Telford 250 | A Mile of
Style | Soviet Times: Russian Times 1917 -
2007 | London Now - City of Heaven,
City of Hell | Floating London |
Spanning the River: Artists' Views of Thames River
Bridges| William Powell Frith |
Arts Express I Collective
Response| Theatre Portraits from Life|
GF Watts | Shot from
above
Magic Casements - the Keats House restoration
6 August - 14 September 2008
Keats House, the Grade I listed building and museum in
Hampstead, once home to the poet John Keats, received a £424,000
Heritage Lottery Fund grant in 2006 to complete the redecoration
and reinterpretation work at the house. This display shows the
work that has been carried out in preparation for the reopening of
the house next January.
Essex Paints London - an exhibition by and about the Essex Art
Club
21 April - 15 June 2008
The association between Guildhall Art Gallery and the Essex Art
Club goes back to 1949, when the Club held its fiftieth exhibition
in the utilitarian gallery erected on the bomb damaged site of our
original building. Exhibitions have also been held in the Royal
Exchange and in Bishopsgate Institute. Now the Club now returns to
Guildhall for the first time since 1986 with 108 specially selected
paintings, prints, watercolours and drawings of specifically London
subjects by current members.
The Essex Art Club originated 109
years ago in a sketching society set up by staff and students
of the Walthamstow School of Art. Many well known artists have
been associated with it over the years, including Sir George
Clausen and Sir Alfred Munnings (both former presidents of the
Club), Sir Frank Brangwyn, John Nash, the sculptor Frank
Dobson and even Sir Winston Churchill. With a current
membership of 168, the Essex Art Club continues to flourish
under the presidency of Professor Ken Howard RA.
Essex Paints London is an exhibition of over 100 selected works
by current members of the Club, who have turned their attention
from the leafy lanes and ancient woodland of their home county
towards London’s contemporary urban scenes and subjects. Most of
these works are for sale, and with both professional and
non-professional artists included and a wide variety of style and
subject, this exhibition offers something for everyone.
A separate section of the exhibition showcases rarely seen
paintings, prints, book illustrations, watercolours, posters and
sculptures by some of the EAC’s most distinguished past members,
presidents and honorary exhibitors, generously loaned by the Royal
Academy, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Imperial War Museum,
the National Portrait Gallery, the London Transport Museum, the
William Morris Gallery and Vestry House Museum, Epping Forest
District Museum and a number of other museum and private lenders.
Alongside an extensive collection of photographs, cuttings, easels
and equipment, letters and personal objects, they reveal the
fascinating story of this long established and still thriving Essex
institution.
Shot from Above: Aerial Aspects of London
5 March to 27 April
Organised by the National Monuments Record, the
public archive of English Heritage.
This display of 60 images from the archives of the National
Monuments Record charts the transformation in our city through
historic and modern aerial photography. 
Remarkable aerial survey photographs
carried out by the RAF during and after the war are teamed
with earlier views and contemporary shots by English
Heritage’s aerial reconnaissance team, who travelled the
length and breadth of London in a helicopter to recreate or
complement the earlier archival photographs. Among the most
vivid and striking of these comparisons are the images of the
Isle of Dogs, showing how wartime devastation has been
replaced by the shimmering metal and glass of today’s Canary
Wharf.
The display is accompanied by the recent English Heritage
publication Shot from Above by Steven Brindle with Damian Grady,
available from the Gallery shop at £25 (hardback).
Victorian Artists in Photographs: G F Watts and his World
Selections from the Rob Dickins
Collection
7 January - 13 April 2008
On 28 February 1862, the Photographic News observed, "Treasures
such as these we shall be able to hand down to our posterity, for
there is little doubt that photographs of the present day will
remain perfect, if carefully preserved, for generations."
This remarkable exhibition of more
than 150 photographs of the Victorian world of art and culture
is drawn from the enormous collection of photographs of
everyone Who was Who in the Victorian era, amassed by the late
expert on Victorian painting Jeremy Maas, and now acquired by
Rob Dickins CBE and presented by him to the Watts Gallery,
Compton, Surrey. Rob Dickins CBE is a Trustee of the Watts
Gallery and the V&A but is best known as the Chairman of
Warner Music UK from 1983-98 where he signed The Sex Pistols,
Madness, Simply Red, Enya and Cher.
The exhibition brings us face to face with celebrities such as
these:
Royalty and Politicians: including Queen Victoria, Prince
Albert, Gladstone, Disraeli
Influential Thinkers: including
Ruskin, Carlyle, Darwin, J S Mill
Literary Greats: including Tennyson, Dickens, George Elliot,
Wilkie Collins
Artists: including Leighton, E J Poynter, Lady Butler, the Alma
Tademas
G. F. Watts and his Circle: including Tennyson, the Prinseps
The Pre-Raphaelites and the Aesthetic Movement: including Holman
Hunt, Rossetti, Burne-Jones
Artists’ Dress and Costume:
including Henry Holiday, Dalziel in fancy dress
The Artist’s Muse: including Fanny Cornforth, Phoebe ‘Effie’
Cookson, Edith Holman Hunt and Margaret Burne-Jones
Satellites of the Art World: including John Tenniel, Phil May,
George Cruikshank
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive and
fully-illustrated catalogue available from the shop for only £12.50
(special exhibition price). Details of the programme of talks and
activities which will accompany the exhibition will be available
shortly.
The Other Victorians
An exhibition of daguerrotypes, tintypes, ambrotypes and other
kinds of photograph showing how ordinary people had themselves
portrayed.
Every Day: Take Your Own
‘Victorian’ Photograph
Photography of works of art on display in Guildhall Art Gallery
is not permitted for copyright reasons and to avoid disturbing
other visitors. However, in connection with this exhibition only,
we invite you to create your own Victorian-style family photograph,
using props from the basket if you wish.
The Other Victorians exhibition shows that photographers used a
variety of different backdrops, ranging from elegant room interiors
to country or seaside landscapes, with props including moveable
balustrades, boulders, chairs and curtains. Some of the children
who posed for the Lafayette studio in the costumes they wore for
the Lord Mayor’s Fancy Dress Party of 1899 were even photographed
with a stuffed swan or fawn! Our own magnificent backdrop has been
specially created for us by Beckie Toland, Ellen Whelan and Amy
Huckett, who are second year students on the BA Stage Management
and Technical Theatre course at the Guildhall School of Music and
Drama. We are very grateful to them, and to Vanessa Cass who made
the project possible.
Using your own digital camera or phone you can create a souvenir to
take home immediately of your visit. Alternatively, use our own
tripod-mounted camera, and your photograph will be posted on a
dedicated web-page for you to view and download later. If you use
the Gallery camera to take a photograph of yourself or family, you
will be deemed to have consented to the publication of your
picture.
Please note that photographs may only be taken in front of the
purpose-built backdrop, and that photography is not allowed
elsewhere within this exhibition or anywhere else in the
Gallery.
Programme of Events
Pogonophobia!
25 January 6.00pm
A talk by Rupert Maas, whose father Jeremy Maas originally put
together the vast collection of Victorian photographs, recently
acquired by Rob Dickins and presented by him to the Watts Gallery,
from which Victorian Artists in Photographs has been drawn. Tickets
cost £7.50 (£6.00 for Friends of Guildhall Art Gallery) and must be
bought in advance. Price includes a viewing of both exhibitions and
a glass of wine.
A talk by David Webb
4 February 12.30 pm
Talk within the exhibition by David Webb, photographic historian
and one of the authors of the Victorian Artists in Photographs
catalogue. Free when purchasing an admission ticket to the Gallery,
but space is limited so please reserve your place in advance.
Fact and Fiction: Identity in Photographic Portraiture
9 February 10.00am - 12.30pm
Photographic historian Bob Pullen from the Photography and the
Archive Research Centre, London College of Communication will look
at how we represent ourselves and others within the formal setting
of the studio. Bring your own digital camera (if you have one) and
any props or costumes you think it would be interesting to include.
NB there will be flash photography. Not suitable for small
children. This event is free but places are limited and must be
booked in advance.
Flash, Bang, Wallop!
20 February 2.00pm
Our 'genuine' Victorian photographer will show you how to make a
pinhole camera and a 'salt-print' using non-processing
light-sensitive paper, and finally you can have your own Victorian
photo taken in the 'studio'. This is a free family event but places
are limited so must be booked in advance.
Celebrity Homes
12 March 6.00 pm
A tour around late 19th century artists' studios - illustrated
lecture by Mark Bills, Curator of the Watts Gallery and organiser
of the Victorian Artists in Photographs exhibition. Tickets cost
£7.50 (£6.00 for Friends of Guildhall Art Gallery) and must be
bought in advance. Price includes a viewing of both exhibitions and
a glass of wine.
Freshwater
14 March, evening (time to be confirmed)
A costumed reading of Freshwater by the New Farnham Repertory
Actors Company. Set on the Isle of Wight in 1864, Virginia Woolf's
amusing short play satirises her great-aunt, the photographer Julia
Margaret Cameron, and Cameron's friends Tennyson, Watts and his
young bride Ellen Terry. Tickets cost £12 (£10 for Friends of
Guildhall Art Gallery) and must be bought in advance. Price
includes a viewing of both exhibitions and a glass of wine.
Theatre Portraits from Life by June Crisfield Chapman
7 February - 2 March 2008
Celebrated mime artist Marcel
Marceau, legendary violinist and conductor Lord Yehudi Menuhin
and Bill Owen the actor best known as ‘Compo’ from Last of the
Summer Wine are three of the famous faces on display at a new
exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery.
Theatrical Portraits from Life
brings together a collection of 15 portraits based on work
from a single three-hour session with each sitter. June
Crisfield Chapman says: “I spend a lot of time absorbing the
sitter’s character through listening to what they say and
observing their reactions, and I am fortunate in being able to
capture likenesses and poses quickly. After the sitting, I
work up the completed portrait in my studio by ‘feeling into’
the character of each sitter, while ensuring that the
underlying drawing is strong and that the brushwork has a
sense of immediacy.”
The full list of portraits is as follows: John Bett, Julian Bream,
Dr Cyril Cusack, Viviana Durante, Henry Goodman, Sir Michael
Horden, Russell Hunter, Freddy Jones, Jane Lapotaire, Maureen
Lipman, Marcel Marceau, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Bill Owen, Geoffrey
Palmer and Bill Paterson.
One Canvas - Many Lives
An exhibition by Art of Community
Part 1, 6 December 2007 to 6 January 2008; Part 2, 10 January to
3 February 2008
Guildhall Art Gallery is delighted to be able to exhibit a
series of vibrant and life-affirming paintings made by different
community groups. The groups are drawn from a variety of
organisations based in London. The individuals within each group
have painted “what has touched our lives” and what is important to
them. These collective paintings represent their deepest concerns
and feelings that have arisen from experiences within their lives
and within their community group.
Each painting has been facilitated through a series of weekly
workshops with Ros Lewis Williams. Ros, an Art Therapist, set up a
voluntary organisation called “Art of Community” in 2005. Her aim
was to provide an opportunity for a group of individuals within
community groups to work together on one canvas using art
materials, allowing them creative expression within a supportive
environment. The creative process frees them to produce spontaneous
work, which often contains powerful, and surprising imagery. This
is often both inspiring and moving. Painting together on one canvas
generates negotiation, discussion, disagreements, insights,
tension, anxiety, fun and collaboration.
It was usually the first time in their adult lives that the
participants had used art materials and been encouraged to create a
group painting together.
The paintings contain talented individual expression, yet they
are also holistic in that they represent each separate group. These
paintings will stand as a permanent record of each group. Each
painting is unique.
London is rich in diverse groups of people who have come
together either through work, faith, passion, or chance. This
exhibition is a positive platform for them to share their
experiences with others.
The exhibition at Guildhall Art Gallery is in two consecutive
parts. Part 1 (6 December to 6 January 2008) is comprised of
paintings made by the following London groups:
Faith Group of Roman Catholic Priests and Brothers
Harington Scheme
Headway North London
Sotheby Mews Day Centre
Kentish Town Football Club
Part 2 (10 January - 3 February 2008) comprises the paintings made
by these groups:The Inner London Teenage social group
Metropolitan Police, The Safer Neighbourhood Team
The Studio Upstairs
7 July Assistance Centre (survivors of the Tavistock bus bomb)
Collective response
A selected London Group exhibition, curated by Wendy Anderson
and Annie Johns
8 October – 16 December
| Wendy Anderson |
Eugene Palmer |
| Bryan Benge |
Ian Parker |
| Clive Burton |
David Redfern |
| Tony Carter |
Susan Skingle |
| Tony Collinge |
Wendy Smith |
| Mark Dickens |
Bill Watson |
| Annie Johns |
Arthur Wilson |
The London Group was founded in 1913, when the
Fitzroy Street Group and the Camden Town Group joined together. It
united all the divergent personalities of the contemporary art
scene, and was for many years the most modern exhibiting society in
Britain, numbering many of the best-known British artists among its
members and exhibiting paintings and sculptures which today are
universally recognised as key works of their period.
Collective Response features the work of fourteen artists, all
current members of the London Group, who have responded to the idea
of creating a dialogue with the Gallery’s own collection through
sculpture, installation and drawing. Alongside their
extraordinarily varied and stimulating pieces are paintings and
drawings by past members of the Group (including Sir Matthew Smith,
John Piper, Carel Weight, Edward Wolfe, John Nash and Duncan
Grant). Together with selected documents and photographs from the
London Group’s archive (lent by Tate), they reflect the Group’s
rich heritage alongside its vibrant and active life today.
Arts Express
24 September - 7 October 2007
The Gallery is exhibiting a selection of artworks by Southwark’s
over 60s residents. Arts Express, a charity based in Peckham, has
given older Southwark residents the chance to visit the countryside
around London to paint landscapes, walk in the woods and make new
friends.
The aim of the Arts Express programme is to bring people
together through shared creative arts activities and to use art as
a form of expression. More than 38 paintings by 19 budding artists
are now on show.
In delivering this project Arts Express is working closely with
two partner organisations which provide services for elderly people
– the Blackfriars Settlement and the Rainbow Group – so that a wide
range of people can benefit.
TELFORD 250: Continuing Telford's Vision
19 July - 2 September 2007
Organised by the Institution of Civil Engineers, the exhibition
is part of a nationwide programme commemorating the 250th
anniversary of the great engineer’s birth.
2007 marks the anniversary of Thomas Telford, one of the UK's
greatest civil engineers. Telford was an innovative engineer with
advanced methods to create some iconic structures across the UK,
many of which still exist today. He was responsible for over 1500
miles of roads, 400 miles of canals and 1000 bridges. The
exhibition will guide you through Telford's remarkable life and
outstanding achievements and includes an array of artefacts,
correspondence and and original sketches and drawings.
A Mile of Style: 180 Years of Luxury Shopping on Regent
Street
13 April - 30 June 2007
Celebrating the 180 years of Regent
Street, A Mile of Style will reveal the fascinating
story of Europe’s most famous shopping thoroughfare through
archival documents, maps, photographs and plans. It is the
result of a unique collaboration between the Gallery,
Westminster City Archives and The Crown Estate. The exhibition
will also coincide with the launch of a new and revised
edition of the History of Regent Street by Hermione
Hobhouse, which will be available for purchase from the
Gallery shop.
Prestigious heritage retail fashion
brands Aquascutum (est. 1851)
Jaeger
(est. 1884), and Austin Reed (est. 1900) will be
participating in the three-month exhibition. These classic
brands will reveal some of their most treasured archive
pieces; graphic art and advertising material, original fashion
designs and vintage costumes all for public viewing for the
first time. For more than 100 years, each of these classic
British brands has enjoyed a reputation for high quality
clothing and innovative design.
Regent Street has witnessed an exhilarating pace of change
within the past 18 months following a £500 million development
programme by The Crown Estate.
To find out more about Regent
Street past, present and future, go to the
Regent Street Online website.
Soviet Times: Russian Times 1917 - 2007
10 January - 30 March 2007
Visit the RIA
Novosti website.
This small but powerful exhibition of 40 photographs from the
archives of Russian News and Information Agency RIA Novosti covers
the most controversial, unstable and difficult period of Russian
history – the 90 years following the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Using the turbulence of the Bolshevik Revolution as its starting
point, the exhibition charts the tremendous changes this great
country has undergone over the last nine decades, from the
industrialisation of the 1930s through the 2nd World War and Cold
War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and developments since
then.
|
Dmitri Donskoi |
Arkady Shaiket |
Many of Russia's finest photographers have worked for the Agency
or have their images in its archives. The exhibition has examples
from Soviet era photographers such as Max Alpert and Arkady
Shaiket, together with their more recent counterparts such as
Dmitry Donskoi and Vladimir Vyatkin who are the current employees
of RIA Novosti . The exhibition contains several examples of
Vladimir Vyatkin’s work, including the stunning photograph
Waterbirds, of female swimmers practising technique, awarded a gold
medal at Interpressphoto 2003 and the thought-provoking image of a
federal reconnaissance unit in Chechnya, awarded a gold medal at
the World Press Photo 2002.
The images in this exhibition, many of which have rarely been
seen before, give the visitor a brief glimpse of these moments in
history, as experienced from the Russian perspective.
|
Chechnya |
Boys in the rain |
Swimmers |
William Powell Frith: Painting
the Victorian
Age
6 November 2006 - 4 March 2007
Read the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
entry for William Powell Frith
It is more than 50 years since there was an exhibition devoted
to William Powell Frith, one of the greatest British painters of
the social scene since Hogarth.
Frith (1819-1909) was a quintessential yet radical and
innovative Victorian painter who enjoyed huge success and
popularity - on six separate occasions rails had to be put up in
front of his pictures in the Royal Academy to hold back the
admiring crowds. This major exhibition includes works borrowed from
galleries across Britain and features his great ‘modern life’
panoramas including Derby Day, from Tate Britain and The Railway
Station, from Royal Holloway College, University of London, without
an illustration of which no book on Victorian art is complete.
These paintings are populated by numerous figures, based on his
friends, family, professional models and characters that he met in
the street, and remain icons of their
age.
The Frith exhibition contains more than 60
paintings, prints and drawings, many from private collections,
alongside most of Frith’s major works, with loans from national and
regional galleries around the country.
Spanning the River: Artists' Views of Thames River Bridges
3 July - 15 October 2006
For centuries artists have been inspired by London's river
bridges. Bridges link communities, form avenues of trade and
commerce, are triumphs of engineering and objects of enormous
aesthetic beauty. They are places for romantic assignations but
also where the destitute and desperate seek shelter or even choose
to end their lives.
In short, bridges have meanings and associations ranging from
the purely pragmatic to the imaginative and mysterious.
This exhibition looks at artists' continuing fascination with
the Thames and is drawn principally from the extensive collections
of paintings, watercolours held by Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall
Library Print Room, and the Museum of London.
For a breathtaking view of the River Thames why not visit
Tower Bridge.
Floating London by Peter Spens - Paintings from high vantage points
around the Thames
30 March – 5 June 2006
A new exhibition, Floating London, by artist Peter Spens charts the
changing skyline around the Thames – from the installation of the
London Eye in 1999 to present day.
The series of 30 paintings and drawings of the riverside are
taken from vantage points high above the city’s streets. It starts
with views from the IPC Tower towards the old Bankside power
station as it was being transformed into Tate Modern in 1999, the
then solitary tower of Canary Wharf being shown in the distance.
The show comes up to date with two paintings from the 40th floor of
the HSBC tower in Canary Wharf and a large series of views east,
south and west from the 10th floor of 80 Strand, formerly known as
the Shellmex building.
From some of these buildings the
same view takes on a different atmosphere as they are depicted
first by day, then by night when the light vibrates to a new
intensity.
These are some of the largest and most ambitious pieces in Peter’s
exhibition, often taking many months to complete. They have been
made possible by companies accommodating Peter as artist in
residence and allowing him to use their offices as temporary
studios. He has been compared to Cezanne for his desire to work en
plein air in front of his subject, rather painting from memory or
photographs.
The exhibition will bring together works borrowed from corporate
and private collections as well as including these exciting new
works produced over the past year. The sites from which he has
painted include:
- Tower 42, looking west towards St Paul’s and south-east over
Tower Bridge
- Views east, south and west from the 10th floor balcony of 80
Strand, formerly known as the Shellmex building
- 40th floor of the HSBC tower Canary Wharf
- Riverside House, looking east and west down the Thames, also
Across to St Paul’s
- London Studios on the South Bank, looking towards Blackfriars
Bridge and St Paul’s
- The Shell Tower, looking towards the City and north across the
Thames. The pictures include the construction of the London Eye as
it lay horizontal over the Thames in 1999 and the construction of
the Hungerford pedestrian bridge in 2002
- The Canadian High Commission on Trafalgar Square, looking
towards St Martin-In-the-Fields in 2000 before pedestrianisation,
when routemaster buses still trundled past the steps of the
National Gallery
This exhibition provides a refreshing look at this evolving city
observed over seven years through the eyes of this exciting
artist.
London Now – City of Heaven, City
of Hell
16 January – 9 April 2006
This exhibition brings together
powerful works by ten artists who will take the measure of
London now. Their passion for this city is revealed through
clashing imagery: some conjure up a City Beautiful, others a
City of Blight. The exhibition will separate visitors into
optimists and pessimists; alternatively it will heal the rift
between London’s Heaven and Hell. Back in the 18th century the
city was hailed as the new Rome and a century later as a
fallen city. Which is true now?
Some of the highlights of this
controversial exhibition include a room-sized installation by
Magnus Irvin in which he provides a drastic
solution to the ills of our big city. Miscreants would be
loaded onto his Thames floating ‘Monument’ surmounted by
Princess Diana ‘bandoneon’. It would then be taken out to the
North Sea and sunk.
Janet Brooke, on
the other hand, used to hate Canary Wharf Tower when it was
first built. But over the years, she has produced 36 beautiful
views of this East End landmark, inspired by the Japanese
print master Hokusai’s 36 views of Mount Fuji. All 36 views of
Canary Wharf are being exhibited for the first time.
Will you view David Hepher’s paintings of tower
blocks as a sign of decadence and decay? Will you share in the
pessimism of Timothy Hyman’s ‘The Stripping of
London’ or John Bartlett’s ‘Germs’? As for
Alec Worster’s figures of homeless people, will
they move you to tears and also despair? Or will you agree with
Mark Cazalet that the streets of London make a
perfect setting for the Seven Vices?
Perhaps you’ll join the ranks of
‘positive London’ and be transfixed by Arturo Di
Stefano’s exquisitely beautiful London canvasses. Or
take a walk along Jiro Osuga’s fantastic
Thames panorama and gaze at Ben Johnson’s
perfect and soothing urban geometry?
If you want to find out which side you are on, come to the
challenging exhibition London Now – City of Heaven, City of
Hell and / or read a copy of the souvenir magazine with
probing interviews with the artists.
The exhibition has been curated by the
London
Arts Café for Guildhall Art Gallery.
Past exhibitions continued
Current exhibitions
Forthcoming exhibitions