Gill Hedley is a writer, an independent curator and a consultant on contemporary visual arts. This is an archive of projects, exhibitions, events and news she has been involved with. These stories are re-used elsewhere on the site as notes. Divided by year - please use the menu below:
JUMP TO NEW ARTHUR JEFFRESS WEBSITE
From the Bloomsbury website:
• Read the introduction (www)
• 30% off print book (www)
• 45% off eBook (www)
The biography of Arthur Jeffress, A Life in Art, by Gill Hedley is to be published by Bloomsbury on 2 April 2020. ISBN 978-1-8386-0281-9
above © Richard Chopping, Trompe L’Oeil for Arthur Jeffress
left https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/arthur-jeffress
On 2 April, there will be a preview in Southampton of A Complete Portrait of Arthur Jeffress, an exhibition of his bequest, loans and previoulsy unseen archives: please email Gill for an invitation. See https://www.southamptoncityartgallery.com/whats-on/a-complete-portrait-of-arthur-jeffress/
There will be a book launch in London in early April: please email Gill for details.
And, finally, Gill will give a talk, Love, Art, to complement the book and the show at Southampton City Art Gallery at 2pm on 25 April followed by a book signing. Please book through this link: https://visitsouthampton.co.uk/events/arthur-jeffress-a-life-in-art
See also on this website: → article on the main menu → note on writing the biography
Gentle friends,
This was the title of Arthur Jeffress’ first exhibition in his own gallery, showing the work of the very strange artist E. Box. Inevitably, I am writing to state the obvious fact that the book launch of the Jeffress biography, so kindly offered by the Redfern Gallery on 7 April, is cancelled.
The exhibition in Southampton City Art Gallery is also postponed. I plan to create some kind of website/blog to recreate part of the exhibition on line and show many more images from his splendid photo albums than either book or show allowed. I excised much material from the book and will add some of that, too.
So that is my attempt to be positive as I bear in mind how many artists, actors, musicians and all the support staff are really suffering professionally.
As we all spend more time at home, and people find amazing ways to communicate and entertain themselves and us,
may I suggest – much more bluntly than I would have done at the party – that, before the warehouse shuts down, you
order Arthur Jeffress: A Life in Art. It really is quite funny and is all about a
very different world to this one:
→
E-book: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/arthur-jeffress-9781838602826/ (www)
→
Real book: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/arthur-jeffress-9781838602819/ (www)
To quote the marvellous Robin Muir’s words on the dust jacket: Picaresque and tragic by turns, packed full
of incident, Gill Hedley has breathed new life into a near forgotten figure. Soon not to have heard of Arthur
Jeffress will be seen as betraying a shameful ignorance of our art historical past.
If you can review it or suggest some who might do so, please contact Carly.Bull@bloomsbury.com who is in charge of PR, to receive a review copy. There will, sadly, be more space for book reviews in the art press than normal.
With all best wishes for your good health and high spirits.
The Church Commissioners have applied successfully to Westminster City Council to have a green plaque installed to mark the site of the Drian Gallery in Porchester Place. Gill wrote a report in support of the application and subsequently extended her researches for the marketing that will, eventually, accompany the unveiling of the plaque.
Halima Nalęcz (Halina Maria Krzywicz-Nowohonska), an artist born in Poland and who trained in her native country and in England, opened her own gallery at 7 Porchester Place W2 in a previous butcher’s shop. She named it after Mondrian whose work she had go to know in Paris: Mon Drian Gallery / My Drian Gallery.
From 1957 until 1989 she staged exhibitions that not only championed abstraction, Halima’s first love, but also a more general international avant-garde including constructivism and new figuration. She was a continuous supporter of Polish art and gave a retrospective to Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, her teacher. He later married Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement: they met as a result of her seeing his paintings in the Drian Gallery.
A catalogue essay on Muriel Wilson, to accompany the exhibition Muriel Wilson Bequest at the Pallant House Gallery, 15th February - 7th June 2020.
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