NEWS
Mechanical Echoes: the Typewriter and Artistic Practice
Until 27 October 2019
Early visual poetry by Eduardo Kac is featured in Mechanical Echoes: The Typewriter and Artistic Practice at the Museum of Contemporary Art in São Paulo, Brazil. Curated by Cristina Freire, the exhibition highlights the use of the typewriter by international artists from the 19th and 20th centuries and it includes five of Kac’s works on paper alongside his digital poem Letter (1996). Acquired by the museum in 2014, Letter presents a spiralling cone made of words, visually evoking the creation or destruction of a star. The component texts are composed as fragments of letters written to a single individual, while deliberately conflating the subject positions of grandmother, mother, and daughter, referencing moments of death and birth in the poet’s family.
Jack Bilbo in Brave New Visions at Sotheby’s
17 July – 9 August 2019
Jack Bilbo is represented – as both an artist and gallery director – in the exhibition Brave New Visions at Sotheby’s London that pays tribute to the émigré art dealers who transformed the London gallery scene after arriving in the UK. England & Co have loaned Bilbo’s Black Madonna and material about the gallery Bilbo opened during the war years in London.
Benjamin Creme and the Circle around Jankel Adler
Thursday 11 July, 6.30pm
Gallery director, Jane England, will be giving a talk on Thursday evening at the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London. Entitled Benjamin Creme and the Circle of Jankel Adler, it will focus on the work of Glasgow-born artist Benjamin Creme (1922-2016), one of the artists who gathered around the émigré Polish artist Jankel Adler (1895-1949) in Glasgow and London in the 1940s. Two works by Benjamin Creme are included in the museum’s current exhibition, Jankel Adler: A ‘degenerate’ artist in Britain 1940-1949.
Anne Bean in conversation on Resonance FM
7 July 2019
Listen to Anne Bean talking with Simon Tyszko on Resonance FM. The discussion was recorded as a “walking conversation” around her latest exhibition project, Anne Bean: How Things Used to Be Now, held by England & Co in the Southeran Building, London W1.
Vicuña exhibition at Witte de With
Until 24 November 2019
Cecilia Vicuña’s retrospective exhibition at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam brings together more than a hundred works by this poet, visual artist, and activist. Dawn Adès’ wonderful essay on Vicuña’s early paintings – first published by England & Co in the publication/catalogue for Cecilia Vicuña’s exhibition at England & Co in 2013 – has been re-published in the excellent publication accompanying the exhibiiton edited by the curator Miguel López.
Karl Marx at the Guggenheim
24 May 2019 – 12 January 2020
The exhibition Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York, comprises six displays curated by artists from the museum’s collection. In her selection, artist Julie Mehretu has included the painting of Karl Marx by Cecilia Vicuña that was acquired by the museum from England & Co in 2018.
Tina Keane’s SHE acquired for The British Council collection
April 2019
Tina Keane’s iconic, declamatory neon wall sculpture SHE has been acquired from England & Co for the collection of The British Council. This work was initially conceived in 1977 for Keane’s pioneering, multi-media performance event, SHE, at the Hayward Gallery in 1978, and produced as an edition in 2018 by England & Co with the artist and her original fabricator. Keane’s practice reflects her feminist perspective and explorations of gender roles, sexuality and political concerns.
John & Astrid Furnival in Venice
9 May – 23 June 2019
John Furnival is known for his drawings and for being an early exponent of Concrete and Visual Poetry. His wife, Astrid Furnival, is a textile artist known for her conceptual and pop art designs using her own organic dyes.
This exhibition presents works by John spanning over 50 years, with a particular focus on his collaborations with Astrid since the 1970s. Furnival has significant associations with Italy, including twice being artist-in-residence at the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, and exhibiting and associating with members of the Fluxus Group in Italy (organized in Verona by Francesco Conz).
From the Kitchen Table, in Southwark
16 May – 30 June 2019
Tina Keane is one of the many artists included in From the Kitchen Table: Drew Gallery Projects 1984-90. The exhibition at Southwark Park Galleries (across both the Lake and Dilston Galleries) celebrates the projects of Australian curator Sandra Drew who staged a series of ground-breaking exhibitions in locations in and around Canterbury in the 1980s.
Installation photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy Southwark Park Galleries.
René Halkett: From Bauhaus to Cornwall
4 March – 11 May 2019
On the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Bauhaus, Falmouth Art Gallery presents the work of Bauhaus student, German-born René Halkett (1900-1983). Hackett studied under Klee and Kandinsky and in 1923 joined the Stagecraft Workshop of the Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar. Escaping the rise of fascism in the Thirties, Halkett sought exile in Britain, emigrating in 1936. He later settled in Cornwall, from where he broadcast for the BBC, while continuing to produce paintings, drawings and sculpture. His book Dear Monster was published in 1939.
The exhibition René Halkett: From Bauhaus to Cornwall is curated by Marcus Williamson with works from private collections in the UK and Germany. England & Co have loaned two Surrealist paintings from the late 1930s to the exhibition, the first time these works had been exhibited since they were included in Halkett’s exhibition at Jack Bilbo’s The Modern Art Gallery in the 1940s.