F O R T H C O M I N G  E X H I B I T I O N

ZOOM – Looking Back / Looking Forward
2nd July – 15th August, 2009

Exhibiting artists

ART FIRST presents highlights from the programme in a celebration of 15 years in Cork Street.

These master works, selected from the recent series of solo exhibitions, form a declaration of current strengths and future intentions. After September 2009 the gallery will be moving from Cork Street to new, ground-floor premises nearby in the West End.

C U R R E N T  E X H I B I T I O N

Eileen Cooper RA
28th May - 27th June, 2009
Dreams of Elsewhere

Art first is delighted to announce its major summer show of new work by Eileen Cooper RA, Dreams of Elsewhere.

The title expresses the journey of the imagination that has taken place in Cooper's South London studio over the past two years. The vertiginous environments depicted in these new paintings and prints give a mixed message about their fantastical locations – elements of the picturesque, of rest and relaxation, are tinged with architectural tension, lending a sense of fragility to Cooper's ubiquitous human figures.

Tigers, longstanding inhabitants of Cooper's mythography, make new appearances. The painting Desire shows a woman delicately poised - walking the plank - apparently in a state of bliss, whilst a second figure (her second self?) conceals herself behind a multi-panelled screen decorated with the tiger and a fleeing heron. Meanings are multitude and these new precarious, confounding and beautiful stage sets help take our minds on the many travels that Cooper intends.

Eileen Cooper trained at Goldsmiths College and the Royal College Of Art. She has been exhibiting in gallery and museum spaces nationally and internationally, since the early 1980's, whilst currently teaching at the Royal Academy Schools. In 2001 Cooper was elected Royal Academician, and is one of the selectors for the RA Summer Show 2009.

> download press release (Adobe Reader Format)


Please visit the section for Front Room exhibitions


R E C E N T  E X H I B I T I O N



Bridget Macdonald
30th April - 21st May, 2009
Time and Place

Macdonald Writes:

"The works in this exhibition are about time, place and the role of imagination in our relationship with the landscape. My childhood landscape of St Catherine's Point on the Isle of Wight is one place which recurs in the paintings. The other is the country around the Malvern Hills where I now live. Its farms, orchards, rivers and Elgar soundtrack exactly conform to the pastoral ideal. The paintings of the Severn in flood reflect the fleeting magical transformation that happens when the river floods, especially in the summer, which is a rarer occurence.

The crucial point of pastoral is the idea of contrast between yearned for tranquillity as represented by the countryside, and the noise, stresses and strains of city life. It requires this counterpoint to give it depth and meaning. It is about the harsh realities of getting and spending, and our desire to get away from it all or to regain an imagined idyllic age of the past.

The drawings are less specifically located than the paintings. The May Bull is a reworking of a tiny photograph taken in the 1930's by my mother with her box Brownie. Here the bull verges on the mythical, more obviously a fertility symbol. The young men in the Eclogue drawings relate back to Giorgione's dreamers. I have been enthralled by the great paintings of Titian, and I love Giorgione and Bellini's paintings of poetic young men, the enigmatic atmosphere they conjure up, the shadows and glimpses of golden distances."

In her catalogue essay, Katharine Eustace writes: "The word 'distilled', the poet's phrase 'emotion recollected in tranquility', describe these fixed images."

Bridget Macdonald trained at the School of Art and Design, Wolverhampton and her work is in the collections of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Wolverhampton and Worcester City Art Galleries.

> download press release (Adobe Reader Format)



P A S T  E X H I B I T I O N S

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham LONDON
Margaret Hunter LONDON
Gillian Lever & Clement McAleer LONDON
Jennifer Durrant LONDON
Richard Cook LONDON
Karel Nel LONDON
Dialogue LONDON
Anna Gardiner LONDON
Will Maclean LONDON
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham & Sandra Blow LONDON

For an extensive listing please see  


O W N  A R T

Art First is delighted to announce that it is participating in OWN ART. This is a scheme initiated by Arts Council England to encourage first time and existing collectors by providing the opportunity to use an interest free credit scheme*

* (Typical 0% APR)

Up to £2,000 is available with 10 monthly payments, subject to acceptance. Art First Limited is a licensed credit broker of Own Art loans. Registered address: 9 Cork Street, London W1S 3LL