In September’s Art Diary, I highlight a range of international exhibitions before returning to the UK for exhibitions at Hastings Contemporary, The Sainsbury Centre, The Fitzwilliam Museum and Elizabeth Xi Bauer. I also highlight two interesting art books, a new initiative by the Association of Art Historians and a charity auction jointly hosted by Bonhams and Hauser & Wirth.
The Museo de Pollenca organises an annual installation in the Convent Church, Església del Convent de Sant Domingo, the Convent now being the location for the Municipal Museum. This year’s installation is ‘Tercet’ by Danny Rolph. ‘Tercet’ is an immersive experience in which Rolph appropriates time, space, light, forms, words and colour. Shunning the message of a linear narrative, the observer is invited to take part in a contemplative sensorial experience. The two-part installation includes “This is Just To Say”, a large format diptych on various layers of polycarbonate that lends a sense of depth and movement to the work, and “Contact”, a four-sided construction made with painted transparent polycarbonate sheets placed in the centre of the space with a changing light gleaming from the interior.
Rolph is recognised worldwide for his multi-layered, abstract, colour-focused paintings. He continually questions surface tension and spatial relations via the mediums of Triplewall plastic and canvas surfaces, embracing joy, doubt and discovery within his creative processes. Over the years as an artist, and as a Rome scholar, Rolph has travelled and exhibited extensively across the world. From an early age, he has been inspired by many places, especially ports and their histories, around the Mediterranean. Around two years ago, the artist started a series of works on canvas that draw upon these memories, reshaping them into emotive painted compositions, emerging from recollections of his experiences in these locations and, in particular, the local topography. This exhibition, ‘Marenostrum’, comprises paintings that span the whole region, and therefore, he wanted to exhibit them together in the Mediterranean port of Palma. The title for this solo show comes from the Ancient Roman words Mare Nostrum (“Our Sea”) referring to the Mediterranean Sea.
Also in Mallorca is ‘Zupan & Zupan’, an exhibition by father and daughter Bruno and Natasha Zupan. Art critic Ed McCormick described Bruno Zupan’s work as such: “The real magic is in the paint surface itself, with its energetic bravura strokes, splashes, splatters, and drips forming a unified statement, as active, alive, and visually autonomous as an Abstract Expressionist work by de Kooning or Diebenkorn – yet simultaneously evoking the world outside the canvas … His rhapsodic brushwork and singular vision have garnered him a worldwide following among those who still seek beauty in the art of painting. Bruno Zupan is one of the last great romantics, and for that alone, his work is worth treasuring.” Zupan’s iconic technique using black filigree design over gold leaf was inspired by the Byzantine art of his homeland of Croatia. One of the ways in which he uses this style is to create images of churches that show the faithful moving towards love, “which is the basis of constructive religious belief”.
Natasha Zupan’s “work is a union between the old and the new, playing with similar elements as her father in a modern manner”: “Combining renaissance hues with chiaroscuro, modern collages with mixed media, the Yale-educated artist innovates her own technique of modernism and admiration for the great masters. Showcasing a sense of rhythm and youth in her work, Zupan utilizes rich, saturated brushstrokes to play on light and shadow. Her union of the modern and the classic is displayed in the juxtaposition between her palettes and her subject matter.”
‘Corita Kent. Where Have All the Flowers Gone’ is the summer exhibition at Museum Penzberg —
Sammlung Campendonk in Germany. Kent was not only a groundbreaking pop art artist but also a former nun of the American order Immaculate Heart of Mary, a celebrated art teacher, and an advocate of social justice.
Her prints and teaching experienced worldwide distribution and were politically motivated beyond her innovative aesthetic. The peace-movement generation in California of the 60s and 1970s thanked her while artists of the avant-garde such as Buckminster Fuller, John Cage and Charles and Ray Eames were among her followers. In the middle of the consumer-oriented pop art era, Kent offered content with the pursuit of freedom, faith, love and hope.
In the course of her work, Kent developed art from the use of figurative and religious images to bright coloured serigraphs that, with elements from advertising graphics and slogans, supermarket logos, typography of search posters, popular lyrics, bible verse and handwritten literature quotes, displayed an increasingly critical attitude towards the existing grievances of American society. In her art and in communal actions, she asked her viewers to deal with poverty, hunger, racism, social suffering and the Vietnam War.
The exhibition traces her versatility as an artist. The early work of the 1950s is particularly interesting in the context of the Museum’s Campendonk collection because Kent names the expressionism of the Blue Rider as a source of inspiration. The abstraction of colour and shape in her work charges her visual language with sensitive and mystical experiences, which at the same time visualizes a spiritual confidence. The exhibition continues with text-based serigraphs from the 1960s and 1970s, demonstrating exceptional technique through the use of sensitive watercolors in the last phase of her life. Videos and photographs complement the presentation to reproduce the life and working atmosphere of this eventful era. The commitment of her art for a better world today appears as topical as it was in her own day and time.
Visitors to the National Gallery of Ireland currently have a chance to explore the beauty and fragility of nature through a unique collection of drawings and paintings spanning four centuries in the exhibition ‘In Real Life’. Many of the works included are seldom displayed and are presented alongside pieces on loan from contemporary Irish artists. Anne Hodge, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Ireland, says: “Artists always look closely at the world around them – it is, in a sense, their job. This exhibition highlights the enduring connection between artists and the natural world, emphasising how art reveals the fragility of nature and the need for conservation.”
‘In Real Life’ explores themes such as how nature inspires artists, sustainability, and the critical role of art in drawing attention to environmental threats. The exhibition features 50 works spanning the 17th to 21st centuries, including closely observed studies, idealised landscapes, topographical views, and poetic interpretations. Works from the Gallery’s permanent collection by artists such as Aelbert Cuyp, Barbara Rae, Michael Wann and Emil Nolde are complemented by recent works on loan from contemporary Irish artists Angie Shanahan, David Lunney, Fiona McDonald and Bridget Flannery. These works highlight how art reflects the natural world and the urgency for environmental conservation.
Dr Caroline Campbell, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, says: “In Real Life explores the connection between nature and art, inviting visitors to step away from daily life and immerse themselves in the beauty of the natural world through the eyes of the artist. In Real Life celebrates the inspiration that nature provides to artists, from Aelbert Cuyp’s meticulous studies to Fiona McDonald’s contemporary digital drawings. It highlights how artists, past and present, continue to draw upon nature to create reflective and forward-thinking works.”
Another genre-based survey show with similar breadth is ‘Immortal Apples, Eternal Eggs’, Hastings Contemporary’s major new show exploring the rich and complex genre of still life. The exhibition comes about through a meeting of two of the UK’s most significant collections – The Ingram Collection and the David and Indrė Roberts Collection – and includes work from artists such as Phyllida Barlow, Louise Bourgeois, Sir Anthony Caro, Patrick Caulfield, Michael Craig-Martin, Dame Elisabeth Frink, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson and Sarah Lucas.
Juxtaposing world-class contemporary sculpture, video and installation alongside traditional still life painted works, the exhibition aims to challenge assumptions about this familiar genre, inviting new perspectives and asking viewers: what really is still life? More than 50 artworks are on display, created by more than 50 artists over the past 100 years. The genre of still life has, perhaps, never been more relevant. The obsessive documentation of our lives, meals and homes for social media has turned us all into still-life artists and while seemingly ordinary, every still life is shadowed by the exploitation of natural resources and labour. ‘Immortal Apples, Eternal Eggs’ delves into all these themes through the lens of some of the most exciting artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, bringing this long-marginalised genre out into the spotlight.
Hastings Contemporary Director Liz Gilmore says: “From magic and mystery to life and death, and the beauty of the domestic and ordinary, Immortal Apples, Eternal Eggs takes visitors on a surprising and thought-provoking journey through the genre of Still Life. The exhibition title was inspired by the writings of former Sussex resident, Virginia Woolf, and her intuitive understanding of the quiet poetry of everyday items.”
The next big question that the Sainsbury Centre is activating art to address through a six-month season of interlinked exhibitions and programmes is Why Do We Take Drugs? It’s a timely question – in the year ending March 2023, around 10% of people aged 16 to 59 years in England and Wales used an illegal drug in the last 12 months (according to the Office for National Statistics).
From alcohol and caffeine to ayahuasca and heroin, this season uses art to take visitors on a journey of investigation, inviting audiences to explore the world of global drug cultures from illegal to familiar across one museum landscape. Art and artists help us explore and better understand this world of drugs across time and space. Their carefully curated programme delves into drug cultures around the world and brings to life the highs and lows of drug taking in society. The season explores both the organised and chaotic use of narcotics and intoxicants within communities in different parts of the world alongside the human stories, experiences and cultural impact of mind-altering substances.
‘Power Plants: Intoxicants, Stimulants and Narcotics’ features objects, sculpture, yarn paintings, digital works, and textiles, plus a selection of Japanese art to explore the important role that stimulants and intoxicants continue to perform within societies. ‘Ayahuasca & Art of the Amazon’ considers the impact of the mind-altering, psychotropic vine – ayahuasca – within Western Amazonian social life. ‘Heroin Falls’ highlights the realities of heroin addiction through the juxtaposition of two different worlds through the eyes of two incredible photographers. Lindsey Mendick subverts the tradition of ceramics with her darkly comic, confessional works. Her newly commissioned sculptures for the Sainsbury Centre are strikingly personal, tackling social taboos and exposing the artist’s secret fears. The Sainsbury Centre, in collaboration with Orleans House Gallery, also presents ‘Towards the Weird Heart of Things’, a new site-specific series of sculptures by artist Ivan Morison in response to the curatorial provocation, Why Do We Take Drugs?
Another intoxicant provides the basis for Elizabeth Xi Bauer’s summer exhibition, cheekily called ‘Cupid’ after the Roman God of love, which brings together nine couples where both parts are active in producing art, whether as individuals or as double acts. They were invited to respond to this invitation by either creating a collaborative piece – which in some cases meant working together for the first time – or by exhibiting individual pieces. In recent years, Elizabeth Xi Bauer has exhibited several artists who incidentally are in a relationship with another artist. This sparked the idea of further investigating the many entwinements between art and life. Celebrating the many entanglements between love and creativity, ‘Cupid’ presents works by nine couples: 16 individual artists within their romantic partnerships and an artist duo. The exhibition invites artists to explore the various creative dynamics within a relationship.
Amongst the artists exhibiting are Marta and Miklos Jakobovits. The Jakobovits lived and worked during the Ceaușescu dictatorship in Romania. They created works in secret, often collaboratively, as part of the underground Transylvanian art scene. In ‘Cupid’ three types of interconnected works are exhibited. There is a series of small Raku pillows created by Marta, exhibited alongside tempera paintings of the same pillows made by Miklós: a perfect example of how one’s individual practice might inspire the other’s work, creating an effortless artistic flow with mutual benefits. In addition, they exhibit a box that was devised by both of them: the form made by Marta and painted by Miklós, yet again vouching for the beauty of collaboration between lovers. This exhibition is the first time that the late Miklós Jakobovits’ artworks have been exhibited in the UK.
Through his artworks, Glenn Ligon also explores big issues, including social, cultural and political constructions of race. Since the late 1980s, the New York-based artist has pursued an incisive exploration of American history, literature, and society across bodies of work that build critically on the legacies of modern painting and conceptual art. He is best known for his landmark neon installations and text-based paintings, which draw on the influential writings and speech of 20th-century historical and cultural figures, including James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Genet, and Richard Pryor.
Alongside Ligon’s original paintings, sculptures and prints, ‘All Over The Place’ at the Fitzwilliam Museum presents a series of site-specific interventions curated by the artist throughout the Museum aimed at peeling back the layers of history and meaning to reveal a new perspective on our collection. Ligon says: “My exhibition is a thread that winds its way through the Fitzwilliam, loose in some places, taut in others, which the visitor can choose to follow or encounter serendipitously. In some cases, I juxtapose my works with pieces from its expansive collection, while in other moments, I have chosen to amplify themes of empire, resource extraction and cultural hybridity by adding text commentary to existing museum displays.”
Visitors to the Fitzwilliam are greeted with Ligon’s major 9-part neon sculpture ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ installed in the museum’s Neoclassical Grade I listed portico entrance, marking the work’s UK debut. Inside, a significant presentation of Ligon’s text-based paintings, including ‘Mirror #9’ and ‘Stranger #90’, as well as an important early work, ‘Untitled (I Feel Most Colored When I Am Thrown Against a Sharp White Background)’, transform the museum’s Octagon gallery.
Victoria Crowe is one of Scotland’s leading painters, known for her evocative landscapes and portraits of subjects, including scientist Professor Peter Higgs, psychiatrist R.D. Laing and composer Thea Musgrave. Her work encompasses and entwines landscape and still life (the subjects of the survey shows at National Gallery of Ireland and Hastings Contemporary) with portraiture and interiors. Dividing her time between Scotland and Italy, of where the landscape and light can be felt in her distinctive practice, she explores the boundaries between representation, reflection and surface, with exquisite sensitivity to line and form.
In 2022, Crowe made two trips to Orkney as part of her Royal Scottish Academy/Pier Arts Centre Residency award. Her exhibition ‘Touching the Surface – The Orkney Pictures’ showcases some of the work made during her residency, as well as works created in response to her time spent in Orkney. Looking at the contrasting light around the summer and winter solstice, the two most extreme periods of the celestial cycle, Crowe’s intention was to “explore the light on the land and its margins during the long twilights of the Orkney summer solstice, then return to experience the short days, long darkness and luminous skies of winter”.
Concurrently, Flowers Gallery is presenting ‘Ice Moon Fire Land’ with works that are also influenced by Crowe’s residency in Orkney. These take inspiration from nature and its transformations during the white nights of the summer solstice and the dark splendour of midwinter. Exploring the ephemerality and fragility of the natural world through evocative depictions of the changing seasons and landscapes in the Scottish Borders where Crowe lives, the paintings invite the viewer to reconsider their perspective and relationship with the environment. This exhibition also features Crowe’s collaboration with Dovecot Tapestry Studios in Edinburgh with a large gun-tufted wall hanging made by master weaver Louise Trotter.
The latest exhibition at St Andrew’s Church in Wickford is ‘Trials and Tribulations: Modern Interpretations of Iconography’ by John Paul Barrett. Barrett specialises in mixed media paintings, using acrylics and oil pastels on paintings that range from symbolism to landscapes and portraits. He creates texture, perspective, and sculptural effects by using acrylic paints mixed with an extra heavy medium gel applied with a palette knife and finished with a layer of oil pastel. His work is vivid, colourful and expressionistic. This exhibition focuses on his modern interpretations of Eastern European religious iconography. Viewers will experience traditional religious imagery in a new light and (re)connect with the spiritual aspect and values symbolised by pivotal Biblical events.
Artworks by Rana Begum, Sue Dunkley, Do Ho Suh and Ryan Mosley, amongst many others, are currently being offered to raise funds for the arts and mental health charity Hospital Rooms. The charity is running a live and online-only auction, both hosted by Bonhams and Hauser & Wirth. The live auction takes place on 11 September with artworks donated by acclaimed artists including Begum, Sutapa Biswas, Peter Liversidge, and Fabian Peake. The online-only auction is open for bidding on bonhams.com from 22 August – 12 September and features new specific works by Do Ho Suh, Sara Berman, Dunkley and more. Proceeds from the auction will contribute to the delivery of inspiring new projects transforming mental health care units in cities from London to Bristol, Birmingham, Wakefield and beyond. Both auctions are available to preview at Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, from 22 August – 10 September.
The charity Hospital Rooms was founded when a friend of artist Tim A Shaw and curator Niamh White was sectioned and admitted to an NHS mental health hospital. On visiting her, they were shocked to find the hospital environment was cold and clinical at a time when she was so vulnerable. Having both worked in the arts for ten years, Shaw and White felt they had the skills and community to be able to transform these spaces with unique and site-specific artworks. Hospital Rooms envisions a new world where abundant and meaningful creative opportunities are readily accessible to people with severe and enduring mental health diagnoses and where mental health hospital environments are inventive cultural spaces offering solace, comfort and dignity. Since 2016, Hospital Rooms has undertaken a number of acclaimed projects completed in some of the most challenging mental health settings. A roster of artists is carefully selected for each Hospital Rooms’ project according to the needs of each community.
Susie Hamilton is showing two donated works in the exhibition and auction. ‘Paintings From Poetry’ curated by Imperial College Healthcare, is a show of her drawings and paintings based on literature which is currently in St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. Her artworks are in the Cambridge Wing and will be on display until the end of the year. Hamilton paints people in urban or natural wilderness where not only is the setting challenging in its bleakness or ferocity, but the materials of pastel, charcoal, pencil and paint assert themselves against the figures. Her ‘alchemical’ process of making and unmaking leads to remaking, to the creation of uncertain and enigmatic images hovering between abstraction and figuration and between human and non-human, as if the human is always vulnerable to being transformed.
A third monograph book from international award-winning artist Josh Tiessen is being launched this month at Redeemer University Art Gallery, East Ancaster, with a book and CD launch plus a solo exhibition. Over the course of three years, Tiessen spent 5,000 hours creating 23 new works for the series ‘Vanitas + Viriditas’. The title is Latin for “Vanity” and “Vitality” and reflects the dual approaches to wisdom explored by two characters, Qohelet and Sophia (based on Ecclesiastes and Proverbs) and their animal companions. The series debuted at Rehs Contemporary in New York in 2023. Now, all the paintings, drawings, and artist statements written by Tiessen to accompany the work are presented in a full-colour coffee table book. A foreword by award-winning art critic Natasha Gural contextualizes the painting series, and an original soundtrack composed by Zac Tiessen accompanies the project.
Twenty years ago, Roger Wagner and a group of fellow artists—The Metaphysical Painters—set out on the first of a series of annual pilgrimages to places associated with poets, painters, and writers who transfigured the landscapes in which they lived. Beginning in a bamboo forest in Japan and ending on a boat to Bardsey — “the isle of twenty thousand saints” — a new book ‘The Farther Away: Poems and Images’ by Roger Wagner weaves together poetry, prose, and paintings that describe these journeys and responds to artists like Samuel Palmer, George Herbert, Thomas Traherne, and William Blake. Wagner is an artist and painter living and working in Oxfordshire, producing oils and exhibiting in the UK. A permanent collection of his work in the Faith Museum at Auckland Castle opened in 2023.
His fellow artists, whose religious work can be found in churches and cathedrals across the UK and who support one another in an informal fraternity, are Nicholas Mynheer, Mark Cazalet, Thomas Denny, and Richard Kenton Webb. The group have been creating art works in a rich variety of media since the 1980s, but only came together in a sort of accidental brotherhood in the noughties. They were given encouragement to meet by Anglican nun and art historian Sister Wendy Beckett, who admired and supported several of the artists individually over many years. Sister Wendy was highly esteemed by the group, who believed that she was significant in re-establishing the importance of sacred subject matter in art.
The Association for Art History (AAH), the charity that leads the collective effort in the UK to advance the study and practice of art history, is celebrating its 50th anniversary with the launch of Art History Now – a new online campaign featuring over 90 eminent art history advocates. Artists, art historians, writers and broadcasters have shared inspiring new reflections on what art history means to them and to society. Their thoughts appear in full at forarthistory.org.uk/art-history-now/
In a world bombarded by images, visual literacy and the study of art history have never been more important in helping us better understand visual cues and other cultures and creating an openness to diverse perspectives. The AAH believes that art history, the study of art across the globe, from the ancient world to the present day, helps us examine our histories and can actively shape how we understand what we see around us now. It equips us with the skills and tools to interpret and connect to an increasingly visual world and enhances our ability to analyse, question, and critically engage with issues confronting society and individuals.
Among the advocates featured in the campaign are artists Sonia Boyce, Antony Gormley, Rebecca Salter, Grayson Perry, Cornelia Parker and Magdalene Odundo; museum and gallery directors Maria Balshaw, Nicholas Cullinan, Gus Casely-Hayford, Caro Howell, Gabriele Finaldi, Gilane Tawadros and Tristram Hunt; art historians, writers broadcasters Neil MacGregor, Janina Ramirez, Partha Mitter, Kate Bryan, Simon Schama, Sandi Toksvig, Jonathan Jones, Louisa Buck, and Waldemar Januszczak.
‘Tercet: Danny Rolph’, 13 July – 13 October 2024, Convent Church, Església del Convent de Sant Domingo, Pollenca – Visit Here
‘Marenostrum: Danny Rolph’, 14 June – 9 September 2024, Kaplan Projects, Palma – Visit Here
‘Zupan & Zupan’, 1 August – 24 October 2024, Coll Bardolet Cultural Foundation, Valldemossa – Visit Here
‘Corita Kent. Where have all the Flowers Gone’, 20 July – 17 November 2024, Museum Penzberg — Sammlung Campendonk Visit Here
‘In Real Life’, 17 August – 24 November 2024, National Gallery of Ireland –
Visit Here
‘Immortal Apples, Eternal Eggs’, 21 September 2024 – 16 March 2025, Hastings Contemporary – Visit Here
‘Power Plants: Intoxicants, Stimulants and Narcotics’, 14 September 2024 – 2 February 2025 / ‘Ayahuasca & Art of the Amazon’, 14 September 2024 – 2 February 2025 / ‘Heroin Falls’, 23 November 2024 – 27 April 2025 / ‘Lindsey Mendick: Hot Mess’, 23 November 2024 – 27 April 2025 / Sculpture Park Commission, ‘Ivan Morison: Towards the Weird Heart of Things’, October 2024 – February 2025, The Sainsbury Centre – Visit Here
‘Cupid’, 16th August – 14th September 2024, Elizabeth Xi Bauer –
Visit Here
‘Glenn Ligon: All Over The Place’, 20 September – 2 March 2025, The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge
Visit Here
‘Victoria Crowe: Touching the Surface – The Orkney Pictures’, 31 August – 9 November 2024 Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney – Visit Here
‘Victoria Crowe: Ice Moon Fire Land’, 6 September – 5 October 2024, Flowers Gallery, Cork Street, London
Visit Here –
‘Trials and Tribulations: Modern Interpretations of Iconography’, 13 September – 20 December 2024, St Andrew’s Church, Wickford – Visit Here
Fundraising auctions for Hospital Rooms, 22 August – 12 September 2024, bonhams.com, and 22 August – 10 September 2024, Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London – Visit Here
‘Paintings From Poetry’, until the end of the year, St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington –
Visit Here
‘Vanitas + Viriditas’ – Visit Here
‘The Farther Away: Poems and Images’ – Visit Here
Association for Art History – Visit Here
Lead image: Fiona McDonald, In Search of a Blanket Bog I, 2022. Giclée print Unframed: 37 x 56 cm Framed: 46 x 65 cm Credit line: © Fiona McDonald.