We were delighted to be asked to be invited by the renowned interior designer Suzy Hoodless to curate and source work for two show flats that she had designed for the redeveloped and re-imagined Television Centre.
Building on the success of that project we were then commissioned by the TVC developers to curate a scheme for their prestigious main entrance hall and for the resident's lounge. This iconic building which you may know from days of watching ‘Blue Peter’ and is now the home and backdrop to ‘This Morning’ was designed by Graham Dawbarn and was in use by 1960. It was reportedly based on the form of a question mark that Dawbarn had doodled while thinking of how he could accommodate all the required functions of the world's first purpose-built TV centre into one building.
Within the building remains the impressive (and listed) mosaic mural by the artist John Piper - we commissioned contemporary works that related to the architecture of the building as well as its previous use - from the beautiful, intricate drawings of T.V. masts by Alex Curry to the constructions of Jane Morter that reference the palette and construction of the Piper Mosaic Mural.
Alongside these works in the Resident’s Lounge where they can sit, relax, work, have a coffee, browse book shelves we curated a display including works for sale of a number of original mid-century paintings and contemporary abstact paintings by Christian Aldridge.
Works for sale
Michael Tyzack
Michael Tyzack (1933 - 2007) Forty Eight by Forty Eight, February 1962. Oil on board.
Christian Aldridge
Christian Aldridge (left to right) Stacked Shapes, 2017. Collection, 2017. Dialogue, 2017. Scratched Ground, 2017. Fragments, 2018. Orange Ground, 2018.
Christian Aldridge is a young artist working in rural Suffolk, whilst teaching at the University of Suffolk.
His paintings use the language and techniques of drawing and printmaking to explore surface, shape and the handmade. His paintings evolve over time as they are alternatively built up or scraped away until they achieve a meaningful form.
Stains and ghost imagery from previous layers remain stubbornly resistant to erasure and become re-engaged within the subsequent reworking and give the paintings an aged and weathered aspect.
Frank Downton
Frank Downton (1936- ) Black and White Rotation.Unique hand cut polyvinyl on acylate board. SOLD
Downton worked for Chris Prater at Kelpra Studios, London in the mid 1960s, assisting artists such as Bridget Riley, Eduardo Paolozzi, Gillian Ayres and Sidney Nolan on the production of screen-prints. Downton developed closed working relationships with Riley and Paolozzi in particular, and was assigned exclusively to them at their request.
Following his retirement Downton has created his own artworks using his exceptional skills and his work maintains and celebrated the vibrancy and spirit of the 1960s. Each artwork is hand-cut by the artist and signed as an unique work to the reverse.
David Hazelwood
David Hazelwood. Red Horizon, 1968. Oil on mixed media on board. SOLD
Hazelwood was born and lived in Suffolk. He exhibited widely in group exhibitions, such as the Royal Academy from 1997 and international art fairs including Basel, Cologne and Chicago.
Red Horizon is a major work with an impressive depth of composition and range of media used to create a heavy texture. The subject references the way in which a sun can highlight fragments of clouds in the gathering gloom, whilst only partially illuminating the landscape below.
His work is in the V&A Museum, Birmingham City Art Gallery and the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield.
Tyzack was born in Sheffield and after attending the College of Art there, he studied at the Slade School of Art, London , 1952-6. He won first prise at the John Moores' Liverpool Exhibition in 1965 and exhibited alongside artists such as Bridget Riley, John Hoyland and Kenneth Martin as a key figure in the development of British Abstraction in the 1960s. He was included in Documenta 4, Kassel, Germany in 1968 and he showed at Betty Parsons Gallery, New York and later at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC.
His extended time in the US has resulted in him being lesser known in the UK.
His work is in Tate, Arts Council Collection, V&A Museum and Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland.
Robert Sadler
Robert Sadler (1916-2016) Cloud Cover, c.1960. Oil on board.
Sadler was born in Newmarket and after studying at Cambridge University joined the RAF as a pilot in 1930. During various postings as an Air Attache he studied at art schools in London, Copenhagen and Washington DC, where at the influential Corcoran School of Art he encountered the work of the American Abstract Expressionists in 1953, before they had been exhibited in the UK.
Sadler retired from the RAF in 1955 to pursue painting full time and exhibited widely. Cloud Cover with its textured grey surface that inundates the darker elements within the composition recalls his experience of disorienting flight and compares well with Peter Lanyon's contemporaneous gliding inspired paintings such as Thermal, 1960 held by the Tate.
Jane Morter
Jane Morter. Low Relief Horizontal Yellow Stripe, 2018. Acrylic on Farbriano paper.
Jane Morter studied painting at St Martin's School of Art and subsequently her work became increasingly concerned with structure and construction.
Her recent low relief works used heavyweight Fabriano paper with acrylic paint to create a complex study of light and space, surface facade and hidden layers, relief and flat areas of pure colour and white.
