AUTRES CHOSES

7–23 December 2023

England & Co’s Project Space at the Sotheran’s Building,
2a Sackville Street, Piccadilly, London W1S 3DP.

Opening hours: Monday to Friday 11–5; Saturdays in December 11–4.

Opening evening: Thursday, 7 December, 5–8pm.
Autres Choses, and the launch of our festive window installation, begins with
a joint open evening with our neighbours, the antiquarian bookshop Sotherans.

The title of England & Co’s December exhibition, Autres Choses, is taken from a series of gilded cast artworks by the late British artist, Ralph Rumney. The English translation as ‘among other things’ denotes the nature of this seasonal presentation – a selling exhibition that comprises an assembly of artworks and objects from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, which will be added to over the course of the display.

The gallery window hosts artist Magnus Irvin‘s spectacular, kinetic window display, Sol Invictus: an idiosyncratic amalgamation of imagery from pre-Christian winter solstice celebrations that references Saturnalia, the Green Man, the Sun and Moon.

The exhibition includes a rare, signed and numbered example of the original silkscreen poster for Robert Indiana’s famous LOVE exhibition at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1966 – the first silkscreen print made of Indiana’s famous ‘LOVE’ design, an image currently inspiring the most recent collection by Longchamp Paris.

Among the works on view is Alastair Mackie’s Sphere iii from the series of the intricate, meticulously constructed works that first attracted attention to his practice. Mackie manipulates ‘craft and concept’, and this delicate sphere of tiny mouse skulls, illustrating ideas of mortality and regeneration, is presented poised, apparently floating in a glass bell jar.

Georgia Russell’s Oeuvres from 2007 is contained in an antique dome that complements the age of the dissected book inside. Russell is known internationally for works that result from her techniques of cutting and transforming her materials. As French critic, Anne Malherbe writes: Russell ‘delivers an object for us to gaze at – like a trophy… a testimony to the relationship she has established with the work over her time labouring on it’. Other artist book-works include leporellos by the French-Iranian artist, Christine Khondji: painted and collaged double-sided accordion books inspired by her interest in archaeology and pre-history.

John Furnival’s lithograph, Vintage Oxford Mallarmé, makes gently Surrealist play with the traditional marmalade label; and his depictions of Erik Satie are based on wordplay around the name of Satie’s home in the Parisian suburb of Arceuil.

Autres Choses also includes works by Eileen Agar, Jo Bondy, Anne Bean, Pamela Bianco, Stephen Bird, Martin Bradley, Linda Carmen, Nek Chand, Benjamin Creme, Carolyn Gowdy, Victoria Halford, Charles Hustwick, Albert Herbert, John Kashdan, Chris Kenny, Roddy Maude-Roxby, Angus McBean, Sarah Moon, Eduardo Paolozzi, Perifimou, Geneviève Seillé, Jason Wallis-Johnson, Julian Trevelyan, Paule Vézelay, Andy Weiner, Richard Westall, Scottie Wilson and more.