Over the past few weeks I have been inspired by a number of the artists that the Eagle Gallery represents who work in jobs that involve vulnerable children, or students who are struggling to finish degrees online. It takes creativity and sensitivity to re-think how to deliver workshops for children in tower blocks who do not have computers, or reassure young people who are making major readjustments at such a critical moment in their lives, and I am enormously impressed by how hard people are working to try to alleviate the situation for others.
Harriet Mena Hill has been working with #2Inspireyouth, funded by Notting Hill Genesis, to offer a young people’s art club on the Aylesbury Estate at the Elephant and Castle and has recently secured funding from the Notting Hill Wellbeing Fund to develop a series of remote workshops to bring together elderly residents and children on the Aylesbury. These will record memories of being housed there in the 1960s when the estate offered the most advanced kind of social housing and what it is like to be removed from the community in the current day, as the area undergoes massive private re-development. Hill’s work on the Aylesbury over the past two years has led her to make a series of ‘soft concrete’ works using felting techniques, which transform details of the brutalist architecture into images of surprising beauty. A series of her Perpetual Drawings (2020), has recently been selected for the Derwent Art Prize.
Artists have responded with invention and generosity in different ways, with many posting works for under £200 on Instagram’s #artistsupportpledge. By pledging to buy another artist’s work if sales reach £1000, the scheme enables artists to support each other financially. Eagle Gallery artists whose work you can see on #artistsupportpledge include: @mandy.bonnell, @jmsfsher, @_danroach_, @_carolynthompson_.
Denise de Cordova has turned her mind to a literary quiz based on her re-reading of novels. If you can name the authors of the book titles painted in two of her watercolours you can win them @denisedecordova1. De Cordova’s work is featured in a delightful short film Congregation by Jonas Grimas, which was shot during the opening of her solo exhibition at Jesus College, Cambridge in 2013. The film can be viewed by visiting: https://vimeo.com/405892833
Hormazd Narielwalla’s recent series of mixed media collages Rock, Paper, Scissors, is a tribute to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. Using the pages of a vintage pattern manual, Narielwalla plays with notions of two and three dimensional space in a subtle colour palette that brings to mind stone, marble and sky. The gallery will be launching a limited edition artist’s book based on the project and you can see the work at: http://www.narielwalla.com/Hormazd-Narielwalla-Rock-Paper-Scissors.pdf
The Gallery’s work on behalf of artists is critical during this time and I am delighted to announce that we have recently placed significant work by Jane Joseph and Natalie Dower in the collections of the British Museum, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art and TATE.
The Prints and Drawings Department of the British Museum has acquired Joseph’s etching suite
If This is a Man, commissioned in 1999 by the Folio Society for their reprinting of Primo Levi’s seminal book about the holocaust.
The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art has selected three works by Dower to join their permanent collection of Systems and Constructivist art in Norwich. Chosen from across her 50-year career Dower will be represented by an early wall relief, a sculpture from the 1980s and a recent Square Root Spirals canvas from 2015
TATE has recently acquired an early painting by Dower of the artist Patrick George. The two were great friends and sat for reciprocal portraits in the late 1950s. Dower’s work will join George’s in a hang at TATE Britain.
Emma Hill Director, Eagle Gallery / EMH Arts
