This past year has been one like no other. For most of the year we have been closed and all the gallery staff have been working from home. We have adapted to an online world, to be creative as never before, to maintain our profile and most importantly to stay in touch with our clients.
We have completely redesigned our website and made the experience more enjoyable and interactive with added video content, virtual tours and viewing rooms. We also use many of the online art platforms like Artsy and Artnet and also social media more than ever before. Like everyone we seem to spend our days on Zoom, Teams, Skype, WhatsApp and the good old-fashioned landline. However, we have been acutely aware of online overload and try not to inundate you with too many emails and newsletters.
Last year we created virtual tours of three exhibitions in the gallery which we managed to install in spite of all the restrictions. These were Nash and Nevinson: Impressions of War and Peace, a virtual tour of our Modern British exhibition, followed late last year with Sean Henry: Waiting for the Sun.
Now with greater clarity around the lockdown restrictions we will start our 2021 programme with a group of works by Prunella Clough which we will hang in the gallery and initially present as a ‘virtual exhibition’.
The Keith Vaughan expert Gerard Hastings was also a great friend of the artist and we have asked him to write about her life and work. He has more than fulfilled his brief and for the first time we will be showing images, not only of her work but also of some of the sources that informed and inspired her; decaying walls, flaking paint, discarded concrete with metal reinforcements protruding, rusted and abandoned machinery, electrical circuits and market stalls on the North End Road near her Fulham home. Pru, as we her friends knew her, had what I can only describe as a perceptive peripheral vision; she could always see beauty in the urban landscape and compositional harmony in the seemingly mundane. Gerard’s writing offers us a wonderful insight into her artistic mind and her painting.
The works in the exhibition will be installed in the gallery and can be viewed online from 29th March. We now know that we can officially reopen by appointment on Monday 12th April. We very much look forward to seeing you again soon in the gallery where, needless to say, we will follow all the protocols for your personal safety and that of our staff.