NEWS
Julie Lawson among Barbara Steveni’s friends at Modern Art Oxford
Julie Lawson was one of nine women included by artist-activist Barbara Steveni in her project Conversations Between Ourselves, a series of interviews in which Steveni highlighted the often unacknowledged work of women supporting and administrating the Artist Placement Group and later O+I. The project forms part of the retrospective Barbara Steveni: I Find Myself at Modern Art Oxford (until 8 June 2025).
England & Co director Jane England reflects on Julie Lawson’s remarkable life and her role at the ICA for the Modern Art Oxford blog.
Dom Sylvester Houédard at the Estorick Collection
The Estorick Collection, London N1 2AN
Until 11 May 2025
Clay Perry‘s 1964 portrait of Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924–1992) is featured in Breaking Lines at the Estorick Collection. The exhibition focuses on the work of Dom Sylvester Houédard, widely recognised as one of the masters of concrete poetry. A Benedictine monk and noted theologian, Houédard wrote extensively on new approaches to creativity, spirituality and philosophy, and collaborated with figures such as Gustav Metzger, Yoko Ono and John Cage.
His work – which blurs the boundaries between literature and visual art – helped shape the development of post-war British poetry, and also influenced the global experimental poetry movement.
Eduardo Kac in ‘Electric Dreams: Art and Technology before the Internet’
Tate Modern
Until 1 June 2025
Three of Eduardo Kac’s 1980s Minitel works are included in Electric Dreams – an exhibition at Tate Modern that celebrates the early innovators of optical, kinetic, programmed and digital art, and brings together groundbreaking works by a wide range of international artists who engaged with science, technology and material innovation.
Kac was a pioneer of telecommunications art in the pre-web 1980s, and his Minitel works evolved from his explorations of the relationship between experimental poetry and new media, leading to him to create animated poetic works on the French Minitel platform.
Electric Dreams is curated by Val Ravaglia and all three exhibited works by Kac, plus an additional minitel work are now part of the permanent collection at Tate. Kac is interviewed in the winter edition of Tate Etc. magazine.
Anne Bean performance at Modern Art Oxford for Barbara Steveni opening
28 February 2025, Modern Art Oxford
Anne Bean performed at the opening preview of the exhibition, I Find Myself, the first retrospective exhibition of pioneering, influential artist-activist Barbara Steveni (1928-2020). Bean will develop a new live work inspired by Steveni’s important long-term work, I Am An Archive. Bean has previously presented live performance work at Modern Art Oxford with Bow Gamelan in 1984, as well as the work I’d Rather Go Blind in 2012, as part of Solo curated by Brian Catling. (I Find Myself continues until 8 June 2025.)
Paule Vézelay: Living Lines
Royal West of England Academy
25 January – 27 April 2025
England & Co are pleased to have arranged numerous loans for this celebratory retrospective exhibition spanning Paule Vézelay’s career held in the city of Bristol where she was born in 1892 as Marjorie Watson-Williams. She later adopted the name Paule Vézelay after moving to Paris in 1926. On display are more than 60 of her works, including paintings, prints, sculptures and textiles, in addition to material from her archive.
Liliane Lijn’s Liquid Reflections
Clay Perry‘s 1966 portrait of the artist Liliane Lijn is the cover of her recently published memoir, Liquid Reflections, her account of leaving her native USA in 1958 to become an artist in Paris, and the following decade of experiment and adventure. (Published by Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Books Ltd.)
Anne Bean and Monica Ross: Sit-In 4 / Outside the Circle
Cooper Gallery, Dundee
18 October 2024 – 1 February 2025
This exhibition (part of a five-chapter project) at the Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee, brings together archives, drawings, ephemera, manifestos, paintings, performance, photographs, sculptures, video works and writings by artists, activists, collectives, writers, and thinkers. They include: Sam Ainsley with Anne-Marie Copestake, Anne Bean, Sutapa Biswas, Sheba Chhachhi, Phyllis Christopher, Akwugo Emejulu, Margaret Harrison, Barbara Howey, Carol Massey Lingard and Jenny Stevens, Alexis Hunter, Tari Ito, Derek Jarman, Amelia Jones, Mary Kelly, Suzanne Lacy, Audre Lorde, Katharine Meynell, Annabel Nicolson, nussatari, Griselda Pollock, Monica Ross, Georgina Starr, Marlene Smith, Jo Spence, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Maud Sulter, Ronald Wright, Ajamu X, alongside collective actions and groups including Blk Art Group, Castlemilk Womanhouse, Cyber feminist collective Old Boys Network, Fenix, Feministo: Women’s Postal Art Event, Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Haven for Artists, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, The Hackney Flashers, OutRage!, Womanifesto, Womanhouse and Women in Profile.
Anne Bean at Southwark Park Galleries
18 October 2024
To celebrate their 40th birthday, Southwark Park Galleries are holding a performance night and fundraiser evening in their Dilston Gallery, featuring Peter Liversidge’s Gin Bar and live performances by artists Florence Peake, Anne Bean, Fani Parali and Patrick Cole.
Anne Bean: towards a new ceremony
VSSL Studio, London SE8
11 – 12 October 2024
Anne Bean will be speaking at Autobituaries, an artist lab exploring catalysts for creating ritual. She will speak about aspects of her work and propose solo and collective actions towards a new ceremony.
Nek Chand: Tropical Modernism at V&A
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Until 22 September 2024
England & Co have arranged the loan of five sculptures by Nek Chand for the exhibition Tropical Modernism at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Nek Chand Saini (1924-2015) was a self-taught Indian artist who created the Rock Garden of Chandigarh – a vast fantasy kingdom inhabited by a myriad of sculptures of people and animals constructed from recycled materials such as broken crockery. Now hailed as a visionary environment and a much-visited site in India, the Garden was initially built without permission within a city redesigned as a modernist utopia by the Swiss architect, Le Corbusier. England & Co first exhibited works by Nek Chand Saini in 2001 following a memorable visit with him at the Rock Garden in Chandigarh.