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Charles HustwickCharles Hustwick (born 1950, Shipley, West Yorkshire, England) is a painter and printmaker who has also made stage designs for dance theatre at the Ballet Rambert and the Laban Centre. He received a BA Hons in Fine Art and Museum Studies from the University of Leeds (1968-1972). Professor Sir Lawrence Gowing, who was Head of Department while Hustwick was at university, was an important early influence, as was a study trip he made to Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 1971.
In 1976, Hustwick became involved in the artists’ collective, Artists for Democracy when he was invited by the AFD co-founder, avant-garde Filipino artist, David Medalla, to participate in their events, design exhibition posters, document installations, and exhibit at the collective’s unorthodox gallery/cultural centre in Whitfield Street in London’s Fitzrovia.
For Artists for Democracys’s final event, Hustwick’s Trans-Apparent series – suspended installations of large, painted, reflective sheets of cellophane – were installed in Mayfair Illuminations, the concluding celebrations of AFD held at Hill House, Berkeley Square in August 1978, the year following AFD’s departure from Whitfield Street.
Since the 1970s, Hustwick has held several solo exhibitions and taken part in numerous group exhibitions, including Group Open, Bermondsey Artists Group, Café Gallery Projects (1997-2003); Tate Gallery Project: Bankside Browser, Saint Christophers House, London (1999); Ark, Kunstbrucke / Artbridge Project, Dilston Grove, London (2000); Shapes of London, London Chamber of Commerce, London (2003); Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London (2006); Arts Unwrapped, 40 Open Studios, London (2006); Atlantic Dialogue: Charles Hustwick & Jo Zalon Meer, Mount Desert Island, Maine, USA (2007). He was featured in the exhibition Artists for Democracy (1974-1977), held by England & Co at the Horse Hospital, London in 2023, and in Artists for Democracy (1974-1977): Revisited at England & Co’s Project Space in Sackville Street, London in 2024.
In recent years, Hustwick has revisited his activism of the 1970s and made paintings and installation works that address the climate change crisis.
