Artlyst has selected twelve art exhibitions outside the capital and around the UK this summer. With exhibitions like Sean Scully at Houghton Hall or Joana Vasconcelos at Waddesdon Manor, you get the opportunity to visit some beautiful country homes and gardens alongside the art exhibitions making a perfect day out.
Ashmolean Museum
Flora Yukhnovich & Daniel Crews-Chubb
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
8 July 2023-14 January 2024
The Ashmolean Museum’s renowned historical collections are the inspiration for two contemporary artists whose new works will be on display in the Museum this summer onwards.
The two simultaneous exhibitions in Gallery 8 feature paintings by critically acclaimed British artists Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb. The shows open the Ashmolean’s new exhibition series Ashmolean NOW, in which UK-based contemporary artists are invited to create new work inspired by the Ashmolean’s collections.
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Threads: Breathing Stories Into Materials
Arnolfini Arts, Bristol
08 July – 01 October 2023
A major exhibition featuring 21 contemporary international artists and makers who use textiles as their chosen medium.
Reflecting a range of experiences, materials, processes and artistic impulses, exhibiting artists are Caroline Achaintre, Mounira Al Solh, Ifeoma U. Anyaeji, Olga de Amaral, Will Cruickshank, Monika Žaltauskaitė-Grašienė, Lubaina Himid, Young In Hong, Raisa Kabir, Alice Kettle, Anya Paintsil, Anousha Payne, David Penny, Anna Perach, Celia Pym, Richard McVetis, Ibrahim Mahama, Farwa Moledina, Lucy Orta, Yinka Shonibare and Esna Su.
Artists explore narratives of movement and exchange, environmental concerns, sustainability, labour, trade, migration, post-colonial narratives, identity, gender, politics, community building and place-making, reflecting our histories in a current context.
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Monster Chetwynd: Moths
Mount Stuart, Bute
10th June to 20th August 2023
Monster Chetwynd is known for tackling urgent global issues through a celebratory approach with exuberant and fun performative pieces. Featuring handmade costumes, props and sets, Chetwynd creates joyful outfits and mise-en-scène that often cross the boundaries onto gallery walls.
During her residency at Mount Stuart, Monster has been working with local school children on a performance-based project that focuses on moths: a species she continues to champion and highlight in her work as well as being one which is redolent with art historical allegory. The exhibition includes sculptural works and work on paper which continues the dialogue between her work and the neo-gothic fantasy of Mount Stuart’s interiors. A film work featuring local moth experts and children, and shot by artists including Margaret Salmon, will be available to view throughout the exhibition dates.
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Rana Begum: Dappled Light
The Box Plymouth
24 June 2023 – 24 Sep 2023
Rana Begum (b. 1977) is a London-based visual artist whose work explores the relationships between light, colour and form. Following presentations in Warwick, London and Dubai, her beautiful ‘Dappled Light’ exhibition travels to Plymouth this summer.
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Waddesdon Manor,
Joana Vasconcelos: Wedding Cake
Waddesdon Manor, Aylesbury, Bucks
18 June – 26 Oct 2023
Wedding Cake, a 12-metre-tall ceramic sculptural pavilion in the form of a three-tiered cake, is a major new Rothschild Foundation commission from celebrated Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos.
Opening this summer, the Wedding Cake will stand within a grove of trees at Waddesdon beside the 19th-century Dairy. It’s a playful continuation of the history of placing fanciful buildings in gardens and landscapes, which at Waddesdon include the ornamental Dairy and gilded Rococo-style Aviary.
Tours run every hour on Thursdays from 10.30am-4.30pm and every hour on selected Sundays from 10.30am-1.30pm
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Sean Scully at Houghton Hall – Smaller Than The Sky
Houghton Hall, Norfolk
23 April – 29 October 2023
Sean Scully takes over the grounds and historic interiors of Houghton Hall in Norfolk for an exhibition that showcases the full range of the artist’s sculpture. In the Hall and Contemporary Gallery, the artist also shows a significant group of paintings and works on paper.
Several new works are included in the exhibition, including stacks made of sandstone, wood, glass and marble. The sculptures range in scale from small maquettes to monumental open structures in steel. The exhibition showcases Scully’s outdoor sculptures in dialogue with works in other media.
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Lindsey Mendick: Where The Bodies Are Buried
YSP, Wakefield
Thu 6 Apr – Sun 3 Sep 2023
Lindsey Mendick’s solo exhibition transforms The Weston Gallery, taking the form of a multi-media installation that investigates dreams, Gothic stories, television and cultural experiences from the 1990s. Bringing the artist’s recurring anxiety dream to life, Where The Bodies Are Buried takes the form of a decaying house with dark secrets beneath the floorboards.
The installation references the popular 1990s UK soap opera Brookside, in which abusive husband and father Trevor Jordache was stabbed to death by his wife Mandy in 1993. Mandy buried his body under the patio, assisted by their daughter Beth who was played by Anna Friel.
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Betty Woodman and George Woodman
Charleston, East Sussex
25 March–10 September 2023
The first in the UK to show both artists together, this exhibition celebrates the work of ground-breaking American ceramic artist Betty Woodman (1930–2018) and painter and photographer George Woodman (1932–2017).
A riot of colour, Betty Woodman and George Woodman bring together the artists’ vibrant ceramics, vivid abstract paintings, radical assemblages, photographs and an early collaboration. Side by side, kindred palettes and patterns emerge, evidence of the couple’s continuous artistic dialogue and mutual influences.
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A Century of Style: Fashion Photography from the National Portrait Gallery Collection
Ulster Museum
5th May to 30th Sept
Fashion photography emerged as a commercial profession in the early twentieth century, with the primary purpose of showcasing and promoting clothing designs. However, over the last one hundred years, it has grown into an art form of its own, with many of the most imaginative and creative photographers of their time drawn to the challenge of capturing the essence and beauty of fashion in their work.
This exhibition brings together some of the most famous fashion photographers and models (sitters) to showcase the art of fashion photography. Through themes including Designers, Model, Maker and Muse, and Art and Fashion, the exhibition examines the role fashion photography has played in defining style, imagery and contemporary culture. The exhibition also focuses on the work of probably the most celebrated fashion photographer of the 20th Century, Cecil Beaton.
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Eve Arnold: To Know About Women
Newlands House Gallery
01 July to 07 January 2024
Newlands House Gallery in Petworth is staging the UK’s first major retrospective of Eve Arnold, the pioneering 20th-century photographer, in ten years. The exhibition explores themes of social injustice, civil rights, religion, power, fame, sexuality and birth.
Over 90 black-and-white and colour photographs will be on display, including Eve Arnold’s career-defining documentary of the fashion shows held in Harlem in the 1950s. Rarely seen photos from this body of work will be exhibited for the first time in 70 years.
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Banksy: Cut and Run: 25 Years Card Labour
Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow
18 June – 28 August 2023
An exhibition of stencils from 1998-2023, including authentic artefacts and ephemera from the graffiti artist.
“I’ve kept these stencils hidden away for years, mindful they could be used as evidence in a charge of criminal damage. But that moment seems to have passed, so now I’m exhibiting them in a gallery as works of art. I’m not sure which is the greater crime”
– Banksy
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Albrecht Dürer’s material world
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester
30 June 2023 – 10 March 2024
Albrecht Dürer’s material world is the first major exhibition of the Whitworth’s outstanding Dürer collection in over half a century.
The exhibition offers a new perspective on Dürer as an intense observer of the worlds of manufacture, design, and trade that fill his graphic art. Woodcuts, etchings, and engravings, from the Whitworth’s collection, are juxtaposed with a range of objects from Dürer’s time, including armour and tableware, books and scientific instruments, textiles, and exotic artefacts. The exhibition highlights the ingenuity and skill with which Dürer, a leading figure of Europe’s print revolution, represented his material world.
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