NEWS
Paule Vézelay: Network Paris
5 July 2025 – 11 January 2026
Arp Museum Rolandseck, Germany
England & Co have arranged loans of three works by Paule Vézelay to the exhibition Network Paris Abstraction-Création 1931–1937 at the Arp Museum Rolandseck, Germany. Between 1931 and 1937, the group Abstraction-Création, an international network based in Paris, fought for the freedom of art. Their fluctuating membership included Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Naum Gabo, Piet Mondrian, Marlow Moss and Paule Vézelay. This multigenerational, liberal, progressive and visionary group set about uniting all the different strands of non-objective art. This is the first exhibition on this pioneering association of artists since the 1970s.
Julie Lawson among Barbara Steveni’s friends at Modern Art Oxford
Julie Lawson was one of nine women included by artist-activist Barbara Steveni in her project Conversations Between Ourselves, a series of interviews in which Steveni highlighted the often unacknowledged work of women supporting and administrating the Artist Placement Group and later O+I. The project forms part of the retrospective Barbara Steveni: I Find Myself at Modern Art Oxford (until 8 June 2025).
England & Co director Jane England reflects on Julie Lawson’s remarkable life and her role at the ICA for the Modern Art Oxford blog.
Dom Sylvester Houédard at the Estorick Collection
The Estorick Collection, London N1 2AN
Until 11 May 2025
Clay Perry‘s 1964 portrait of Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924–1992) is featured in Breaking Lines at the Estorick Collection. The exhibition focuses on the work of Dom Sylvester Houédard, widely recognised as one of the masters of concrete poetry. A Benedictine monk and noted theologian, Houédard wrote extensively on new approaches to creativity, spirituality and philosophy, and collaborated with figures such as Gustav Metzger, Yoko Ono and John Cage.
His work – which blurs the boundaries between literature and visual art – helped shape the development of post-war British poetry, and also influenced the global experimental poetry movement.
Anne Bean at CEREMONY
23 – 27 April 2025
Copeland Gallery, London
Anne Bean took part in CEREMONY: A Festival of Performance at Peckham’s Copeland Gallery curated by Future Ritual. Bean’s performance was titled What is that damned beast? Anatomy of performance and she wrote:
“This is a search, a hunt, for the beast that has plagued and soothed me, seared me and haunted me, filled me with unease and with tenderness, with fear and quietude, with disturbance and focus, with bewilderment, with perplexity, with astonishment. It has offered me doorways to transcendence and banishment. This fire-spitting, shape-changing, teeth baring, ecstasy inducing beast will be encountered in some of its manifestations in my lifeworks.”
Eduardo Kac in ‘Electric Dreams: Art and Technology before the Internet’
Tate Modern
Until 1 June 2025
Three of Eduardo Kac’s 1980s Minitel works are included in Electric Dreams – an exhibition at Tate Modern that celebrates the early innovators of optical, kinetic, programmed and digital art, and brings together groundbreaking works by a wide range of international artists who engaged with science, technology and material innovation.
Kac was a pioneer of telecommunications art in the pre-web 1980s, and his Minitel works evolved from his explorations of the relationship between experimental poetry and new media, leading to him to create animated poetic works on the French Minitel platform.
Electric Dreams is curated by Val Ravaglia and all three exhibited works by Kac, plus an additional minitel work are now part of the permanent collection at Tate. Kac is interviewed in the winter edition of Tate Etc. magazine.
Anne Bean performance at Modern Art Oxford for Barbara Steveni opening
28 February 2025, Modern Art Oxford
Anne Bean performed at the opening preview of the exhibition, I Find Myself, the first retrospective exhibition of pioneering, influential artist-activist Barbara Steveni (1928-2020). Bean will develop a new live work inspired by Steveni’s important long-term work, I Am An Archive. Bean has previously presented live performance work at Modern Art Oxford with Bow Gamelan in 1984, as well as the work I’d Rather Go Blind in 2012, as part of Solo curated by Brian Catling. (I Find Myself continues until 8 June 2025.)
Anne Bean and Bow Gamelan
6 February 2025
Tate Modern
Formed by Anne Bean, Paul Burwell (1949-2007) and Richard Wilson in 1983, Bow Gamelan Ensemble are known for their powerful, large-scale performances using unexpected sounds and pyrotechnics. This evening of conversation and short films includes the premiere of Maps of Other Possibilities, a new documentary about the group made in collaboration with Alex Eisenberg.
Paule Vézelay: Living Lines
Royal West of England Academy
25 January – 27 April 2025
England & Co are pleased to have arranged numerous loans for this celebratory retrospective exhibition spanning Paule Vézelay’s career held in the city of Bristol where she was born in 1892 as Marjorie Watson-Williams. She later adopted the name Paule Vézelay after moving to Paris in 1926. On display are more than 60 of her works, including paintings, prints, sculptures and textiles, in addition to material from her archive.
Anne Bean: Paul Hamlyn Award
14 November 2024
Anne Bean has received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists. These awards were established in 1994 to give artists a financial award at a timely moment in their careers. The aim is to give artists the freedom to develop their creative ideas and to grow both personally and professionally, reflecting the Foundation’s strong belief in the value of artists to society. Initially, the awards were made to artists from different art forms each year and there has been a consistent focus on visual artists since 1998 and composers since 2007. The Paul Hamlyn Foundation was founded in 1987 by the publisher and philanthropist, Paul Hamlyn.
Liliane Lijn’s Liquid Reflections
Clay Perry‘s 1966 portrait of the artist Liliane Lijn is the cover of her recently published memoir, Liquid Reflections, her account of leaving her native USA in 1958 to become an artist in Paris, and the following decade of experiment and adventure. (Published by Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Books Ltd.)