Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance

Organised by the Hayward Gallery in collaboration with The Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC
Sat 1 Nov – Sat 6 Dec 1997

As the Jazz Age dawned in the early 1920s, African-American artists, writers and musicians flocked to a little known part of Manhattan called Harlem. ‘The Mecca of the New Negro’ soon became home to a cultural revolution, the repercussions of which would be felt around the world. This multi-media presentation shows the rich cultural legacy of the Harlem Renaissance and includes photograph of Harlem society, jazz inspired paintings of night-clubs and street scenes, sculpture and film footage of the age.

The exhibition is divided into sections: Representing the New Negro; Another Modernism; Performance, Jazz and the Blues ‘Aesthetic’; The Cult of the Primitive; Africa: Inheritance and Seizure; Harlem as Haiti.

It has been devised and selected by Richard J Powell, Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University, North Carolina and David A Bailey, Co-Director of the African and Asian Visual Artists’ Archive at the University of East London and is presented in association with the Institute of International Visual Arts in London.

Antists include: Charles Alston, Richmond Barthe, Edward Burra, Miguel Covarrubias, Aaron Douglas, William Edmondson, Jacop Epstein, Walker Evans, Meta Vaux, Warrick Fuller, Palmer C Hayden, Malvina Hoffman, Langston Hughes, Malvin Gray Johnson, Sargent Claude Johnson, William H Johnson, Lois Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Man Ray, Edna Manley, Ronald C Moody, Archibald j Motley Jr, Winold Reiss, Richard S Roberts, Augusta Savage, Albert Alexander Smith, Doris Ulmann, James VanDerZee, Carl Van Vechten, James Lesegne Wells.

Films directed by Oscar Micheaux, Lutz Becker, Kenneth Macpherson, Richard Maurice, Jean Renoir, Marc Allegret, J. Elder Wills, Isaac Julien.

David Austen: Paintings and Works on Paper

A Mead Gallery Exhibition
Sat 27 Sep – Sat 25 Oct 1997

This is a rare opportunity to view the various strands of Austen’s work including a series of large scale oils shown together for the first time. In these paintings, mysterious objects hand, slide or float in front of panels of exquisite colour. Also included are intimate, delicate watercolours of the human figure and a new series of larger, vivid, abstract gouaches.

A Cloudburst of Material Possessions: A fantasy on a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci

A Purdy Hicks Gallery Touring Exhibition
Sat 27 Sep – Sat 25 Oct 1997

A Cloudburst of Material Possessions is a small pen and ink sketch by Leonard da Vinci of a deluge of everyday objects falling from the sky – a graphic analogy for the triumph of materialism over spirituality. This exhibition brings together the work of nineteen contemporary British artists who were invited to respond to da Vince’s drawing in a variety of media.

Artists include Edward Allington, Jordan Baseman, Brian Catling, Simon Callery, Stephen Farthing, David Mach and Mario Rossi.

Ken Kiff: Recent Work

A Mead Gallery Exhibition
Sat 24 May – Sat 28 Jun 1997

ON SHOW IN LIBRARY EXHIBITION ROOM WHILE MEAD GALLERY CLOSED FOR REFURBISHMENT

Ken Kiff has been painting and printmaking since the 1960s. This exhibition brings together his most recent monoprints, etchings, woodcuts and lithographs and includes work relating to his time as Associate Artist at the National Gallery. Kiff’s work takes a whimsical approach to the natural world. His strange and fantastic compositions describe places where figures, animals and birds play out elusive narratives. As with his painted works, he allows images to evolve slowly, taking months or years to bring them to completion.

Richard Layzell: Infiltration

Artist in Residence
Fri 25 Apr – Fri 23 May 1997

Since his first solo exhibition in 1977, Richard Layzell has exhibited and worked as an artist-in-residence across Britain and throughout the world Making both visual art and performance-based work (plus the occasional gratuitous off-beat event) he has also worked as an artist in industry with AIT plc. For his residency, Layzell will infiltrate the different groups, societies and areas of the university and challenge the campus inhabitants to re-examine their daily lives.

Graham Sutherland as Printmaker, 1950-80

A Mead Gallery Exhibition
Sat 19 Apr – Sat 17 May 1997

One of the most important British artists of the twentieth century, Graham Sutherland is well known for his portraiture, his landscapes inspired by the Pembrokeshire Coast and the huge tapestry that he designed for Coventry Cathedral.

This exhibition focuses on his post-war printmaking and includes a selection from the Bestiary, Bees and Apollinaire suites. These expressive images describe organic and animal forms, originally explored by the artistsin his studies for the Coventry Cathedral Tapestry. From moneys, birds and bees to more fantastical forms, Sutherland’s beasts are characteristically invested with a powerful psychological presence.

ON SHOW IN LIBRARY EXHIBITION ROOM WHILE MEAD GALLERY CLOSED FOR REFURBISHMENT

Jo Stockham: -scape

A Mead Gallery Exhibition
Sat 15 Feb – Sat 15 Mar 1997

Jo Stockham’s art journeys across the pictures we use to navigate our world: grids, diagrams, scientific illustrations and maps. -scape is concerned with drawing in its broadest sense and with the transition between two and three dimensions. the artist uses photographs made into objects, texts and shadows in response to specific sites and histories. Metaphors of mapping and collections of ephemeral objects address the way we chart territories of land or knowledge.

Black Sun: Roger Ackling

A Mead Gallery Exhibition
Sat 11 Jan – Sat 15 Mar 1997

Roger Ackling’s work challenges all interpretation through its sheer simplicity. Working with the sun and a magnifying glass as his only tools, he creates objects of contemplation from found wood. From the moment of his active involvement when he focuses the sun’s heat through the glass, the artist invents a system of marks that express both human endeavour and natural processes. For the Mead Gallery installation, Ackling will develop the meditative qualities of his work through their arrangement within the gallery space

Elizabeth Ogilvie: Oceanus Project I

A Mead Gallery Exhibition
Sat 11 Jan – Sat 8 Feb 1997

Elizabeth Ogilvie lives and works on the coast of Fife in Scotland. To date her work has dealt consistently with her evolving relationship to the sea. The large scale, architectural works of Oceanus project I extend her sculpture to an involvement with the broader processes, cycles and symbolic associations of water – how it reflects, evaporates, falls and flows. With pools of water across the Gallery floor, water bubbling through transparent pipes and falling in sheets down a wall of glass, Oceanus Project I traces the effects and mysteries of the global movements of water through tides, rivers and rain.