To celebratef five Years of Frestonian Gallery we are presenting a group exhibition of our represented gallery artists, Featuring works by Adrian Berg, Tim Braden, Hannah Brown, Luke Elwes, Anna Freeman Bentley, Sam Herman, David Price, Sanne Maloe Slecht & Will Stein.
The stunning late work of Adrian Berg (1929-2011) was featured prominently in our first exhibition ‘The Luminous Language’, in June 2017. Since then the gallery has been privileged to present two solo exhibitions his work – the 2018 show of late work ‘A Human Nature’, and the 2021 retrospective ‘Adrian Berg: Works 1964-2010’, which coincided with the launch of the major monograph on Berg’s life and work, written by Marco Livingstone and with contributions from Paul Huxley and Sam Clarke. Berg stands as one of the most influential British painters of the second half of the twentieth century. A close friend and contemporary of the major figures in painting in the UK at the time, including Hockney & Kitaj. He was a Royal Academician and fellow of the RCA, where he taught for many years. His work is held in museum collections worldwide, and was recently included in the landmark painting show ‘Unnatural Nature’ at Acquavella Gallery, New York.
Tim Braden first exhibited with the gallery in 2018, in a two person show alongside the work of Sonia Delaunay, and again later the same year in a small survey show to launch the monograph ‘Looking and Painting’. Two triumphant solo shows followed in 2019 and 2021 – both displaying the elegance and energy of Braden’s mastery of the medium. Braden's work is included in private collections globally and in public collections, including the British Museum, London; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Nederlandsche Bank (Dutch National Bank), Amsterdam; Pembroke College, Oxford; Walsall Museum and Art Gallery, UK; and the Zabludowicz Collection, London. He has also completed major site-specific projects in Iceland, Italy and for the Goethe Institute in New York. His work is currently featured at the Corn Hall public space in Norfolk.
Hannah Brown’s first show with Frestonian Gallery opened in January 2022 to wide acclaim, and saw her work acquired by museum and private collections worldwide. Focusing on the psychology of the English landscape in particular, Brown’s practice is one of continual refinement and intense examination of her subject. Brown was featured in the 2021 John Moores painting prize, following her 2020 show with Chistopher Orr at the Broadway Gallery, Letchworth. Her work is featured in the State Art Collection of Ireland, Dublin; the V&A Museum, London and the Xiao Museum, Rizhao – and is soon to be featured in the exhibiton ‘If You Forget My Name You Will Go Astray’ at Anat Egbi, Los Angeles.
Luke Elwes was born in London and spent his early years in Iran, where the light and space of the desert were a formative influence. His work invariably derives from lengthy and deep connections with the various remarkable landscapes that he encounters in a semi-nomadic existence. His first show with Frestonian Gallery, in 2019, was a mediatative reflection on the River Ganges, whose course he followed over months of travelling from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. His 2021 show ‘Landermere’, meanwhile, presented vibrant and beautiful works derived from a single space – the eponymous Landermere Wharf in Essex, where Elwes keeps a studio as part of a decade-long engagement with the qualities of light and the submerged landscape. He has shown internationally since 1990.
This coming September 2022 the gallery is excited to be unveiling two major solo presentations by Anna Freeman Bentley at our London space and at the Armory Show in New York. The works shown in ‘Lustrum Frestonian’ offer a first glance of the amazing new body of work that Freeman Bentley has been working on following her 2020 solo exhibition ‘Collected & Composed’ with Frestonian. The new work takes as its subject a series of film sets used for the 2021 film ‘The Colour Room’, and continues her examination of themes from the notions of heterotopias, the baroque and that which is seen and unseen within the constructed interiors that are her subject. Her work is held in the Saatchi Collection, UK; Ahamnson Collection, California, USA; and private collections worldwide.
A pioneer and co-founder of an entire movement in glass-making, Sam Herman (1936-2020) was an extraordinary artist & educator. His 2019 retrospective at Frestonian Gallery marked the publication of the first major book on his life and work – covering his upbringing in Mexico and New York, through to his founding of centres of glass-making in the UK and Australia – most notably the glass department at the RCA, the Jam Factory in Adelaide and the Glass House & Lots Road studios in London. His work features in every serious museum collection of glass worldwide. Following his death in 2020 Frestonian in May 2022 presented a memorial exhibition in his honour.
David Price, like Adrian Berg, was featured in our first exhibition in 2017, since when his painting has become ever more energetic, exuberant and beautiful. The work Still Life with Vase and Fruit that is shown in Lustrum Frestonian continues the development shown in his 2019 exhibition with us (‘Gardens of Ideas’ – with Bob & Roberta Smith and Jessica Voorsanger), and gives an advance sighting of the bold celebration of colour and form that will be presented in his next solo show at the gallery in November 2022. Price is a graduate of the Edinburgh College of Art and the RCA and has been a lecturer at Central St. Martins and a fellow of the Royal Academy. His work is held in private collections worldwide, as well as the V&A Museum, London.
Sanne Maloe Slecht was born in The Netherlands, where she now lives and works following her graduation from the MA Painting course at the Royal College of Art in 2019. Her first solo show with the gallery, in July 2021 (‘Metaphorically Speaking’) displayed her painting practice at its beguiling best, and ran concurrently with a fabulous show of her sculptural works at Galerie Bart in Amsterdam. The work in ‘Lustrum Frestonian’ – Fever Dream – is a newly finished example of a practice that deftly combines the sensibilities and possibilities of sculpture with a significant and ever-developing command of painting. She has exhibited extensively in Europe, and in 2021 was the recipient of the Mondriaan Fund Project Grant.
The work of William Stein is a language in itself – and so the title of the work in ‘Lustrum Frestonian’ – Language Barrier – seems especially fitting. Stein’s first exhibition with Frestonian Gallery in 2018 saw his major canvases presented in balance with works by Ben Nicholson. Subtle and intriguing interactions of geometric objects and planes are the hallmarks of Stein’s practice. Of late his colour palette has expanded and a new, more painterly energy has been in evidence. Stein graduated from the Slade School of Art, where he was subsequently a Research Associate in painting. He has exhibited widely in the UK and USA, and was recently granted the Merchant House Residency in Symi, Greece, as well as being exhibited at Canopy Collections, London.
