, designers and cultural thinkers. Each group constructed an installation that reflected in some way their view of the contemporary environment, obscuring the distinctions between art, architecture and popular culture, and providing a model for collaboration between different spheres of creativity. The 39 participants included Lawrence Alloway, Theo Crosby, Ernö Goldfinger, Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi, Victor Pasmore, Toni del Renzio, Alison and Peter Smithson, James Stirling, William Turnbull and Colin St John Wilson. This one-day conference will include a prestigious line-up of speakers including: Prof Sir Colin St John Wilson, Prof Barry Curtis, University of Middlesex Prof Sarat Maharaj, Rudolf Arnheim Professor at Humboldt University, Berlin Prof David Alan Mellor, University of Sussex Prof Anne Wealleans, Kingston University It will include a rare opportunity to see Lorenza Mazzetti’s celebrated film Together (1956) which featured the artists Michael Andrews and Eduardo Paolozzi against the background of the bombed warehouses and street markets of the late 1950s. Tickets: £25 to include morning coffee and tea in the afternoon
Postcode Daytime Telephone Friends Membership Number Email Address
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For more information and to book tickets please contact Simon Martin, Assistant Curator Tel: 01243 774 557 Email: s.martin@pallant.org.uk
Theway we were
Our ancestors’ homes and the way they built them, their animals and the way they raised them, their crops and flowers and the way they grew them... Explore the Museum’s village, working watermill and superb collection of rescued buildings set in glorious Sussex countryside. Visit the lakeside café, take the dog for a walk (on a lead please), bring a picnic and choose your spot (by the millpond is perfect). Children are free to run, play and learn. Come and discover six centuries of our rural heritage. WEALD EALD & DOW L AN D W & DOW N L AN ND OPPEENNA IAR I R EU M O M UMS U E US M
Singleton, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 0EU There are special events throughout the year. 01243 811348 www.wealddown.co.uk
CHICHESTER FESTIVITIES 30 June - 16 July 2006
FIREWORKS CONCERT . TRIBUTES TO ELVIS, QUEEN & ABBA . OPERABABES . JULIAN CLARY . THE SIXTEEN BLACK DYKE BAND . KATE ADIE . CHRIS PATTEN PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA . BLAZIN’ FIDDLES RAGEH OMAAR . JACQUES LOUSSIER . BILL FRINDALL CASCADA . ERIC SYKES . THE HOLLIES . FINGHIN COLLINS CHICHESTER SINGERS . RICHARD E GRANT . KING SALSA NASH ENSEMBLE . JEFFREY ARCHER . BEN WATERS SIMON CALLOW . LIONEL ROGG . CHRIS BARBER BIG BAND . HARMONIC CONVERGENCE ANNA PAVORD JEREMY ISAACS . MAX ARTHUR . BRENDAN POWER TRIP MICHAEL DOBBS . SZABO TRIO . ANNE DE COURCY PRUNELLA SCALES . CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL CHOIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER . ETHIO BAND . QUINCE QUARTET EDNA HEALEY . PATRICK MOORE . LONDON CONCHORD ENSEMBLE . MILES KINGTON . SHE’KOYOKH DAVID CAIRNS . PAINT THE CITY ... AND MUCH MORE!
Box Office 01243 780192 www.chifest.org.uk
W EALD & DOW N L A N D OPE N A IR MU SEUM
Fresh Flowers Everyday 2 Eastgate Square Chichester West Sussex 01243 789559 www.sandlflowers.co.uk
Introduction to Staff and Trustees STAFF MEMBERS
TRUSTEES
Mr Stefan van Raay, Director
Mr Roger Reed, Chairman of the Trustees
Mr Iain Ballantynem, Custodian Mr Edward Beharie, Caretaker Mrs Elaine Bentley, Events Coordinator Mr Bob Bentley, Technician Ms Gillian Birchnell, Librarian Mr Tom Brodie, Technician Mr Andrew Churchill, Marketing and Commercial Manager Miss Joanne Connolly, Custodian Mr Kenneth Davies, Technician Ms Caroline Down, Bookshop Manager Ms Amy George, Bookshop Assistant Ms Frances Guy, Curator Mr Mark Griffiths, Bookshop Assistant Manager Ms Monica Jervis, Finance Assistant Mr Peter Jordon, Technician Mr Nick Kennard, Custodian Mrs Corry Lilley, Custodian Mr Simon Martin, Assistant Curator Mr Carl Maxim, Marketing Assistant Ms Gilly McCadden, Receptionist Mrs Anna Moore, Finance Assistant Mrs Linda Neve, Finance Officer Mr Paul Newton-Lewis, Custodian Mrs Nell Paton, Friendsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Secretary Mrs Emma Peradon-Jones, PA to the Director Mr Hamish Sandys-Renton, Bookshop Assistant Miss Pat Saunders, Librarian Ms Cyd Standing Bookshop Assistant Mr Marc Steene, Outreach and Education Officer Mr Stefan van Raay, Director Ms Michele Villeneau, Receptionist Miss Helen Ward, Receptionist Mr Matthew Weekes, Corporate Services Manager Miss Nick Worthy, Receptionist Mr David Wynn, Graphic and Web Designer
Lord Dholakia obe dl Mr Tony French Mr Frank Garrett Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox lvo Mr Peter Headey, Honorary Treasurer Mr Angus Hewat, Honorary Legal Advisor Mrs Caryl Hubbard cbe Mrs Ann Janes Mr Charles Rolls Mrs Anne Scicluna
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FRIENDS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox lvo ,Chairman Mrs Julia Cooper Mrs Beth Funnell, Honorary Membership Secretary Mr David Goodman Mr Peter Headey, Honorary Treasurer Mr Angus Hewat, Deputy Chairman Mrs Valerie Hopkins Mr Peter Lomas, Honorary Secretary Mr Keith Mitchelson Mr Alan Thurlow Mrs Diana Welland
EVENTS COMMITTEE Mrs Julia Cooper, Acting Chairman Mrs Jillie Moss, Chairman from 1 July Mrs Margaret Brown Mrs Veronica Campbell Mrs Anne Hewat Mrs Prue Hopkinson Mrs Win Kitchener, Secretary Mrs Jackie Street
Thank you Arts Council England Ian Askew Trust Lady Avery Jones David and Mary Bowerman Vanessa Branson Chichester District Council Keith Clark Max and Eden Davies Lord and Lady Egremont The Eranda Foundation EsmĂŠe Fairbairn Foundation The Robert Gavron Charitable Trust J P Getty Jr Charitable Trust Lewis and Jacqueline Golden Nicholas and Mary Gordon Lennox The Worshipful Company of Grocers Paul Hamlyn Foundation Peter Headey Heritage Lottery Fund Angus and Anne Hewat Adrian and Jean Higham Alan and Diane Hill
David and Prue Hopkinson and the Poling Charitable Trust The Idlewild Trust Stephen and Sally King James and Clare Kirkman The Henry Moore Foundation Peter Moores Foundation Museums, Libraries and Archives Council Angie Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Rourke Pallant House Friends Denise Patterson The Pilgrim Trust Charles and Tineke Pugh The Duke of Richmond Simon Sainsbury and The Monument Trust The Schroder Family SEMLAC David and Sophie Shalit The Bassil Shippam and Alsford Trust The Trusthouse Charitable Foundation West Dean College Weston Family Colin St John Wilson and family The Wyfold Foundation
The opening events are sponsored by Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd
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Final Voice Our Partnership in Art Sally Mather Gary and I joined up in the second wave of Partners in Art. We circled warily and politely around each other at first and then relaxed in to a happy routine of working in my kitchen with the limited range of tools and materials available. In our first session Gary showed me his book of ceiling decorations made from off cuts of coloured plastic. They were complex affairs and carefully executed and I took a long time enjoying them. For the final ten minutes I suggested a quick pencil portrait of each other. Gary announced that he ‘didn’t do people’ almost as a matter of principle but agreed to have a go. We sat at opposite ends of the table and each time we caught the other’s eyes we giggled. I had worn earrings like chandeliers to help overcome the people problem but ‘I don’t do earrings’ and that was final. The results showed us to be very different in style. Gary was neat, precise and detailed. I was more hit-and-miss and impressionistic. This continued to be the case. However Gary was a quick worker and I the slow one. Mindful of the hope that pairs might execute a work together at one session I produced some boards and suggested that we do this. Gary adamantly refused preferring to work independently which was in accord with my own preference. In this instance I pursued the board idea with disastrous results and Gary found a technique he loved and made a huge success with which he admitted he was well pleased. For him this initiated a series of works which have each carried a slight deviation from the original. It is my recognition of the difference, so slight that it could be overlooked, that sends him in to shouts of delighted laughter. With a later picture I commented on the sky space as being a good move away from one full of birds at which he promptly filled the sky with birds. He also firmly named the pictures ‘Birds’ with a wicked grin. 98
Portrait by Marc Steene
We began our diary in fine form but had to abandon it as it took too much time from independent work. Gary is now making a concertina book which may give us an idea for a way forward. The other avenue we have not followed is being out and about, but we did go to see the big international art exhibition at the Minerva Theatre. Again our looking reflected stylistic differences. Gary roamed around quickly and I much more slowly. However he assured me that he was not bored and we each chose our favourite picture and said why. With the small opportunities we have had here we have made a start and it has been important in cementing our relationship. Now we look forward to the expansion that a studio workshop will bring in personal space, materials and techniques. It will also give us more time if we wish to extend any session. With the thought of the galleries full of pictures to enjoy and to inspire, the future looks very exciting. If this scheme may interest you please contact the Gallery.
REPRESENTING THE ESTATE OF PAUL NEAGU Flowers East 82 Kingsland Road London E2 8DP T: +44 (0)20 7920 7777 F: +44 (0)20 7920 7770 gallery@flowerseast.com www.flowerseast.com