Revisiting Modern British Art

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Pilot Boat is Lot 12 in Sotheby's auction of Modern British & Irish Art, which will be held on 23 November. You can view the lots between 18-23 Nov. Speakers: Anna Liber Lewis (artist), Bianca Chu (researcher, advisor to the Kim Lim Estate), Naomi Polonsky (Associate Curator, The Women’s Art Collection), chaired by Jo Baring (Director, Ingram Collection) The event will celebrate the new publication Revisiting Modern British Art, edited by Jo Baring with a text by James Russell. The talk coincides with our current exhibitions The Living Collection and Unseen, which include works by Ravilious and Paul Nash – both featured in the publication, along with Eileen Agar, Vanessa Bell, Francis Bacon, Barbara Hepworth, Margaret Mellis, Richard Hamilton and Kim Lim.

This first group are clustered into a section subtitled Moments, which is followed by Structures. While James Purdon examines the role of corporate and public patronage in modern British art, Jo Baring explores the part played by curators and collectors. Hammad Nasar asks searching questions about artistic Britishness, Natalie Rudd teases out relationships between contemporary artists and their predecessors and Aindrea Emelife makes a personal call for a more expansive British art. Inspired by the major exhibition and publication Barbara Hepworth: Art and Life this event focuses on under-represented perspectives on motherhood to consider how this might affect the making and understanding of art works.

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Each book takes as its starting point an innovative illustrated book of shops published in Paris in the 1920s: Boutiques (1925) and Boutiques de la Foire (1926), with colour lithographs by Lucien Boucher, and Boutiques Litteraires, with illustrations by Henri Guilac (1925). Each Mainstone edition features captions by Andrew Stewart and an array of historical photos, archive materials and artworks brought together in typically elegant, witty style by designers Webb & Webb. Literary flaneuse Lauren Elkin wrote an accompanying essay for the Guilac book, while fairground historian Pascal Jacob did the same for Boutiques de la Foire and I wrote on the first Boucher book. Print aficionado Neil Philip provided for each volume a succinct print and production history.

Hettie Judah is chief art critic on the British daily paper The i, a regular contributor to The Guardian, and a columnist for Apollo magazine. Following publication of her 2020 study on the impact of motherhood on artists’ careers, she worked with a group of artists to draw up the manifesto How Not To Exclude Artist Parents. She is co-founder (with Jo Harrison) of the network and campaigning organisation Art Working Parents Alliance. Recent books include How Not To Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents) (Lund Humphries, 2022) and Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones (John Murray, London, 2022/ Penguin, NY, 2023). She is currently working on a Hayward Touring exhibition and book On Art and Motherhood. This discursive event will feature artists, writers and art historians sharing stories and perspectives on how we interpret art through an artists' biography and how we are enabled or challenged in bringing our own experience as audiences to it.Sara Cooper is Head of Collections and Exhibitions at Towner Eastbourne, where she is responsible for the exhibition programme and for the permanent collection, including overseeing acquisitions. Anyway, enough from me. If you have a lover of Modern British art in your life, you really should buy them this for Christmas. Editor Jo Baring (of the Ingram Collection) has brought together an eclectic group of writers, each of whom approaches the subject of modern British art in a different way. So we have Alexandra Harris on artistic responses to World War One, Laura Smith discussing British Surrealism, Simon Martin exploring Queer Pastoral in the 1940s, Laura Freeman on art and the domestic in World War Two, Harriet Baker discussing women artists in St Ives; James Rawlin on British sculpture in the 1950s and Elena Crippa exploring the diverses uses of collage by artists in 1960s London. The discussion will take place from 6.00pm to 6.45pm, after which there will be 15 minutes for an audience Q&A.

The Ingram Collection is one of the UK’s largest and most accessible collections of Modern British & Contemporary Art. Curated by Jo Baring, this exhibition showcases some classic Modern British artworks by artists associated with The Ingram Collection, such as Dame Elisabeth Frink, and includes some of Edward Bawden’s celebrated views of London, such as The Tower of London, and The Pagodaand The Palmhouseat Kew Gardens. For its wide variety of approach and independence of thought, this collection of studies is most timely. More than useful, this is an important book.’ In 1971, Bruce McLean (b.1944) famously performed his Pose Work for Plinths at the Situation Gallery in London, draping himself across a series of white plinths in a manner reminiscent of one of Moore's reclining figures.Applicants will be notified shortly after the deadline if they are successful and sent instructions on how to claim the bursary amount. Jo Baring will be in conversation with artist Olivia Bax, a former studio assistant to Sir Anthony Caro. Jo and Olivia will discuss the influence and enduring impact of the art made in Britain in the 20th century, debate the new ways in which we can look at modern British art and consider the legacy of artists such as Caro on Bax’s own sculptural practice. Through this careful and original reconsideration, modern British art emerges in an expanded form, more relevant than ever and more urgent in its message.’