Max Bainbridge: Hollow Bodies (2024), scots pine, pewter and pine tar 223 × 100 × 65 cm (87¾ × 39⅜ × 25⅝ in)
We are proud to bring together five British artists spanning work from the 1960’s to today including the pioneering abstract painter Gillian Ayres (1930 – 2018), Max Bainbridge, Max Boyla, Tim Garwood and Caroline Jackson.
The exhibition looks to art history of the 1960’s and the radical developments in abstract painting and sculpture at the time and the effects it had on future and current generations of artists in the UK. It was a politically charged time, creating work in post-war Britain. There was also an undeniably powerful influence exercised by American painters then, but British artists broadened and have continued to develop their legacy in unexpected ways.
The works in this exhibition draw on relationships, not just between individuals but also between people and their environments. The paintings and sculpture connect with a visual language, something separate from a verbal language which is inherent in us all. All of the artists in this exhibition cite the significance of the UK’s counties and landscapes on their work and life, all the way from Cornwall to Scotland. Many of the paintings, although created in pure abstraction, take on organic forms or the feeling of a landscape that is actual and familiar, through their surface, scale, formal organisation or process. The work by Max Bainbridge discovers the exhibition's essence in sculptural terms, further allowing for a direct engagement with the physical presence of the work, situating the viewer directly within the space the artists have created.
These artists talk a universal language, reaffirmed through abstraction and sculpture with an unremitting sense of confidence, freedom and vitality. Their energy is something we can all draw from as we live through tumultuous times of our own, the power of artistic practice that we can all connect with remains crucial.
The exhibition looks to art history of the 1960’s and the radical developments in abstract painting and sculpture at the time and the effects it had on future and current generations of artists in the UK. It was a politically charged time, creating work in post-war Britain. There was also an undeniably powerful influence exercised by American painters then, but British artists broadened and have continued to develop their legacy in unexpected ways.
The works in this exhibition draw on relationships, not just between individuals but also between people and their environments. The paintings and sculpture connect with a visual language, something separate from a verbal language which is inherent in us all. All of the artists in this exhibition cite the significance of the UK’s counties and landscapes on their work and life, all the way from Cornwall to Scotland. Many of the paintings, although created in pure abstraction, take on organic forms or the feeling of a landscape that is actual and familiar, through their surface, scale, formal organisation or process. The work by Max Bainbridge discovers the exhibition's essence in sculptural terms, further allowing for a direct engagement with the physical presence of the work, situating the viewer directly within the space the artists have created.
These artists talk a universal language, reaffirmed through abstraction and sculpture with an unremitting sense of confidence, freedom and vitality. Their energy is something we can all draw from as we live through tumultuous times of our own, the power of artistic practice that we can all connect with remains crucial.
