This year’s Material: Textile is an online exhibition of historically important and highly collectable textiles by some of the most important Modern female designers working in Britain. Brought together for the first time – and offered as an online and virtual exhibition with an accompanying catalogue and podcast – the exhibition highlights the relevance of these mid-century textiles and the vital role they played in the evolution of taste and culture. It offers us all a unique insight into the artistic vision and originality of these women.
As a prelude to his solo show in the Long Gallery this September, we present an online exhibition by photographer Alexander Lindsay. We are delighted to include Alexander as one of Messums Wiltshire’s represented artists. The online exhibition of photography by Alexander Lindsay documents his 8 month journey around South America, from Bolivia to Tierra del Fuego and around Cape Horn.
Tuesday Riddell’s rich, symbolically charged lacquerware pieces take us into an ethereal nocturne of fantastical narratives and acute observation, highlighting themes of mortality and contemporary environmental concerns. It is perhaps then fitting that this new body of six paintings – originally scheduled to be shown as part of a focus on British Observational Art in New York this May – are being offered direct to our clients during this time, when both are in the forefront of our minds.
Tuesday’s intricate pieces recall sottobosco painting of the Dutch 17th Century as they magnify insect life and the of flora and fauna of the natural world. They also employ a visual language that links fairy tales and the fabulous with the real life underworld that is both harmonious and perilous, beautiful and decaying.
She is one of a number of artists supported and represented by Messums whose artistic practice is underpinned by extraordinary craftsmanship in the execution of their work. Similar to Asian lacquer work, Japanning is a European technique brought to Britain in the 17th Century that is both laborious and today is rarely studied. Tuesday’s synthesis of this traditional practice with a modern sensibility and awareness of nature points to a generation of artists who venerate the present, question the future and have embraced technical skill.
From Wednesday 20 May
We are delighted to present two bodies of work by Peter Brown NEAC. The first collection is a snapshot into an evolving world. These are the recent works to have been completed in Peter’s studio. Here time is different, it is contemplated and paintings are returned to over 24hr cycles. Nothing moves in between. This greater period of study lends these works an intensity of observation that is in contrast to the flurry of constant action in Pete’s street scenes It is to Peter’s credit and to our enjoyment that he is able to carry off both.
The second series are street scenes from the busy metropolis of New York, this collection was originally scheduled to be part of a show on British Observational Art on New York’s upper east side this May. They are in so many ways the diametric opposite of the Life in Lockdown series. They capture street scenes of bagel stands and the view north from Madison square, to the early morning sunlight in Greenwich Village and rain falling in Soho.
He says of the en plein air paintings:
“I work entirely from life using the cities and the countryside as my subjects. I start with what tickles me, and this is likely to be a certain play of the light, weather, space and everyday life. Most of my drawings and paintings take several sittings over consecutive days and in that time I may meet police officers, dog walkers, road sweepers, residents and tourists.”
Peter Brown is president of The New English Art Club and a member of The Pastel Society, The Royal institute of Oil Painters and Bath Society of Artists. His studio is based in Bath.
from Saturday 23 May
We are delighted to present a selection of Inuit Canadian sculpture and textile, which have been brought together by Pat Feheley, Director of one of the last remaining commercial galleries in Canada dedicated exclusively to traditional and contemporary art from the Canadian Arctic and an expert on the work of Inuit textile artists.
Friday 29 May, 6:30pm
Join Inuit art specialist Pat Feheley for an online talk on Zoom as an introduction to our Inuit sculpture exhibition.
As part of our online programming, we are delighted to present a collection of significant Inuit sculpture from the mid to late twentieth century from a single owner collection. Beautiful objects in their own right and a lasting record of the Inuit culture past and present, Inuit sculpture also plays an important role in the development of Western art.
Gallery owner and Inuit art specialist, Pat Feheley will discuss the works in the exhibition on Zoom with a chance to ask questions afterwards. All attendees will receive a link to join in the event.
Saturday 30 May, 11am
As part of our online programming, join us for a virtual tour of Inuit Sculpture, an exhibition of significant Inuit sculpture from the mid to late twentieth century from a single owner collection. Beautiful objects in their own right they also speak of a culture leaving a lasting record.
Wednesday 3 June, 6:30pm
What does a travelling poet do during lockdown? Join us for a talk with Gommie and an introduction to his new body of work.
“On Tuesday 17th of March 2020, I was in Llandudno Junction in North Wales. Boris had just shut the pubs and I realised that I could no longer morally roam from place to place the way I had been doing.”
Lockdown has affected us all and no more so than artist and travelling poet Gommie. Taking government sanctioned daily walks Gommie began mapping out the shape of our new way of life. Noting fragments of language coming to the fore and engaging more with life online.
“I had some beautiful and hilarious conversations with people from all over the world about their experiences of lockdown. I realised how romantic so many of us are. How funny and silly and poetic we all have the ability to remain during abrupt change.”
From Saturday 6 June
A series of 25 paintings positioned on a tideline, a point on the coast to engage with the idea of this shifting transient marker. For this collection Kurt chose Port Quin as his inspiration, a North Cornish cove he has known since childhood.
“Being on this particular rocky shoreline, focussing on this slow daily process, time ruled. Here the tideline was subtle, not marked by a line of deposited items but simply the delineation between the wet and dry. The relationship between the sea’s ebb and flow and the topography of the coast is determined by the clock. Watching the water creeping up and down, in and out of the cove is like watching the hands of a cock rotating on a clock face,the twice daily rise and fall of the sea level is arguably time made visible almost tangible.”
Wednesday 10 June, 11am
Christie Brown is an artist and Emerita Professor of Ceramics at the University of Westminster in London. She graduated from Harrow School of Art in 1982 and set up her north London studio that year. At Westminster she taught on the BA, MA and PhD programmes while maintaining and developing her sculptural practice. She was Principal Investigator on the AHRC project Ceramics in the Expanded Field, awarded to the University’s Ceramics Research Centre-UK in 2011, which included her solo exhibition DreamWork at the Freud Museum in London in 2012. Recent major exhibitions include Marking the Line at the Sir John Soane’s Museum (2013), Material Earth 1 and 2 at Messums Wiltshire (2017 and 2018), Humanism at the ClayArch Gimhae Museum, Korea (2018), Dream On at the V&A Museum of Childhood (2018), Cultural Icons at the Potteries Museum and Beyond the Vessel at Mesher, Istanbul (2019).
She continues to exhibit her ceramic sculpture widely in the UK and abroad and frequently lectures about her practice at international residencies and conferences. Her work is featured in several private and public collections in Europe and the USA, including the Victoria and Albert Museum UK and the Mint Museum USA.
Wednesday 17 June, 6:30pm
Join us for an online talk and Q&A with the landscape artist Kurt Jackson during the week his new exhibition ‘Time & Tide: the Port Quin Paintings’ opens on our website.
The show consists of a series of 25 paintings positioned on a tideline, a point on the coast to engage with the idea of this shifting transient marker. For this collection Kurt chose Port Quin as his inspiration, a North Cornish cove he has known since childhood.
Friday 26 June, 11am
A podcast interview with multimedia artists Sonia Leber and David Chesworth by journlist Fiona Gruber exactly one year since the start of their residency at Messums Wiltshire. Sonia Leber and David Chesworth were artists-in-residence for five weeks during which time they created work in response to the thirteenth century tithe barn and it’s surroundings to be exhibited in December 2020.
Wednesday 20 May, 11am
As part of our Studio Story series of events we will feature a podcast interview with the en plein air artist Peter Brown NEAC as we launch a series of his New York cityscapes online. These works were originally scheduled to be shown as part of a Messums’ exhibition focusing on British Observational Art in New York this May.
Peter rarely paints from reference in the studio preferring to work directly from the subject en plein air whatever the weather, refusing to use photographic reference.
“I work entirely from life using the cities and the countryside as my subjects. I start with what tickles me, and this is likely to be a certain play of the light, weather, space and everyday life. Most of my drawings and paintings take several sittings over consecutive days and in that time I may meet police officers, dog walkers, road sweepers, residents and tourists.”
Peter is president of The New English Art Club and a member of The Pastel Society, The Royal institute of Oil Painters and Bath Society of Artists.
Wednesday 13 May, 6:30pm
Join us for a virtual tour of Tuesday Riddell’s studio as she works on her new pieces through the fascinating processes of gilding and japanning. These new artworks will be launched on our website on 13 May on the same day they were planned to preview in our New York show, postponed due to the ongoing situation.
Our Emerging Talent artist from 2019, Tuesday Riddell defies easy classification. Her work is attractive, decorative and fantastical yet rooted in dark themes of mortality and contemporary environmental concerns.
Through processes of japanning and chinoiserie these creations are grounded in dramatic tones of black and gold. The ornate surface of the works, together with the depth of narrative, are traversed together in a rare marriage of the imagined world and the decorated surface.
Tuesday Riddell graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting from City & Guilds of London Art School. She has concluded her Painter-Stainers Decorative Surface Fellowship at City & Guilds – the only Fellowship in the UK that provides specialist training in the craft of decorative surface techniques to ensure that endangered skills are kept alive and vibrant in contemporary practice, focusing on historic techniques such as gilding, japanning, chinoiserie and marbling.
Friday 8 May
Photographer Alexander Lindsay considers the great outdoors to be his studio as for the past forty years, Lindsay has brought his cameras to the most extreme situations and environments on the planet. We are delighted to be joined by Alexander on Friday 8 May live on Zoom at 6:30pm as his online exhibition opens on our website. Alexander will talk us through the images and locations in South America also the fascinating stories behind the works.
Alexander Lindsay creates photographic landscapes of extraordinary beauty. From his earliest experiences with the Maasai tribe, a five year spell in Afghanistan during Soviet occupation and his expeditions to photograph and film the wreck of the Titanic 4km beneath the oceans waves, Lindsay has always sought to immerse himself in situations where, as he explains, ‘the imagination is rendered unnecessary’.
Having recently photographed in Namibia, Lesotho and South Africa, Lindsay’s lifelong project is to continually further our appreciation and comprehension of what is possible in photographic landscape art. His work has been exhibited internationally, including France, London, USA and South Africa. His prints are included in major private and corporate collections in the US, UK and Europe.
Charles Poulsen’s large-scale drawings are realised in layers of pencil, wax and gouache to create striking abstractions that capture the energy of drawing as a primary means of expression.
“I was particularly influenced by commentary in Tate Modern’s catalogue for an exhibition of Agnes Martin (2015), as follows: ‘The root word for ‘grid’ in both Latin and Greek denotes ‘wicker work’ – flexible twigs or shoots woven criss-cross into a horizontal-vertical format.’* This released me – from the idea of the grid as simply a rigid structure of straight lines – and led me to start drawing loose, overlaying structures of irregular spatial elements based on fragments of the grid.” Charles Poulsen
The drawings start with the square sheet of paper and a drawn square frame within. The square is chosen for its stability, calmness and because there is not the same association with landscape or the portrait of a rectangle. They are more about energy than any particular subject matter – the invisible energies, the internal organic forces of growth, the forces which drive the winds and currents the energies within the earth. They are often drawn to music as the musical language of harmony, melody, rhythm and form has a very close relationship to the language of his drawings.
The materials he employs are deliberately limited: pencil (he favours a hard lead to begin, capable of creating grooves in the paper, but may turn to the very soft at the end of a drawing); gouache (opaque water-soluble pigment); wax (a ‘resist’ medium over which coloured wash can be laid, Poulsen sculpts a range of drawing edges from blocks of it). He begins and often ends with pencil. His process is one of layering, building form and space. There is an established sequence of his media: wax is usually the second to be laid down (where white is needed), then gouache (to provide light tones), then more wax, and so on, with the final application of gouache providing darker tones.
Charles has shown his drawings and sculpture throughout the UK and his book ‘Charles Poulsen Drawing’ was published by Hughson Gallery in 2017. He lives with his wife, the textile artist Pauline Burbidge, in the Scottish Borders.
An inaugural exhibition of original tintypes and by photographer Tif Hunter. The alchemy of tintypes is one Tif Hunter has mastered in the background of a highly successful career as a professional photographer. Celebrated by agencies for his exacting detail in the pre-digital era, Tintype has been his sole focus now over the last decade and has seen him develop this mercurial early means of image capture. It is now a celebrated medium in its own right, praised for its uniqueness and authenticity in an age that has seen image manipulation become a filter through which we are looking.
Brought up amongst the groves and vineyards of Faedis in northern Italy, the son of an architect and winemaker, Francesco Poiana has exchanged the alluvial plains and terraces of the Mediterranean for the wild and open chalk downs of Wiltshire.
Francesco joined our emerging talents programming following his masters degree at St Martin’s art college in London in 2019. Later that summer he was invited to Wiltshire to spend time in the landscape surrounding Messums. It was a culmination for him of a reverse Grand Tour, that saw him trace a path from Italy to the landscape from which so many of the most legendary tours started. His interest however was in a connection to the landscape far more ancient; in particular he has been taken by the area around Cranborne Chase with its striations and lush gradations of green and the Bronze Age barrow of Win Green that stands high on a ridge above it.
Based in Kyushu, the southern island of Japan, Makoto Kagoshima’s celebrated ceramics are a fusion of design and heartwarming motifs making each object a unique, one-of-a-kind work of art. His hand produced and decorated works are designed with a variety of plants and animals remembered from his childhood. They speak of whimsy and elegance and […]
Thiébaut began his career in 1976, training in France, Belgium and in England under Michael Cardew and Richard Batterham. Returning to France in 1981 he set up his first workshop in the Loire Valley and in 1984 built a new studio in the Vosges with a wood-fired kiln. Examples of his work can be found […]
As part of our Tuesday lecture series which accompanies each exhibition we are excited to welcome Francesco into the gallery for an in depth discussion and presentation on his work and his processes and printmaking methods. The talk will accompany Francesco’s series of prints that will be on as part of our emerging talents programme. […]
Describing the kind of Japanese paper he uses to make his prints, Francesco Poiana says; ‘It is very thin and also very delicate. I like its feeling of lightness and also the rich tradition and history of paper from which it comes, which has had such a big cultural influence in the West; van Gogh […]
Leading ceramics expert Paul Greenhalgh takes us back to where it all began, introducing two of the biggest names in Korean ceramics working today for their debut in London, as part of our focus on Ceramic across both London and Wiltshire venues.
Join us at 6pm in the gallery during printmaker Norman Ackroyd’s exhibition ‘Images of the North’ to hear the artist talk about his work and inspiration. Norman Ackroyd has built a reputation as one of Britain’s most highly regarded printmakers. He made his first etching at Leeds College of Art 60 years ago before winning […]
Saturday 8 – Saturday 15 February Preview Party: Friday 7 February, 6 – 8pm RSVP Collectors Tour: Saturday 8 February, 11 – 12pm RSVP The Pod at Messums Wiltshire is a unique retail space presenting a fusion of artists and makers brought together to explore the margin where art meets design and craft. The […]
Gommie’s pictures are a testament to one of the most extraordinary years in British history. We have had the vote and these are the first responses from an artist at the coalface of an area that was once a Labour heartland. Gommie started to make these pictures during one of the lowest ebbs of his life […]
Messums London and Wiltshire are delighted to be back at the London Art Fair in January 2020. The London Art fair aims to provide a space to showcase the most exceptional modern and contemporary art of our time, a place to discover and to buy. Specially curated for the art fair, Messums will be showing […]
We are delighted to showcase these remarkable sculptures here on Cork Street and to preview the maquette and concepts for the public commission to be installed at Printers Office Street, Doncaster in May 2020. In 2018 Laurence Edwards was awarded a commission by the town of Doncaster for a sculptural installation celebrating and remembering the […]
An exhibition of pictures by one of the most distinguished observers of the British landscape, Norman Ackroyd, will be on show at Messums in London throughout January. Twenty-two aquatints and etchings of the Yorkshire countryside – from the snowy plains of the dales to the shadowy presence of Whitby Abbey – will reveal the majesty not only of the landscape of the North but of Ackroyd’s technical skill.
PAPUNYA TULA ARTISTS Paintings and Woodblock from the Western Australian Desert Indigenous Australian people have lived in the remote deserts of Australia for tens of thousands of years. In the late 1960s, the Australian government moved several communities from the Western Desert region – primarily Pintupi, Luritja, Warlpiri and Arrernte peoples – to […]
This December our Talks and Tapas event will explore the work of Kurt Jackson. Alongside authentic Spanish tapas and champagne there will be an in-focus discussion led by art critic David Boyd Haycock examining Jackson’s artistic process. Working both out on the riverbank and in the studio Jackson’s work takes many forms but never deviates […]
Kurt Jackson has for a long time been a champion of the environmental movement. Whilst his paintings, with their range of media and texture and their three dimensionality, are clear calls to experience the physicality of the world first hand – to get in there amongst it all, to realise that this landscape – so threatened as rivers […]
SOLD OUT 3 December 2 – 3pm. The Royal Academy lecture theatre £20 Due to overwhelming demand to view Kurt Jackson’s work at Messums London, the gallery will now be open before and the Royal Academy talk from 10am – midday and later from 6 – 8pm. Attending the gallery is free of charge but […]
Messums London and Wiltshire is honoured to represent the celebrated sculptor Albert Paley’s work and studio in Europe and Australia. Albert Paley joins a roster of artists whose working practice is exemplified by their choice of material and we are delighted Albert will be visiting the gallery during his forthcoming exhibition of drawings and smaller […]
The Talk & Tapas with Albert Paley on Thursday 28 November is now sold out so due to popular demand we announce an extra date on Wednesday 27 November. Messums London and Wiltshire is honoured to represent the celebrated sculptor Albert Paley’s work and studio in Europe and Australia. Albert Paley joins a roster of […]
Three remarkable evenings designed to appeal to our senses of occasion and exploration have been curated by Johnny Messum, Rebecca Jago and Alex Motture. You are invited to take your seat at the table to enjoy a pairing of exceptionally rare and aged spirits from The Last Drop Distillers with a five course supper prepared […]
Messums London and Wiltshire is honoured to announce representation of Albert Paley’s work and studio in Europe and Australia. Albert Paley joins a roster of artists whose working practice is exemplified by their choice of material. As representatives of Paley’s work in Europe and Australia we are delighted to present an exhibition of his drawings […]
Tuesday 29 October, 6:45pm, £10 Join us for an illustrated talk by the award-winning journalist, novelist and painter Philippa Stockley discussing her new book Restoration Stories: Patina and Paint in Old London Houses. The book features interviews with the owners of sixteen restored London period properties, one of which is her own, alongside ravishing photographs […]
Tuesday 15 October 18:30 – 20:30 £15 Our Tuesday talks and tapas are an opportunity to delve into a theme that springs from the artists on show at the time. From the 8th of October we are excited to have the drawings of Brian Taylor and Henry Lamb in the gallery and therefore our evening […]
As representatives of the Henry Lamb Estate we are delighted to present a collection of oils and drawings by Henry Lamb from 1914 – 1921. The exhibition will go some way to telling the story of Lamb’s multifaceted experiences of war and how this nervous, sensitive, physically fragile artist come to be a front-line doctor […]
Drawings by Brian Taylor inspired by a period of time he spent in Naum Gabo’s studio in Connecticut will be on display at Messums London from 9 October – 1 November 2019. Taylor rarely made drawings of his subjects in advance of sculpting them in clay, but in 1984 he went to stay in New […]
We welcome back The Pod at Messums Wiltshire to Cork Street for a pop-up exhibition this October. The Pod at Messums Wiltshire is a unique retail space inside our 13th century tithe barn. It curates a fusion of artists and makers brought together to explore the margin where art meets design and craft. The Pod […]
We would like to welcome you to visit the British Art Fair where Messums London has been invited to take a stand presenting Modern British Art on the ground floor of the Saatchi Gallery. The works we will have on show range across the Modern British genre from textile to ceramic and are from both our London and Wiltshire galleries. […]
Messums London would like to invite you to the first of our monthly Tuesday Talks and Tapas evenings. An in-focus event for our collectors and friends to get together and explore the work of Laurence Edwards. Laurence is a creative titan who’s unique and world class casting methods have made him one of the UK’s […]
Messums are delighted to announce a double show of works by sculptor Laurence Edwards. The show is in divided into two parts, with large-scale public and private commissions on view in Wiltshire and recent works and studies in Cork Street. Encompassing works from the studio and a presentation of commissioned pieces including the unveiling of […]
In addition to the main show, ‘A Gathering of Uncertainties’ there is on display a new maquette series fresh from Laurence Edwards’ foundry. These pieces are a menagerie of unique studies and individual pieces, some created in preparation for larger scale works and some playful maquettes, unique examinations of the human figure. These sculptures work […]
An exciting selection of some of the key works from the Camden Town Group exhibition remain at Cork St. These highlights come from our exhibition on the Camden Town School and Royal Academicians representing the lifetime obsession of Christopher Mason-Watts with completing this collection. So often the context of a gallery is to allow an […]
‘The Pod’ at Messums Wiltshire is a unique retail space inside our 13th century tithe barn. It curates a fusion of artists and makers brought together to explore the margin where art meets design and craft. This window takeover in London focuses particularly on the medium of wood and its organic and versatile nature. Fritz Baumann, […]
Tuesday Riddell’s work takes us down to the forest floor and a glorious insight into the world that captures her imagination, that ethereal nocturne when all cycles of life and death carry on with rarely a watchful eye. However it is also her unique craftsmanship in the ancient art of japanning that catches the eye. […]
Danish artist Malene Hartmann Rasmussen works with figurative narrative sculpture and installation, creating work from individual hand-modelled ceramics and found objects. She is part of a vanguard of artists who choose not to define themselves by discipline or craft but instead blur the boundaries between Applied Art, Design and Fine Art, with exceptional hand-craftsmanship at […]
Join us at midday on the opening day of Daniel’s exhibition ‘STATE’ for a talk and tour of the show by the artist. Daniel Agdag is an artist and filmmaker based in Melbourne, Australia whose practice sits at the nexus of sculpture and motionography. He creates highly detailed sculptural pieces that have been described as […]
As one of the leading contemporary figurative artists working today Antony Williams is dealing uniquely with matters of reflection and thoughtfulness in a context embedded in tradition and provenance. This series of beautifully conceived works perfectly examples Williams’s recent development towards, not only the human psyche, but how this relates to the natural landscape. Williams’ […]
Daniel Agdag, an artist and filmmaker from Melbourne, creates models that come to life through the medium of stop motion animation. As static objects, however, these pieces invite close personal inspection and maintain suggestions of whimsy and narrative. Agdag’s pieces make no attempt to conceal the mechanisms and materials of his process. For Agdag, cardboard […]
A Very British Collection is a selection of 20th Century work that provides a unique opportunity to see together both a remarkably complete collection of Camden Town Group and British Figurative paintings. It is also an insight into the desire to collect, and how personality can shape that process. This collection comes directly from one […]
