Exhibition dates: 15 September – 20 December 2020
The directors of Dellasposa are delighted to announce Tales from the Colony Room: Art and Bohemia, a group exhibition featuring more than seventy artists associated with legendary Soho club, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Tracey Emin, as well photographers John Deakin, Bruce Bernard and Daniel Farson.
The presentation comes hard on the heels of Tales from the Colony Room: Soho’s Lost Bohemia, an oral history of the club edited by Darren Coffield, who is also the curator of the show. He says: ‘For more than fifty years, artists, poets, musicians, actors and writers, plus a fair few criminals, congregated at the club. This show pays homage to some of the biggest names, such as Bacon and Freud, but also the legions of others who made it such a special and influential place, as well as the club’s three proprietors, Muriel Belcher, Ian Board and Michael Wojas.’
The exhibition — the first of its kind — is arranged on two floors, with the lower ground of the gallery devoted to photography. The images include portraits of Bacon and Freud, but also famous Sohoites, such as the late Sebastian Horsley (by Carla Borel), who is also captured in oil by Maggi Hambling. Coffield adds: ‘This is a disparate collection of artists united by one thing: conviviality. The club was a safe haven for creatives and people who lived outside of convention, and its closure in 2008 was without question the end of bohemian London. This show is a celebration of those times.’
Coffield and the gallery have drawn together a collation of work, including loans from many important public and private collections. Freud, Bacon and Auerbach are all represented, along with Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, Sir Peter Blake and Patrick Caulfield. Reflecting the club’s resurgent popularity with the co-called YBA generation, there are works by Keith Coventry, Gavin Turk and Tracey Emin. Sarah Lucas, who worked behind the bar for a while (as did Damien Hirst, famously doing so naked one evening), has created a sculpture especially for the show.
Says Dellasposa director Jessica Phillimore: ‘The Colony Room Club is very important in the history of British art. It was a place where artists could socialise and exchange ideas. There is nothing like it in London anymore, and probably never will be again, and the work in this show is a testament to the spirit it enkindled in those that went there.’
The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of talks and lectures. Details of these will be announced shortly.
Featured artists: Jankel Adler, Craigie Aitchison, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, David Bailey, Baron, Christopher Battye, Bruce Bernard, Peter Blake, Carla Borel, Cecily Brown, Orlando Campbell, Patrick Caulfield, Daniel Chadwick, Brian Dawn Chalkley, William Corbett, Keith Coventry, Peter Quinn Davies, John Deakin, Tom Deas, Harry Diamond, Craig Easton, Tracey Emin, Jacob Epstein, Angus Fairhurst, Daniel Farson, Angus Forbes, Lucian Freud, Alberto Giacometti, Maggi Hambling, Nina Hamnett, Michael Heath, Michael Heath, Paul Hogarth, Gary Hume, Alyson Hunter, Fred Ingrams, Jak, Ricca Kawai, R. B. Kitaj, Catherine Shakespeare Lane, Stephen Lees, Bill Lloyd, Sarah Lucas, Dan Macmillan, Claudio Manesse, John Minton, James Moores, Frank Norman, Eduardo Paolozzi, Isabel Rawsthorne, William Redgrave, John Richardson, Sophy Rickett, Sir Francis Rose, Robert Rubbish, Elinor Bellingham Smith, Bob and Roberta Smith, F. N. Souza, Trog, Amelia Troubridge, Gavin Turk, Jessica Voorsanger, Ed Winter, Michael Woods
For press information please contact Albany Arts Communications:
Mark Inglefield
mark@albanyartscommunications.com
t: +44 (0) 20 78 79 88 95; m: + 44 (0) 75 84 19 95 00
Carla von der Becke
carla@albanyartscommunications.com
t: +44 (0) 20 78 79 88 95; m: +44 (0) 79 74 25 29 94
Notes to Editors:
The Colony Room Club
The Colony Room, formerly located at 41 Dean Street, Soho, was founded in 1948 by Muriel Belcher. It quickly became a haven for artists, poets, radicals and free thinkers. The club attracted Soho’s artistic elite, including Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, George Melly and Jeffrey Bernard, as well as people from aristocratic and political circles such as Princess Margaret, William Burroughs, David Bowie and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Bacon was a founder and lifelong member who helped to get rich patrons up its notoriously filthy stairs and into the room’s iconic green walls.
After Belcher’s death in 1979, the club continued under the stewardship of her long-term barman Ian Board until his death in 1994. Throughout the 1990’s the club experienced a renaissance when the so-called YBAs (Young British Artists) including Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin began frequenting the club. The Colony Room closed in 2008.
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