‘As we make our way through the myriad of ‘stuff’ which remains – the familiar, forgotten and unfamiliar, we discover and rewrite the past, calibrating our memories and thoughts, shifting the sense of ourselves and our life story.’

This exhibition presents a collection of drawings made by Fay Ballard since her father, the novelist J. G. Ballard, died in 2009. The ‘House Clearance’ of the title refers to that of the parents’ home following such a bereavement. The artist described this as a ‘daunting task’, where ‘the past is present in each room, on the staircase banister, on the light switches, the window ledges, mantelpieces and door handles.’

It was on a summer holiday in Spain, 1964 that Fay Ballard’s mother died suddenly of pneumonia, aged 34. The young family returned to Shepperton, and continued their lives with no discussion about the tragic loss they had just experienced. There were no photographs of the artist’s mother on display in the home, she became ‘invisible, almost erased’.

Room One of the exhibition features drawings of the artist’s mother made from photographs discovered hidden away at the family home. Amongst them a pair of small photographs of the artist as a baby with her parents in Chiswick House Gardens. The parents took it in turn to pose with their young daughter in front of a large stone statue of the Sphinx, the man-eating mythical beast who guarded Thebes. The photographs show a young happy family, the statue acts as an omen of their impending tragedy.

Whilst clearing her father’s house – the family home, Fay found herself confronted with ‘stuff’. Small possessions, containing countless memories that shape us and the stories we tell about ourselves. It is on these small objects that the artist’s attentions are focused in the second room of this exhibition. Drawn in incredible detail and grouped into ‘Memory Boxes’, of which there are 3. Box 1 comprises objects drawn from life, with every crack, crease and speck of dust accounted for. Box 2 holds objects drawn from memory and Box 3 contains objects representing the artist’s father, the central figure in her life who brought her and her siblings up single-handedly.

‘The memory boxes commemorate and celebrate these objects which stir the memory and unlock the past. The drawings of my mother make concrete her presence. The process of drawing and making marks on to paper brings her back, and makes her real. They reinstate her into my life.’

The exhibition will be accompanied by a short catalogue containing an essay by writer and curator, Kathy Kubicki.

A related events programme will also be held, including drawing workshops and an evening discussion.

More information to follow.

Eleven Spitalfields is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of sculpture by London-based artist Nick Turvey, curated by Peter Fleissig. This is Turvey’s first exhibition with the gallery, which occupies the two ground floor Georgian paneled rooms of a house originally built by Samuel Worrell in 1720, in the heart of the Fournier Street conservation area in East London.

Continuing Turvey’s use of military metaphor, these latest works treat weaponry as a proxy for the body, scrutinizing the anatomy of power, and revealing connections between the political and more internal or interpersonal forms of conflict. In Wunderkammer style, mixed media pieces occupy floor and wall vitrines lined with period wallpaper, combined with free-standing, cast and painted bronze works. The unease produced by these sinister toys, in which the infantile and domestic turns sexual or violent, may originate in the anxieties of a Cold War childhood, with its repressed fears of confrontation. Yet this witty work also calls attention to how we objectify as ‘other’ those aspects of ourselves we find disturbing. It reminds us that the social contract granting the State a monopoly on violence is equally about allowing its citizens to create a more favourable image of themselves.

Turvey’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses sculpture, design and film-making. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2006, after previously studying architecture. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at The Gibberd Gallery, Harlow; The Print Room, London and ASC, London, as well as group shows Interesting Times, Leicester; Surface, Burghley House; Sculptour, Phoenix Gallery, Belgium; and The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Large-scale works are permanently installed in London, Harlow, and the Pinsent Masons collection.

http://www.julieheld.com/

Following from the success of his exhibition, ‘Spitalfields Paintings’ in Spring 2011, artist Anthony Eyton is set to return to Eleven Spitalfields on 6th November. ‘Drawing on Hawksmoor’, originated from a suggestion by Architect and gallery owner Chris Dyson’s suggestion that Eyton produce a series focusing on the London churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor.

The exhibition of more than 20 pieces includes a myriad of vibrant oil paintings and pastels produced since 2012, as well as a selection of early sketches and paintings from the very beginning of Eyton’s career.

The exhibition reflects the artist’s longstanding affiliation with the architect, who is most well-known for his work completed alongside Christopher Wren in the late 17th Century. It is Hawksmoor’s collection of East London churches that serve as inspiration for Eyton.  An iconic collection of buildings, the recognisable churches narrowly avoided sliding into dilapidation, before efforts in the mid-20th Century to restore them to their former glory.

As the title suggests, ‘Drawing on Hawksmoor’ features pre-dominantly drawn works, the majority of which are in pastel, that possess an incredible sense of urgency. Described by gallerist Kapil Jariwala as a ‘crazy energy...the result of an eye that sees rhythm.’

Speaking on the exhibition, Eyton says; ‘Pastel is an immediate and vibrant medium, malleable and sensitive to light. In a word, it is drawing with colour, ideal to express Hawksmoor’s supremacy of design.  A mantra ‘stone by stone’ goes through my head so that intimacy can combine to express the solids and voids of his churches.’

‘Drawing on Hawksmoor’ is a reflection of Eyton’s longstanding connection with London’s East end, as well as his enduring relation   ship with Eleven Spitalfields. His first exhibition at the gallery took place in 2011, and featured works produced when the artist occupied a studio situated on the adjacent Hanbury Street.

EVENT SERIES

Private View - Thursday 6th November 2014 - 6.30 - 8.30pm

Official exhibition opening, with introduction by Charles Saumarez Smith at 7pm

Artist Talk - in conversation with Owen Hopkins (RA Architecture Programme)

Thursday 27th November - 7pm

Spaces limited, to attend please RSVP to - info@elevenspitalfields.com

Poetry reading - Thomas Pearson (ARUP)

Thursday 4th December - 7pm

Spaces limited, to attend please RSVP to

info@elevenspitlafields.com

Thursday 22nd January 2015 - 7pm

Due to an overwhelming response at the close of last year, 'Drawing on Hawksmoor' by Anthony Eyton has been extended until the end of January.

In celebration of this, you are invited to join poet Thomas Pearson for a reading of works inspired by the art of Anthony Eyton and the architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor in the wonderfully atmospheric first floor gallery rooms.

This is a free event, however we do ask that peopple RSVP as space in the gallery is limited. To reserve a space for this event, please call 0207 247 1816, or email info@elevenspitalfields.com

More information on Thomas Pearson can be found at nospinoza.co.uk

Is the mundane object worthy of being called art? That is the question at the heart of this collection of new works by Isabella Dora Dyson.

Working in watercolour, gouache and ink, Dyson produces thoughtful studies of household objects. Ubiquitous and with a singular function, this is displayed most effectively in a recent series focusing on kitchen utensils.

Working in a muted colour palette, 'The Well Worn' brings to mind the subtle tonality of Giorgio Moranidi's Still Lives. Inspiration is also drawn from Jim Dine's 'Tools', intricate studies that stand as a symbol of artistic creation.

Dine described his tools as providing a link with 'our past, the human past, the hand', a sentiment that clearly resonates here. The title itself refers to the marks of overuse, inherent in such items, which over time add character and tell a story, displaying as Dyson describes it, 'their place in time'.

Artist Jeanette Barnes exhibits a selection of vibrant drawings and prints at Eleven Spitalfields Gallery from 4th March - 24th April 2015. Her work reflects her personal involvement with cities as an environment of excitement and construction where many generations of architecture rub shoulders and innovative change is encouraged.

Site Specific refers to Jeanette's fascination with those areas of London where buildings and movement create an energy which she aims to capture within a single image. Her commitment to this task began thirty years ago when as a student Jeanette moved to London from a small Lancarshire town to a bustling urban environment. That sense of wonder has somehow never left her.

To bring her vision to reality, many site visits, sketches and compositional experiments are needed to give depth and reality to her drawings. Jeanette collects a variety of viewpoints and particular incidents as source material for her large drawings, which evolve on a trial and error basis as potential solutions are instinctively explored, the final drawing going beyond mere typography to become a history of events.

For more information and images, please take a look at Jeanette Barne's official website

'The task of describing what I do in the studio everyday is a difficult one. The process by which I create and construct images through an alternating rhythm of paper and cloth, paint and dye, has become a ritual of making and unmaking, built up and laid downover many years. Working the material is at the heart of this ritual. Not just the physical material of paper, cloth, thread etc but the material stuff of an image. the resulting fragments and scraps of image, whether in paper or cloth are complete in themselves but also incomplete, as if torn from a much larger whole. they are images temporarily bound, always with the potential for change, held at a still point, neither perfect nor finished.

The work at Eleven Spitalfields Gallery takes as it's starting point, The Leake Survey, an ancient book of maps that records the carving and cutting up of land. A book of fields, each page trapping ancient enclosures within a frame of red borders. Fields stretched out like folded and cut cloth, complex pattern pieces criss-crossed with pathways of ochre. Dotted lines and bands of yellow break and bisect each field into delineated strips and folds. These fields are fragments, floating free of any surrounding landscape. Ancient outlines trapped and pressed for all time in the pages of a book with names that point to an ancient history of use and ownership.

'Field Notes' began life as a collaboration betwenn myself and the composer Howard Skempton, commissioned by Craftspace, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Arts Alive for a regional concert tour through Shropshire and Herefordshire in the spring and autumn 2014. Whilst the aim of the project was to generate work that would bring together audiences for contemporary music and visual arts, the means by which this came about was always left very open. The resulting dialogue between Howard and myself became one that was ultimately about a shared approach to process, language and material. About the way in which we both work with material, move it around, play with it until it begins to surprise us by revealing something of itself. In many respects we never sought to try and make something together, preferring instead to trust that through our conversation, we might discover a shared language that cut across both our disciplines and lead to the making of work that would leave an audience free to observe similarities and draw their own conclusions and responses.'

Matthew Harris, 2015

Field Notes will be performed as part of the Spitalfield Music Summer Festival on Saturday 13th June 2015, info and tickets

More information on matthews work can be found over on his official website

Like a modern day mudlark, the artist, writer and filmmaker Amanda Schiff spends her days trawling for the lost and found. Using abandoned objects, images and texts, she creates assemblages that evoke ambiguous and unsettling narratives.

Schiff's new exhibition 'HERMAION' explores her fascination with things that have survived 'by chance or miracle.' The exhibition, installed within a domestic setting in an 18th Century Huguenot silk weaver's house, takes its name from the gift of Hermes, the trickster god of the Greeks. Hermaion is the lucky find, the happy accident, the unexpected windfall. it describes both Schiff's imaginative process in making the work and the surprising results.

Using orphaned objects, whose makers are almost cretainly long dead and whose purpose is outworn or forgotten, Schiff conjures up fictional narratives, encapsulating them within one-of-a-kind boxes.

These beguiling assemblages are constructed with a filmmaker's eye for detail and a writer's love of tall tales. A cast of characters emergese. Are they witty and playful - or sinister? The viewer, it becomes clear, is the missing element. They must call up their imagination to complete the picture and resurrect the stories. Jane Wildgoose's haunting and beautiful photographs offer additional layers of meaning in conversation with the cabinets of curiosities.

A major influence on Schiff's work is the American surrealist Joseph Cornell, whose 'shadow boxes' are the subject of a new Royal Academy exhibition in London. The shape shifting Dada and Surrealist artists, the fragmentary process of Walter Benjamin's writing, and Czech animator Jan Svankmajer's films, also inform her multimedia practice.

Accompanying the exhbiition is an artist's book of fictional narratives with photographs of the cabinets by artist and photographer Jane Wildgoose.

With HERMAION Schiff and Wildgoose return to Eleven Spitalfields Gallery following the 2009 exhibition WE ARE SHADOWS: Metamorphosis, Curiosities, Dark Tales

Amanda Schiff is an artist, writer and lecturer in screenwriting. Her first solo exhibition in 2009 was at Eleven Spitafields Gallery, her second in 2010 was a 4-month installation (Pandora's Box) at the Grant Museum of Zoology. She has been commissioned to write short fiction for international fine art photography magazine HOTSHOE, and in 2001 was shortlisted for Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger award. Her long film industry career has included stints at Columbia Pictures, the National Film Development Fund, Goldcrest, The Samuel Goldwyn Company and in partnership with producer Barbara  Broccoli setup and ran Astoria Pictures, where they produced Crime of the Century. In 2004 she graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London and is currently writing a novel and a screenplay.

Jane Wildgoose is an artist, writer and Keeper of her own collection, The Wildgoose Memorial Library, which is dedicated to memory and rememberance. She works to commission with museums and collections in the UK and USA and has exhibited at the Soane Museum in London and Yale Center for British Art in Connecticut USA. Her exhibition 'Beyond All Price', commissioned by Waddesdon Manor (Rothschild Colelctions) is on view at Waddeston Manor until 25th October 2015. She is currently completing a practice-based PhD at Kingston University in which she is investigating the collection and interpretation of human skulls and hair in late nineteenth century London.

Field Notes began life as a collaboration between Matthew Harris and composer Howard Skempton, commissioned by Craftspace, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and ArtsAlive for a regional concert tour through Shropshire and Herefordshire in the spring and Autumn of 2014.

Join us in the gallery for a conversation event where both artist and composer discuss their shared approach to process, language and material, and the bringing together of audiences for contemporary music and visual arts with one of the commissioners of the project.

The talk will be followed by a performance of Field Notes at the nearby Bishopsgate Institute as part of Spitalfields Music Summer Festival 2015. Tickets available here.

Spaces for the talk are limited, and are allocated on a first come, first served basis. To secure yours, please click here.

Saturday 4th July | OPEN AFTERNOON | 2-5pm

To celebrate the opening of 'HERMAION: Happy Accident, Lucky Find' the gallery will be open from 2-5pm, with no need to book an appointment to view.

Thursday 16th July | ARTIST IN CONVERSATION | 7pm

Artist, writer and filmmaker Amanda Schiff wil be in conversation with award-winning producer Sophie Balhetchet.

Spaces limited, and are allocated on a first come, first served basis. RSVPhere

Thursday 13th August | ARTIST TALK & READING | 7pm

Amanda Schiff artist talk and reading of stories to accompany the works on display.

Spaces limited, and are allocated on a first come, first served basis. RSVPhere

Town Hall Series: A London Typology, is an ongoing project by architecture and landscape photographer Anthony Coleman. Inspired by the civic confidence and architectural ambition of London's town halls, and how many of the buildings today have new functions, Coleman's images provide 'a definitive study of London's civic townscape' (The Architects Journal). Arranged systematically Coleman contrasts their bold and eccentric facades with other typical high street details, such as road markings, street furniture, and unusually for architectural photography, people. 

Anthony Coleman will be joined in conversation by Ken Worpole.

Tickets available here

Miranda Argyle returns to Eleven Spitalfields Gallery in January 2016 with a collection of stitched and photographic works in the exhibition, 'From Where I'm Looking II'

'Greta Kirkwood Andresen's Sands of Time is a beautifully poetic take on the complexity of Africa and the Middle East. The work reflects the interest, awe and compassion felt by Kirkwood in retracing earlier steps over those lands.

The insightful texts and poetry that accompany the images draw one into her mind's eye and its reflection of her deeply personal experience of these lands.

One is left with a sense of both the urgency of the political situation in much of the region but also the resilience of human life under the deepest adversity.'

- Dr Lee Salter

This body of work comprises images and text from Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Lebanion and Kenya juxtaposed with archival images from that region belonging to her late grandfather who reported from the Second World War in the Middle East for the Royal Army Ordinance Corps from 1939 - 1945. The Sands of Time is an important part of social history and documentation - relating top our world heritage. it is not so much about people as it is places, but people are an inherent part of places, leaving everlasting imprints. It equates timeless ancient monuments and wonders of the past with the worship of Pharaohs to recent times with new established borders and occupied territories, dictatorship, oppression, revolution: these old ruins and civilizations - all left in the hands of fate. The images serve as a gateway to the sands of time.

'A definitive study of London's civic townscape' - the Architects Journal

Town Hall Series: A London Typology, is an ongoing project by architecture and landscape photographer Anthony Coleman.

Inspired by the civic confidence and architectural ambition of London's town halls, and how many of the buildings today have new functions. Coleman's images neatly summarise the city's ever-changing townscape.

The photographs present a variety of still-in-use town halls as well as those that have found other uses, from Bethnal Green (see image, above), now a high end restaurant to Hackney Old Town Hall, a betting shop, and Wimbledon, which today is home to a supermarket. Arranged systematically Coleman contrasts their bold and eccentric facades with other typical high street details, such as road markings, street furtniture, and unusually for architectural photography, people.

'Coleman's photographs have a sculptural quality and showcase the broad range of styles exlored by London's town hall architects,' says Rory Olcayto, editor of the Architects' Journal. 'From Alfred Brumwell Thomas's English Baroque at Woolwich to Clifford Culpin's avowedly Modernist Greenwich and George Trevitt's corporate international style at Hounslow, this is a definitive study of London's civic townscape.'

Coleman, a contributing photographer to the Architect's Journal, trained first in architecture before studying photography at the Royal College of Art. He is a member of the photography agency View Pictures and works occasionaly with the London Open House team provising architectural photography tours of the City of London.

We are delighted to announce that critically acclaimed British actress, Dame Sian Philips, will be making a rare appearance on 2nd February 2016 during Miranda Argyle's exhibition at Eleven Spitalfields Gallery. 

Philips' long career has included numerous theatre, film and television credits, but she is perhaps best known for starring in the BBC adaptation of Robert Graves' novel I, Claudius (BBC2) for which she won the 1977 BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress. She also appeared opposite her then-husband Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton in Becket and in the musical film Goodbye, Mr Chips, again starring O'Toole. Other notable works include Murphy's War, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley's People and Clash of the Titans.

Beyond the screen, Philip's distinctive voice can be heard on Rufus Wainwright's 2007 album Release the Stars, and she appeared live with him at the Old Vic Theatre in London in 2007.

Tickets for this event are free of charge, and are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Click here to reserve your space.

Pindrop Official Website

"Last chance to see the exhibition "The Sands of Time" at Eleven Spitalfields with the possibility of picking up a FREE  copy of both titles of the artist Greta Kirkwood Andresen's books The Sands of Time and Road to Havana this last week of the exhibition. The titles sell at £29.99 each in the bookshop. The show finishes on April 29.