Alison Watt: From Light

Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery presents From Light, by the award-winning artist Alison Watt. This will be Alison Watt’s first exhibition in a public gallery in London since 2008.

The exhibition features a new series of paintings which resonate with the architecture and collection of Sir John Soane, the architect of Pitzhanger Manor. Watt’s practice, rooted in a fascination with light, echoes strongly with Soane’s innovative manipulation of light to shape space and create atmosphere.

Alison Watt reflects: “Pitzhanger had a great personal significance for Sir John Soane. It is a house that tells us something not only of his intellectual life, but also his emotional one—a place that once held his hopes and aspirations. In its own way, a form of biography. Soane was an artist, who created an art object in which to display art. Like a painting, light is part of the very substance of this house.”
Watt’s works, displayed across the historic manor and contemporary gallery, engage in dialogue with figures from Soane’s circle, including architect Robert Adam. Paintings such as Parker draw on the symbolism of Soane’s collection, while works like The Day After explore the motif of the rose—a symbol of innocence, purity, and mourning— echoing Soane’s preoccupation with themes of decay and memorialisation.