Towards Night
Towards Night | 1
Foreword
Foreword © Emma Morris, 2016
Text © Tom Hammick, 2016
World copyright reserved
First published 2016
ISBN 978-1-871360-24-0
The right of Tom Hammick to be
identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and
Patents Act 1988
Published by Towner
Art Gallery, Eastbourne.
All rights reserved.
Cover: detail from Tom Hammick’s
Through Phosphorescent Sea
(study 2), 2016, private collection.
Design: Sophie Gibson
Print: BKT
2 | Towards Night
Not long after I joined Towner in 2013, I bumped into Tom
Hammick and asked if I could visit him at his home to catch up
and have a look at his latest paintings and prints. I have known
Tom for many years and admire his practice greatly.
As we sat around his kitchen table discussing the influences
and ideas behind his work, a seed was planted that grew into
the ambitious exhibition you see today.
Originally we invited Tom to have a solo show, yet
as conversations developed it became clear this was an
opportunity to gather together paintings which inspire
and feed into his practice; from national galleries, as well
as from Towner’s own permanent collection. The exhibition
was to become the realisation of the artist’s studio pin board,
juxtaposing and clustering images as only an artist could.
Tom’s own preoccupation with the theme of night emerged
as the overarching motif.
There are very few people I have met with Tom’s drive and
his energy for the exhibition was infectious. I persuaded him
that including his own work, which fits so well with the theme,
was pivotal to the narrative. Tom eventually agreed and it
is wonderful to be able to show this incredible artist along
with the other big names in the exhibition, including Louise
Bourgeois, Marc Chagall, John Constable, J.M.W. Turner
and Edvard Munch.
Tom’s commitment to the show has been incredible and
assisted by the artist Georgia Keeling, they have curated a
beautiful exhibition and secured over 80 significant loans.
From the germ of an idea Tom has curated a very special
exhibition, which I am sure will delight all our audiences
and attract visitors from far afield. I would like to thank Tom
and Georgia for their enthusiasm, passion and commitment.
Special thanks also to Sara Cooper, Karen Taylor, Tom Laver,
Sophie Gibson and Kirsty Baring who have worked tirelessly;
organising over 80 loans and getting together such a
comprehensive gallery guide is no mean feat.
I hope you enjoy Towards Night and the rest of our
Autumn programme.
Emma Morris
Executive Director
Towner Art Gallery
Introduction
I have written this guide before
hanging the exhibition, so in some
circumstances works might be
added, or may not follow the
flow of the text, but will be in
one of the other rooms.
Several years ago Emma Morris, Executive Director at Towner
asked if I would like to work with Towner on an exhibition.
I was flattered, then apprehensive, and in the process of
working out what to do, I asked her if alongside a show of
my own work I could try and gather together some paintings
and prints by other artists, both dead and alive, whose
work I admired. I hoped that we could hang two rooms with
work made by these heroes of mine and that this would add
relevance to the concerns of my own pictures. Several months
later, we were elated when national collection after collection
sent us positive replies to our loan requests. Not only did we
have a show on our hands, but the exhibition of my own work
would have to take a back seat when we realised that the full
allocation of five rooms with these invited artists would already
be a tight fit.
The works in this exhibition span 250 years. They are
connected, in the broadest sense, by the fact that half the
24 hour clock – that arc of time between evening and dawn
– has been used, at the very least, as the backdrop to the
drama within each image.
In my own work I often use night as a motif, as a way of
pulling out what seems important from the shadow of darkness.
I regularly paint through the small hours until dawn, time that
feels especially personal. I have a deep attachment to the velvet
dark, to the stars above my studio and to the blue black outline
of trees against an infinitesimally less dark sky, as the rotation
of Earth passes one notch closer towards the edge of glow
from the sun on the other side of the world. This blanket dark
re-calibrates what seems essentially important and different
in this upside down world, in this parallel universe. The rules
are opposite, cut loose from the everyday, from repetition,
responsibility, the flatness of daily routine and the flatness
of an even light. Here instead, mystery, detached passion,
yearning, the poetry of love and loss, sadness, fear and anxiety,
emphasised as heightened colour amongst indigo much in
the same way an opera spotlight picks out only what is vital.
This night-language of the senses is shared in this exhibition
by all these artists gathered together here. As Virginia Woolf
put it in Street Haunting, ‘The evening hour too gives us the
irresponsibility which darkness and lamplight bestow.
We are no longer quite ourselves.’
Tom Hammick, August 2016
Towards Night | 3
Room 1
Evening Light
Marc Chagall
The Poet Reclining, 1915
oil on cardboard
Marc Chagall’s Poet Reclining, 1915 was my favourite painting
at Tate when I was a child and a picture I have adored ever
since. It was the first painting that conjured up the fresh smell
of outdoors for me, of spruce pine, the faintest breeze in the
silver birch, the coolness of the evening light and the delicious
emerald greens. And as I grew older it became more peculiar.
What is this figure doing lying there like a tombstone effigy at
the bottom of the picture? Is he asleep somewhere else but
dreaming of the dacha behind him? Is he dead? Is this somehow
connected to so many soldiers’ dreams of the time, yearning
for home during the last year Russia was fighting in the Great
War? Chagall painted this picture in Russia during this time.
He had returned the year before from Paris, where many of his
4 | Towards Night
Julian Opie
View of Moon over Manatsuru
Peninsula, 2009
ink on paper
contemporaries had literary ambitions and it seems logical to
me that he referred to himself as a poet painter. The connection
between certain poets, who want to paint, and certain visionary
painters who want to write poetry has always been strong.
Some like Blake recognise it as the pinnacle of the arts. In this
exhibition there are many painters who fall into this category.
Jackowski, Hamilton, Vesey, Blake, Keeling, Kiff, Nolan, Walter,
to name a few.
This first room is tied together by a positive relationship
between evening light and the subject of the painting. In
fact sometimes the light is the subject of the painting. The
two Constables in this room, though 20 years apart, are
very good examples of this. Dedham Vale: Evening, 1802 is
simply exquisite and his first directly realistic interpretation
of the natural world. He wrote in the same year: ‘… I shall
shortly return to Bergholt where I shall make some laborious
studies from nature – and I shall endeavour to get a pure and
unaffected representation of the scenes that may employ me
with respect to Colour particularly…’ [1]
Dedham Vale: Evening is probably one of those he was
describing.
[1] From a letter written by Constable on 29 May 1802.
Towards Night | 5
Constable’s Evening Sketch at Hampstead, 1820 and
Turner’s Sunset Shore Scene, 1830s despite their minimalism,
are refreshingly honest in their celebration of the light over the
landscape. These pictures don’t have the metaphysical charge
of the Chagall, they’re very different sorts of painting, but they
have moved on from the head-on representation of nature in
Constable’s Dedham Vale. They seem to me to be as much
about paint as anything else, and it is their depiction of sky that
is so magical. The Turner is soft and ephemeral, layered colour
blooming, wet on wet, more connected to the beautiful Nolde
watercolour, Friesland Farm Under Red Clouds, c.1930 in both
technique and intensity of colour. The Constable sketch
is wonderfully clunky by comparison, drier, a constructed
image where the clouds appear almost as heavy as the
foreground landscape.
Julian Opie’s lenticular print of a View of Moon over
Manatsuru Peninsula, 2009 (illustrated on page 5) and
Hiroshige’s Kiga Spring; A Tour of the Seven Hot Springs of
Hakone, c.1850 both celebrate places of walking pilgrimage
at night in Japan. Opie has often cited the influence of
Hiroshige’s work, and made his own homage to him by curating
an exhibition at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham called ‘Utagawa
Hiroshige: The Moon reflected’. This exhibition showed
the importance of historical work on current practice, and
exemplifies one of the main themes in this exhibition; that
artists, like writers and poets, so often look back to earlier
work as a source of inspiration and aesthetic.
The two 18th century Indian miniatures, Krishna and
Milkmaids, 1760-1775, and Radha with Krishna’s Messenger,
Artist unknown
Radha with Krishna’s
Messenger, c.1780
opaque watercolour on paper
6 | Towards Night
c.1780, are sublime paintings, where figure and ground
relationships are at their most simple. Colour is unearthed in
these pictures; the landscapes, stretched flat like wall hangings,
add great drama to the scenes. Bill Crozier, one of the greatest
of colourists, similarly uses both the magic hour of evening light
to amplify the intensity of his paint and flattens out space in
his painting Balcony at Night, Antibes, 2007. The plant, blue
and iridescent against the sky, becomes anthropomorphically
charged like the Rousseauesque trees in David Willetts’ Night
Journey, 1974.
William Crozier
Balcony at Night, Antibes, 2007
oil on canvas
David Willetts
Night Journey, 1974
acrylic on board
Towards Night | 7
Room 2
Metaphorical Landscapes
Caspar David Friedrich
Winter Landscape, c.1811
oil on canvas
The next two rooms have altogether darker and more profound
paintings where the artists seem often to be using religious
themes with depictions of the natural world to challenge and
convey meaning in life. Caspar David Friedrich’s small but
sublime Winter Landscape, c.1811 sits next to a brackish Alex
Katz of a seaside wood and a moving jewel-like coloured Craigie
Aitchison Crucifixion, 2005. Friedrich’s Winter Landscape,
despite its diminutive size, has extraordinary power and
Alex Katz
Black Brook 10, 1995
silkscreen (right)
Craigie Aitchison
Crucifixion, 2005
oil on canvas (far right)
8 | Towards Night
colossal internal range of scale between foreground and
background, between the tiny figure in supplication before
Christ on the cross at the bottom of the picture and the looming
cathedral in the background. Symbolism is key through his
use of these pictorial elements. He emphasises both the link
between God as the creative force behind the natural world,
and the possibility of finding salvation in the afterlife through
prayer. For our secular times this painting perhaps lays it on
thick, especially when you compare Friedrich’s work to that
of the more restrained Constable and Turner paintings that
celebrate wonderment without the props that emblemise
the central tenets of Christian faith. But it is quite incredible
Ken Kiff
Tree by the River, 1994
pastel and charcoal on paper
how many of us artists are drawn to this painting like pilgrims.
When quite late on I was able to announce that we would be
loaned the Friedrich, there was a final scramble amongst some
contemporary artists to be included in the exhibition. Ken Kiff’s large pastel Tree by the River, 1994 like so many
of his works is an image of a journey, a metaphor of our
own passage through life perhaps? His pictures are often
full of an innocence and a childlike love wrapped up in a
celebration of our positive integration with plants, animals and
landscape. I have always adored this artist and his work, with
his idiosyncratic sensibility of constructing an image, paying
homage to the exploration of phases of time found in early
Italian quattrocento painting and ancient Chinese scrolls.
Towards Night | 9
J.M.W. Turner
Fishermen at Sea, 1796
oil on canvas
Alfred Wallis
Voyage to Labrador, c.1935-6
oil on wood
10 | Towards Night
I admire how he manages to stay on the right side of sweet,
where men and women in his worlds, as well as objects made
by man with anthropomorphic characteristics, as in so many
myths, seem to be able to talk to animals and plants. Tree by
the River conjures up a parallel universe to me, almost Middle
Earth. I find myself urging the figure onwards, encouraging him
to cross to the other side of the water so that he can reach his
goal and walk in the enchanted wood beneath the stork.
Opposite this more transcendental wall is a series of
paintings that very much remind us of the perils of the natural
world. Turner’s darkly rich Fishermen at Sea, 1796 was his first
picture to be exhibited at the Royal Academy, as coincidentally,
was Constable’s Dedham Vale: Evening. The influence of
Joseph Wright of Derby’s nocturnal paintings on this and
other early Turner works is self-evident. But here you have
two internal light sources, the moon and the tiny lantern on
the boat that emphasise how fragile the fishermen are in the
eye of space picked out by moonlight. The rocks on the left,
like teeth, link to those much larger triangles of ice or rock
that would scupper any boat with engine failure, in Alfred
Wallis’ edgy Voyage to Labrador, c.1935-6. This painting,
perhaps because of the angle of orientation, has a great filmic
quality to it as you look down on the boat below you.
Finally in Room 2, we have Nolde’s The Sea B, 1930. With no
human presence in this composition, the painting is incredibly
powerful and abstracted; an image of one wave breaking on
top of an oily sea swell.
But with Nolde’s depiction of a pungent sulfurous sky
so much more is hinted at. At the time it was painted the
Weimar Republic was wracked with rampant inflation, mass
unemployment and the political extremes that would develop
into German fascism. The painting acts as a premonition of
the horrors to come in Europe.
Emil Nolde
The Sea B, 1930
oil on canvas
Towards Night | 11
Room 3
Contemporary Angst and Journeys into Night
Sidney Nolan
Convict in a Billabong, 1960
oil on canvas
Emma Stibbon’s Rome Aqueduct, 2011 is both stylistically
indebted to Caspar David Friedrich’s work in general and is
specifically linked to one painting in particular; his Abbey in
the Oakwood (not exhibited) through the use of the arch as a
central motif. It has little of the innate religiosity of Friedrich’s
Winter Landscape. Instead it seems to herald a different
kind of warning. Rather than a painting setting out the way to
everlasting life, this postmodern statement is more about the
death of Empire and the tragedy of conflict. Whether Rome
is substituted for Berlin; it is still a salutary warning of what
happens when hubris implodes after war into the dystopia
of decay and the breakdown of society. It’s a wonderfully
bleak image predicting a nightmare, post-apocalyptic world
that hits me in the solar plexus every time I see it.
Sidney Nolan’s Convict in a Billabong, 1960 conjures up
much of the anxiety generated by Emma Stibbon’s woodcut,
but reduces it to a personal and individual level. This outlaw,
dwarfed by the triffid-like plants, seems to have no chance in
Emma Stibbon
Rome, Aqueduct, 2011
woodcut on Japanese paper
12 | Towards Night
Christiane Baumgartner
Wald bei Colditz II, 2014
woodcut on kozo paper
Peter Doig
Echo Lake, 1998
oil on canvas
the dark and arid world he has escaped into. The starkness of
his surroundings reflect the inadequacies of his personality and
the chances of his survival in the civilized world. This painting is
a lament on the plight of outcasts in society, but perhaps, like in
his wonderful Ned Kelly series, celebrates them too – a sort of
pre-Mad Max anti-hero living on the fringes of civilization. Christiane Baumgartner’s Wald bei Colditz II (Wood near
Colditz II), 2014 is not necessarily set at night. As a black
and white woodcut, it is difficult to tell what time of day it is.
Emotionally and intellectually her work is abstruse and reflects
the problems we have interpreting multiple images in an age
of such sophisticated blanket media coverage. But her work
often relates to both war and our pressured environment. ‘It
has a strong relationship to World War II in Britain... and in a
way I don’t mind the connection... I quite like that it brings this
meaning to this piece of the forest... Colditz is a kind of a small
triumph against the Nazis.’[1]
Meanwhile Peter Doig takes us on a complicated journey
into contemporary angst and acute loneliness in his vast and
magnificent Echo Lake, 1998. Originally taken from a film still
from Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th, it depicts a North
American policeman shouting out over water from the edge of
a lake. Not far away, his patrol car lights are flashing. With his
[1] Christiane Baumgartner in Alan Cristea’s press release for her show
Totentanz, 2014-15
Towards Night | 13
Sarah Raphael
Colony, 1988
acrylic on paper
Basil Beattie
The Approaching Night, Janus
Series, 2008
oil and wax on canvas
Amanda Vesey
Night Barn, 1997
oil on canvas
hands to the side of his face, it is not difficult to be reminded
of Munch’s Scream. Of course we don’t know what preceded
this image, what has made the traffic cop scan the water out
towards us, but as Doig himself describes, this is not important.
‘Often I am trying to create a ‘numbness’. I am trying to create
something that is questionable, something that is difficult,
if not impossible, to put into words ... I often use heightened
colours to create a sense of the experience, or mood or feeling
of being there ... I think the paintings always refer back to a
reality that we all have experienced.’ [2]
I feel that, as the policeman shouts out over the lake towards
the viewer, Doig manages to bring us into the psychology of the
painting. Like the last verse of Louis MacNeice’s poem ‘Corner
Seat’, the figure depicted in the painting perhaps reminds us
of our own solitude. [3]
Sarah Raphael’s Colony, 1988 is a paradigm of other works in
this exhibition that are both veiled in their iconography and defy
a linear narrative.
Basil Beattie has created such a silent almost subconscious
world in The Approaching Night, 2008. This painting is one
of half a dozen from his Janus series where he worked with
what looks like stacks of half-oval shaped rear view mirrors as
a simple motif. Are we looking back behind us in time as our
lives play out, or are we looking forward to the future towards
the horizon in front of us? I think probably both. In her essay on
this much underrated painter’s painter Sue Hubbard interprets
these paintings as portals that open up to an illusory space: ‘As
in Plato’s cave, there is a confusion as to what is real; or what
simply a reflection or shadow of reality. It is as if, speeding
through these barren terrains, we are forced to witness our
lives unfurl in front of us as in a silent film, so that Janus-like
we find ourselves looking both back at the past and forwards
into the future.’[4]
This painting has a darker, historical connection, and for me
it lies at the dark existential centre of this exhibition. It can be
read as a personal journey into and out of the subconscious.
But most significantly how can one avoid interpreting it as a
lament to the millions of lives destroyed in the concentration
camps of the Second World War? Scrubbed out landscapes,
[2] Kitty Scott’s text in the National Gallery of Canada’s catalogue of Peter
Doig’s solo exhibiton in 2001
[3] ‘…Windows between you and the world/Keep out the cold, keep out the
fright;/Then why does your reflection seem/So lonely in the moving night?...’
Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems, published by Faber & Faber.
[4] Sue Hubbard’s text accompanying the show Basil Beattie: Paintings
from the Janus Series II at Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, 2010.
14 | Towards Night
Susie Hamilton
Blue Petrol Station, 1996
oil on board
Gertrude Hermes
Through the Windscreen, 1929
woodcut, ink on paper
Nick Bodimeade
Gas Truck, 2001
oil on canvas
parallel lines as train tracks, the hint of a tower approaching on
the horizon. It brings a chill to the senses and acts as a tragic
reminder of where humankind can go so cataclysmically wrong.
Amanda Vesey’s Night Barn, 1997 appropriately straddles
rooms 3 and 4. We see a brooding burgundy red sky above a
tussocky, scrubby downland of gorse. Tyre tracks divide the
landscape. Underneath an open-sided hay barn, a mound
of manure seems to be smouldering. On the horizon, a car’s
headlights appear. A Land Rover perhaps is returning to the
farm. The bled-out landscape is covered in the scars of years
of subsistence farming on a thin topsoil. For me, this incredibly
evocative painting, by a sensitive and much overlooked painter,
alludes to a fragile environment in crisis.
Susie Hamilton’s Blue Petrol Station, 1996 is more
reminiscent of Michael Mann’s night oases, his beacons
of neon seen on the horizons in his film Collateral, than it
is to comedian Bill Bailey’s description of service stations
as ‘cathedrals of despair.’[5]
In conversation Hamilton said, ‘My petrol stations are part
of my wilderness theme, urban and otherwise, in which light
has an ambivalence – alluring and yet bleak, traditionally
spiritual yet glaring, exposing and empty. The petrol station
for me has an ache about it, a beckoning island and yet just
a blown-through flimsy thing in which there is no lingering.’
Gertrude Hermes’ Through the Windscreen, 1929 is both a
charming throwback to childhood and a Hitchcockian device
of our hero peering through the windshield on a quest in North
by Northwest or Vertigo. It reminds me of my childhood, and
the thrill of being driven through the close landscape lit up on
curving roads. This is described so succinctly in the extract
from John Betjeman’s poem set in Berkshire, Indoor Games
near Newbury:
In among the silver birches,
Winding ways of tarmac wander
And the signs to Bussock Bottom,
Tussock Wood and Windy Break.
Gabled lodges, tile-hung churches
Catch the lights of our Lagonda... [6]
Meanwhile, despite its tiny size, Nick Bodimeade’s Gas
Truck, 2001 is an arresting image of the experience of driving
now and epitomises tedious journeys on motorways at dawn or
dusk, flaring rear brake-lights warning you of the consequences
of getting too near the bumper of the vehicle ahead carrying
such volatile liquid.
[5] From Bill Bailey’s DVD Bewilderness, 2001
[6] © the Estate of John Betjeman
Towards Night | 15
Room 4
City and Revelry
Danny Markey
Wedding Store, Ramon Road,
2004
oil on board (above)
Much of the selection in this room is underpinned by Edward
Hopper’s filmic paintings and etchings of the loneliness of
bedsit life.
Danny Markey’s work optimises the sense of a hidden life
behind closed doors in both his TV Room at Night, 2008 and
Wedding Store, Ramon Road, 2004. We all know these scenes
from driving through suburbia in late evenings, but it is by
and large an unexplored world in painting belonging more to
a tradition of North American photography and filmmakers,
exemplified by the likes of Michele Iversen, Gregory Crewdson
and David Lynch.
This Peeping Tom pastime of city dwellers, where framed
scenes look like openings from an advent calendar or a doll’s
house is depicted in Alice Walter’s tiny Untitled, a Dr. Jekyll
green painting of bottles in a chemist’s window.
Humphrey Ocean’s prints of the outlines of two sorts of
houses at night, give off starkly different atmospheres of place
and environment. The woodcut is a cottage, with its soft edges
of jigsawed wood, so easily imagined in the country, despite
the paucity of information on offer. The almost wholly black
aquatint which conjures up a post war Span house with the
silhouette of a car in the drive, sets one up in a more suburban
setting. In contrast to these detached houses, Nick Carrick’s
Night Shift, 2015 is a surprisingly Gaudiesque high-rise block, full
of tiny illuminated windows. It is difficult to imagine the insides
of flats and the personal lives of families living in the mass of
this concrete edifice. Walkways like stilts lead to the minute
TV Room at Night, 2008
oil on canvas (above right)
Alice Walter
Untitled, 2016
oil on panel
16 | Towards Night
Humphrey Ocean
After Dark, 2011
woodcut (right)
and
House, 2007
aquatint (far right)
Nick Carrick
Night Shift, 2015
oil on linen
Phoebe Unwin
Cinema, 2010
paint on canvas
entrances of his building, evoking an even more impersonal
air. Compare this with Hiroshige’s woodcut Evening Bell and
the Receipt of the Message. I marvel at how he reveals the way
inside and outside spaces merge and overlap, like looking into
and through the Farnsworth House, an almost transparent
pavilion designed by the architect Mies van de Rohe.
Phoebe Unwin’s Cinema is a small, head-sized painting
of a big internal space which explores the ‘picture inside a
picture’ leitmotif that so many night paintings of the city seem
to analyse. She wrote to me: ‘I think the combination of a dark
auditorium and the focus of a film can make for a surprisingly
intimate experience. I was also interested in the picturemaking questions this subject raises: how to paint the dark?;
How to paint the liveliness of a moving picture on a still screen?
To make the painting I used a combination of materials:
powdered graphite, acrylic and enamel paints. The chromium
green, bits of pyrrole orange, iron-oxide brown, metallic steelgrey, matte and gloss black were chosen to try to capture the
night-time sense of losing scale, the dimming of colour and
the glow of partial shapes perceived.’ Social cohesion through
law and order requires a certain sense of conformity and
this painting can be seen as a dystopian observation with an
audience of couched automatons, feeding off the subliminal
messages emitting from the flickering screen.
I come to this bleak analysis of Unwin’s painting when I look
in stark contrast at Julian Bell’s celebration of a down and out
figure in his painting Hong Kong Dave & the Constellations, 1997
(illustrated on page 18). Dave, having fallen through the net of
society, is probably no longer able to join the throng of people
in a cinema, but instead is outside, literally on the outside of
society. Artists have often had empathy with outcasts, feeling
that, in order to be barometers of their time, they find they
are in exile themselves. Julian Bell explained that Dave was
a Big Issue seller he knew. In 2016 Bell wrote, ‘I don’t know
what happened to him. But he was a good guy and one day
he let me draw him lying stoned on a park bench. I kinda
Towards Night | 17
George Shaw
The Next Big Thing, 2010
enamel on board
Julian Bell
Hong Kong Dave & the
Constellations, 1997
oil on canvas
18 | Towards Night
used elements of the shopping mall down the hill, plus a very
Londony sky.’
Hurvin Anderson’s minimal image of fenestration, Untitled
06, 2004 depicts windows which we are prevented from
Prunella Clough
False Flower, 1993
oil on canvas
Hurvin Anderson
Untitled 06, 2004
etching
Betsy Dadd
Four AM, 2016
monotype
peering through. It reminds me of the kind of heavy-duty metal
shutters you find screwed down over windows of mothballed
buildings pre-redevelopment to deter vandalism. It has a feel
of frottage, and stares back at us blankly.
The Next Big Thing, 2010 a vast painting (illustrated on page
18) in George Shaw’s signature enamel shows building rubble at
dusk and has similar ghost-like qualities of a building that once
was. Shaw wrote about it, ‘The Next Big Thing’ forms part of
what has become a series of paintings of landmarks no longer
there. The pile of rubble is all that remains of a pub called The
Hawthorn Tree. ...The pub sat in the Tile Hill Estate, and I went
there frequently with my dad. Neither the pub nor my dad are
here anymore. The land is now a housing estate of it’s own.’[1]
Looking across the room at Prunella Clough’s False Flower,
1993, I am reminded of a dystopian J. G. Ballard short story.
Clough, a painter of great truth, subtlety and ingenuity has
always created her own semi-abstracted language based
around the surfaces of buildings and the detritus of human
existence. Her paintings are veiled and have a subliminal charge
that can be difficult to interpret. Despite this I have found that
she is very popular with students and older fellow painters
alike. In this painting nature seems to be winning back, and
the ‘false flower’– a tree not a weed – has managed to grow
up and out from behind a thick layer of brutalist concrete.
From buildings and building sites we move onto night life
[1] The Next Big Thing forms part of what has become a series of paintings
of landmarks no longer there. Arts Council 2010, Arts Council Collection.
Text courtesy of the artist.
Towards Night | 19
Patrick Caulfield
Rideaux écartés du haut des
balcons des grèves (Curtains
drawn back from balconies of
shores, Laforgue), 1973
screenprint (below far right)
and revelry. L. S. Lowry in his mysterious painting The Crowd,
1922 has painted a group of figures in front of a doorway,
perhaps in a pub, or outside the wall of a stadium. Most
of them stare back out at us like ghouls. It’s as if they have
noticed we have intruded on their world.
Betsy Dadd’s Four AM, 2016 (illustrated page 19) is a closeup of a woman drinking from a paper cup. We don’t see who
she is talking to, but it’s not difficult to imagine the high pitched
buzz from the corner of a house party still in full swing.
Meanwhile, Michael Craig-Martin and Patrick Caulfield show
their iconic and restrained cool with two images of objects that
can be associated with nightlife. Craig-Martin’s silkscreen,
Helen Turner
Glittershoe, 2015
gloss and glitter on paper
of a hovering and pristine ashtray, with flat indigo background
seems to revere and celebrate the act of smoking. No nasty fag
butts here, but one can sense any cigarette lying part smoked in
the dayglo neon green grooves will be whiter than white in any
bar, or nightclub.
Caulfield’s Curtains drawn back from the balconies of
shores, Laforgue, 1973 from his series of prints accompanying
the poems of Jules Laforgue is similarly brilliantly evocative.
He invokes the velvet fabric of the curtain, and hence the
atmosphere of the location, with such a subtle crinkled edge.
Caulfield described Laforgue’s poems as ‘wonderfully concise,
managing to be both romantic and ironic’. [2] A description
that could be said to equally apply to Michael Craig-Martin’s
Ashtray, 2014.
Helen Turner’s Glittershoe, 2015 and Rose Wylie’s Nicole
Michael Craig-Martin
Ashtray, 2015
screenprint (below left)
[2] From Tate Gallery Education Pack accompanying Patrick Caulfield’s
retrospective show at Tate Liverpool
20 | Towards Night
Rose Wylie
Nicole Kidman (Pink Frock),
2015
watercolour and collage
on paper
Kidman (Pink Frock), 2015 are two works on paper that
celebrate party going and the excitement of dressing up.
Kidman is on the red carpet, cameras flashing. Turner’s picture
is a wonderfully sexy image. You can only imagine the woman
who is going to wear these high heels.
Munch’s The Kiss, Fourth Version, 1902 is the most pruned
down and passionate image of two lovers that he replicated
from earlier more narrative drawings, paintings and prints of
the same subject matter. This exploration and reworking of the
motif of a couple embracing, started off in 1894 with a drypoint
of Death and the Maiden – a typically Munchian bittersweet
device of a sexy woman in a deep kiss with a skeleton! An
etching of The Kiss, from 1895, compositionally similar but
with more graphic detail, with the sculptural figures naked in
front of a window, is finally reduced to a wonderfully flat print;
the embrace and a shroud-like background of pale woodgrain
that we see here is such an arousing image of night-time
passion that it would make the heart of even the coolest
amongst us skip a beat. Setting is no longer important, but
it is the expression of the union of body and soul that has
become vital. Munch’s choice of the medium of woodcut,
using a piece of humble pine makes this version so evocative
and romantic. As Paul Westheim put it in his text in The Book
of Woodcut, (Das Holzschnittbuch), 1921:
‘The technique seems to become a part of the intention...’
Edvard Munch
The Kiss, Fourth Version, 1902
woodcut, ink on paper
Towards Night | 21
Room 5
Dreams, Insomnia and Moonlight
Andrzej Jackowski
Surfacing, 1987
oil on canvas
The night paintings in Room 5, works that have a more
surreal dream-like content, can be seen as an outward visual
projection of what is an internal night-time phenomenon.
The dialogue within oneself which the self-conscious mind
can hold in its depths. Georgia Keeling’s tiny etching Now I
May Wither, 2014 can be seen as a visual and metaphorical
exploration of night terrors where as much emphasis is placed
on the presence of a tree’s roots, usually hidden, as its trunk
and foliage above ground. Georgia Keeling writes, ‘The picture
is about the anxiety that is found – or finds you – solely and
exclusively during the night. It is a realm that is both real and
imagined, where watchful shapes emerge from the darkness
and hold up mirrors onto all of your fears. There is an energy
there that is both malevolent as well as strangely protective –
you have to learn to see it like that, to make friends with your
22 | Towards Night
Georgia Keeling
Now I May Wither, 2014
etching
Andrzej Jackowski
Standing Train, 1988
etching with chine collé
Andrew Cranston
Incubus, 2012
oil and varnish on board
demons, in the same way that you have to try to make
peace with the idea of dying. The etching takes its title
from W. B. Yeats’ poem ‘The Coming of Wisdom with Time’,
which is both beautiful and sinister, and to me perfectly
encapsulates this idea:
Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.’
All of Andrzej Jackowski’s paintings and prints seem
to similarly explore the zone which develops in the semisubconscious hypnagogic world between waking and sleep.
This is conveyed in his paintings and prints by an otherworldly
radiance, perhaps more Eastern European than British, rich in
delicious caustic yellows, umbers, earth reds and green-blacks,
often highlighted in a soft pinkish magenta. This intensity
of colour, of peculiar colour, he applies with dryish paint,
scumbled flat, reducing his imagery to the barest essentials –
just like the way we remember the most pared-down elements
from dreams and earliest memories. In this way it seems he
manages to slow down time. Jackowski writes of his painting
Surfacing, 1987: ‘I was reading Adrienne Rich’s poetry when I
was working on this painting – ‘Diving into the Wreck’. In similar
fashion to the poem, my painting explores an internal journey
of our memories and our past that happens in both the revery
of waking and dreaming, and during the real time of making
the work.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.’ [1]
Andrew Cranston’s Incubus, 2012, is much more edgy than
it first appears. While in mythology an incubus is specifically
a predatory demon, it can also be defined as a disturbing
nightmare. Here, a reclining woman is seen to be rising up in
response to an off-stage figure whose shadow is cast onto the
wall. As Cranston wrote when explaining this painting to me,
‘It is unclear if the figure is inside the room or perhaps passing
by a window. It is a nocturnal situation, perhaps around four in
the morning. Night interests me deeply as a space in each day
where reason is challenged and we are vulnerable to fear. It
[1] The lines from Diving into the Wreck copyright © 2016 by the Adrienne
Rich Literary Trust. Copyright © 1973 by W. W.Norton & Company, Inc.,
from COLLECTED POEMS: 1950-2012 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission
of W. W.Norton & Company, Inc.
Towards Night | 23
Stephen Chambers
White Light, 2003
etching with chine collé
poses certain formal challenges too, ...in how to represent the
borders of the visible and the mood and qualities of that time.
I had in mind the sense of threat in Walter Sickert’s paintings
and the patterning in Eduard Vuillard, which ...reflect the
inner emotional turmoil of the figures…’ [2]
White Light, 2003 a small etching by Stephen Chambers,
has strong formalistic connections in style and content to
works by Jackowski. Here a naked figure lies on top of a blanket
on a full-size brass bed. There is nowhere to hide under this
electric light. Huge and up close, it hangs like a pendulum or
metronome from the ceiling, conjuring up a rhythm of the
figure tossing and turning with an anxiety attack that has
materialised in the small hours of night.
Louise Bourgeois
Spirals, 2010
gouache and pencil on paper
Louise Bourgeois
Insomnia, 2000
drypoint on cloth
The unhinged mind, delirious from lack of sleep, is explored
spontaneously and automatically by Louise Bourgeois in both
Spirals, 2010, an abstracted drawing in gouache and pencil on
of a page of close knit chimeric spinning circles and Insomnia,
2000, a drypoint on cloth depicting a young woman whose
eyes, like those in a cartoon, frantically rotate round their
sockets. They are both brilliantly ‘unarty’ and raw
hallucinatory images.
‘These drawings resemble the compulsive sketching of
mental patients celebrated in the 20th century as art brut. Not
that Bourgeois is mad, but she has managed to strip away the
protecting veils of fine art so that she seems to draw as directly
as a child or someone with no awareness of art and its rules.
[2] Cranston is specifically referring to Sickert’s Camden Town Murder
series, where he painted a number of subtly toned interiors depicting a
naked woman on an iron bed observed by a clothed man.
24 | Towards Night
William Blake
I Want, I Want, c.1793 to 1818
etching engraving black carbon
ink on paper
Samuel Palmer
Moonlight, a Landscape with
Sheep, c.1831-33
ink on card (right)
Vija Celmis
Night Sky, c. 2006
screenprint
She does not put up any defences of irony or erudition. This
is her waking dream life spilling out, the agony of insomnia
crystallising into images, the terrible thoughts that won’t
go away’.[3]
Samuel Palmer and William Blake’s influence looms large
in the collection of moon and night sky images in this last
room. Palmer’s Moonlight, a Landscape with Sheep, c.183133, made while he lived at Shoreham in Kent, has a mystical,
nostalgic and almost primitive quality. It is an intensely poetic
image that celebrates the Darent Valley, his ‘Valley of Vision’ as
the perfect backdrop that he could use to celebrate the divine
presence in nature.
Blake’s tiny print, I Want, I Want, was first published in
1793 for children as one of 18 engravings called The Gates
of Paradise, documenting the different stages of life. It is an
extraordinary picture. Such an incredibly modern abstracted
image in its surreal dreamlike simplicity, seemly prophesising
lunar exploration in the future. It is also a work that, like a
drawing on a blackboard, in its freeing minimalism, seems
to open up a whole new way artists could take interest in
science and imagine their way to later discoveries in time.
Vija Clemens’s beautiful Night Sky silkscreen, c.2006
uses detailed photographs as part of the process in making
her prints and drawings. What we and the camera see is
made possible by the absence of light reflected down on
us via the moon, and is the natural consequence of a
[3] Jonathan Jones, The Guardian, 9 January, 2001 The Night Stuff.
Towards Night | 25
Will Gill
Snow at Night, 2005
acrylic, copper and wood inlay
on birch panel
Matthew Burrows
Eclipse I, 2015
oil on board
Eileen Cooper
Night Gardener, 1987
charcoal on paper
26 | Towards Night
moonless night sky at its darkest.
Will Gill’s arresting Snow at Night, 2005 creates a subtle
double, double take. It is literally a built image. It takes a bit
of time to realise that it is half painting and half sculpture.
And then as you discover the materials he uses, you question
if the stars in the sky might be snowflakes.
He incorporates wood inlay, copper and paint in an effort to
marry the two disciplines. Gill was influenced in his formative
years by the brilliant Canadian artist Paterson Ewen. Ewen
used to draw on ply with a router before he painted on top of
the wood. Gill writes, ‘There are, it seems, few things as quiet
as snow falling in the darkness of night. In this depiction of
an empty bed (or is it a gentle slope?) I was in a reflective
mood and thinking about beauty, melancholy and presence/
absence.’
Matt Burrows investigates the moon as object and
emphasises its mirror-like qualities, reminding us of the sun’s
presence even at night in his Eclipse I, 2015. It is the painting
in this exhibition that along with Louise Bourgeois’ Spirals, is
closer to abstraction than figuration. He writes, ‘I see ‘Eclipse I’
as a painting which asserts and renounces its own presence.
It is both the sun and the moon, night and day, light and dark.
Its light is contained in the painting’s own universe, hidden
behind the deep earthy green/black of the moon. One cannot
think of the sun or the moon as being a mix of the sticky
pigments of olive green deep and Van Dyke Brown, it is too
much of a conceptual leap. It is not enough to paint what you
know or think is there, with what you know or think is pictorially
appropriate. One must be surprised, even to the point of
insult, at painting’s capacity to suggest the most unexpected
response.’
Eileen Cooper’s drawing Night Gardener, 1987, Simon
Burton’s painting Impossible Memory, 2016 and my woodcut
Passes Between Us, 2016 are all moonlit works that use the
backdrop of lunar night to cushion and encase a private
narrative. Cooper writes, ‘Night Gardener is part of a group of
charcoal drawings I made around the time that my sons were
born. The night-time seems to be beyond a space for sleeping,
when you have small children. One is often awake during those
strange hours, when the light has gone. I think Night Gardener
is about finding a hard-won private space, of nurture and
creativity, both with children and away from them.’
Burton’s Impossible Memory, 2016 resists coalescing into
a solid state. He suggested to me that this in-between place
is like the space between waking and sleeping, the space of
insomnia. He transforms the idyllic scene of people in a rowing
Simon Burton
Impossible Memory, 2016
oil on linen
Sara Lee
Ridge, 2012
Japanese woodcut
Utagawa Hiroshige
Bush Warbler on a Plum Tree
in Moonlight, 1840-2
woodcut print for fan, ink
on paper
boat into a dislocated, unnatural setting with an air of the
uncanny. He writes, ‘Representation here exists only partially
and subjectively and meaning can only be pieced together,
like memories, through the shadowy and insubstantial isolated
fragments. The surface of the painting offers us it’s making;
the sense of touch on the surface emerges and becomes the
activity that one relies on. The more one looks at the painting
the more it becomes a threshold of a vision, light is failing,
and our own sight is myopic.’
This interest in quarter light is also prevalent in Sara
Lee’s work. Her woodcut technique, subtle in this day’s flat
and saturated hardness, hotwires one back to the time of
printmaker Utagawa Hiroshige. Ridge, 2012, while a woodblock
print in the ukiyo-e tradition is compositionally as much
influenced by the waning light of her childhood in Wales as
Japanese topography. She writes, ‘I think one of the attractions
of twilight and dark is that we are looking with the parts of our
eyes that don’t allow for detail and tend towards monochrome.’ Hiroshige designed this Bush Warbler on a Plum Tree in
Moonlight, 1840-2 uchiwa-e, or rigid fan print with an image of a
bush warbler (a Japanese nightingale). It has all the equivalent
qualities of a poem and is simply ravishing compositionally and
stylistically, and I love the way it conjures up sound. The bush
warbler is a classic symbol for early spring in Japan.
Mark Wright’s Afterglow, 2013 (illustrated on page 28) sits
in a place between the real and the imagined and has a range
of organic structures and natural forms in an eerie twilight
that give his painting an unsettling quality. Where are we, in a
dream? Looking through a microscope? A telescope? What are
these objects? Where do they come from? The painting gets me
asking many questions, and it jags at my fixation on narrative.
While it’s a very different kind of painting to all the work in
this exhibition, I think it is locked into the same primordial
soup of source material and inspiration, and straddles much
of the discourse here in a more postmodern way. He is a
hunter gatherer of sources, and he seems to be borrowing
from Friedrich’s romanticism, Redon’s symbolism, Duchamp’s
surrealism, and consequently the work becomes a kind of
art historical tardis of possibility painting. I have the privilege
of teaching with Mark, an inspiring tutor, and I know that he
is very interested in addressing the idea of making paintings
of potential images. Mark wrote to me recently: ‘Pictorial
ambiguity is inherent in images because visual perception
is an interpretative act involving memory and imagination.
Modern art has made this aspect of perception crucial to its
relationship with the viewer. Related to this, the concept of
Towards Night | 27
Mark Wright
Afterglow, 2013
oil on linen
constructing a painting from different pictorial sources
and fragments, creating a composite image has a
complex and rich history.’
Edmund De Waal writing on Christopher Le Brun’s work
writes, ‘One of the reasons these paintings are so strong is
that they don’t button-hole you, but you cannot walk past;
they do mix things up, but are coherent.’ [3]
Le Brun’s painting of great bravura is called Aeneas Book IV,
2015 (illustrated on the back cover). It refers to Aeneas’ father’s
ghost appearing in the night and encouraging him to visit the
underworld, and then his subsequent descent through the
cave into darkness. It is fitting as the penultimate work in this
exhibition. The title gives a fix on this operatic picture, sets up
a rich world in which to explore. I am then led by paint, colour,
mark, the most simple motif and shape of a great red eye or
pulsating disc floating in the middle of the canvas. Le Brun’s
ingredients are intoxicating in themselves and draw me, free
me, like the music of Wagner and Debussy, to be propelled on
my own epic expedition in parallel with Aeneas’ odyssey.
It is such an honour to have Howard Hodgkin’s Black as
Egypt’s Night, 2005-2013 as well as Christopher Le Brun’s
Aeneas Book IV, 2015 to hang at the end of this exhibition. As
Jackie Wullschlager wrote in the Financial Times in June 2014,
‘Painting, especially old-age painting, is about the passage
of time. Hodgkin’s work, rooted in the search for time lost,
has always been touched by melancholy… Hodgkin has been
preparing all his life for the late style, economical, emotional,
celebratory, poignant, transcendent, which makes him the
freshest painter working today.’
Hear, hear! On a par with Titian’s late works, this is a painting
that moves me to tears. It seems to me to encapsulate so much
beauty and sadness and pain in the world. Thank God
for painting.
Howard Hodgkin
Black as Egypt’s Night,
w2005-2013
oil on wood
[3] Edmund De Waal’s essay in Christopher Le Brun: New Paintings
published in 2014 by Ridinghouse.
28 | Towards Night
Acknowledgements
This exhibition would not have
been possible without the longsuffering patience and kindness
of Sara Cooper and her brilliant
and unflappable maternity leave
replacement Karen Taylor and
Tom Laver, whose attention to
detail has enabled us to bring
together over 80 works to the
Towner from all over the UK. I now
know quite how herculean a task it
is putting on a museum show, and
I am in awe of the professionalism
of the team at Towner.
I have been so ably assisted by
the wonderful Georgia Keeling who
has been my barometer and reiner
in-er from the get go. And most
recently Kirsty Baring and Sophie
Gibson on the production of this
gallery guide.
Nick and Char Maclean must get
a mention for their help in acquiring
an important piece for the show, as
well as the incredible Alan Cristea
and his assistant Luke Duncan who
have been so patient with their
time and generous with their loans.
Ditto Sophie Hall at Flowers, who
has enabled us to store paintings
in the gallery, and Frankie Rossie at
Marlborough, Robin Light at Crane
Kalman and the two Richards at
Redfern Gallery. Meryl Ainslie has
been particularly helpful in helping
us gain access to four wonderful
works. I am also indebted to my
friend Emma Hill of the Eagle
Gallery who encouraged me to
pursue the idea of this exhibition
many years ago. My thanks also
to Charles Booth Clibborn and the
team at Paragon Press who have
loaned us four sublime etchings
and to Caroline Collier at Tate and
Liz Gilmore at Jerwood who both
gave me invaluable advice at the
very start of this project.
I would also like to thank three
museums and galleries in particular.
Helen Dawson, assistant registrar at
The V&A was an early supporter of
this exhibition, and so helpful and
kind with loans. We have one
of my favourite Munch prints thanks
to her, and several works by my
hero Hiroshige. Dr Gabriele Finaldi,
director of The National Gallery
and his team who have allowed us
to hang Caspar David Friedrich’s
Winter Landscape. Who would
have thought this possible? A
dream come true for me and all
of us artists in this exhibition. And
the same with the team at Tate.
To have Chagall’s The Poet
Reclining, my favourite Clough, a
majestic Doig, Alfred Wallis, such
a moody Turner and Nolde’s Sea
B… all in this little show; this is
astonishing and proof that miracles
do happen!
This show would not have been
possible without the sponsorship,
time and advice of Chris Kneale
and Simon Sheffield of Martinspeed.
Shipping is an art in itself, and they
have been so brilliantly positive
and effective. Also to Matthew
Flowers of Flowers Gallery who has
contributed to the production of
the catalogue.
I would like to thank all the
artists in this exhibition who have
been so kind, allowing studio visits
and explanations on their work.
I feel honoured to have got to
know you and have my work
hang in your company.
And finally I would like to
express my deepest thanks to
Martha, Charlie, Cecilia and Elsie
for being so tolerant with me while
I tried to make some sense of this
exhibition. Being an artist is tough
enough on family, without the extra
fear of being out of one’s depth in
this new world of curating.
Towards Night | 29
Catalogue
and credits
Room 1
Marc Chagall (1887-1985), The
Poet Reclining, 1915. Oil paint on
cardboard. On loan from Tate:
Purchased 1942. Photograph © Tate,
London 2016. Chagall ®/© ADAGP,
Paris and DACS, London, all rights
reserved, 2016.
John Constable (1776-1837),
Dedham Vale: Evening, 1802. Oil on
canvas. On loan from Victoria and
Albert Museum. Given by Isabel
Constable, 1888.
John Constable (1776-1837) Sketch
at Hampstead: Evening, 1820. Oil
on card. On loan from Victoria and
Albert Museum. Given by Isabel
Constable, 1888.
William Crozier (1757-1827),
Balcony at Night, Antibes, 2007.
Oil on canvas. On loan from
Flowers Gallery. Image © The Estate
of William Crozier. Care of Flowers
Gallery.
Tom Hammick (b.1963), Waiting
for Time, 2016. Edition variable
reduction woodcut. On loan
from Flowers Gallery. Care of
Hammick Editions.
Hiroshige (1797-1858) Kiga Spring;
A Tour of the Seven Hot Springs of
Hakone, 1851. Woodcut print for fan,
ink on paper. On loan from Victoria
and Albert Museum.
Mary Newcomb (1922-2008),
Flowers of the Ash, 1973. Oil on
board. On loan from Northampton
Museum and Art Gallery.
Emil Nolde (1867-1956), Friesland
Farm Under Red Clouds, c.1930.
Watercolour on paper. On loan
from Victoria and Albert Museum.
Julian Opie (b.1958) View of Moon
over Manatsuru Peninsula, 2009.
Inkjet print mounted to 3D iMotion
lenticular acrylic panel. On loan
from the artist and Alan Cristea
Gallery. Image © Julian Opie.
J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), Shore
Scene, Sunset, Early 19th Century.
Watercolour on paper. On loan from
Victoria and Albert Museum given
by the Executors of the late Robert
Clarke Edwards.
30 | Towards Night
Unknown, Krishna and Milkmaids,
1760-75. Opaque watercolour on
paper. On loan from Victoria and
Albert Museum. Purchased with
the assistance of the Art Fund.
Unknown, Radha with Krishna’s
Messenger, c.1780. Opaque
watercolour on paper. On loan
from Victoria and Albert Museum.
Purchased with the assistance
of Lady Rothenstein and The Art
Fund. Image © Victoria and Albert
Museum, London.
David Willetts (b.1939), Night
Journey, 1974. Acrylic on board.
On loan from the artist. Image
© David Willetts. Photography:
Stuart Blackwood.
Room 2
Craigie Aitchison (1926-2009),
Crucifixion, 2005. Oil on canvas.
On loan from a private collection.
Image © estate of Craigie Aitchison
/Bridgeman Images.
Caspar David Friedrich (17741840) Winter Landscape, c.1811.
Oil on canvas. On loan from The
National Gallery, London. Bought,
1987. Image © The National Gallery,
London, 2016.
Alex Katz (b.1927) Black Brook 10,
1995. Silkscreen, ink on paper. On
loan from Timothy Taylor Gallery,
London. Image © Alex Katz. DACS
2016. Photographer Sylvain Deleu.
Ken Kiff (1935-2001) Tree by the
River, 1994. Pastel and charcoal
on paper. On loan from and image
© The Artist’s estate courtesy of
Marlborough Fine Art.
Emil Nolde (1867-1956) The Sea B,
1930. Oil paint on canvas. On loan
from Tate: Purchased 1966. © Nolde
Stiftung Seebüll. Image © Tate,
London 2016.
William Scott (1913-1989)
Slagheap Landscape, 1952. Oil on
canvas. On loan from Arts Council
Collection, Southbank Centre,
London.
J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
Fishermen at Sea, exhibited 1796.
Oil on canvas. On loan from Tate:
Purchased 1972. Image © Tate,
London 2016.
Alfred Wallis (1855-1942) Voyage
to Labrador, c.1935-36. Oil paint on
wood. On loan from Tate: Presented
by Adrian Stokes 1958. Image ©
Tate, London 2016.
Room 3
Christiane Baumgartner (b.1967)
Wald bei Colditz II, 2014. Woodcut
on kozo paper. Edition of 6. Image
courtesy of Christine Baumgarter
and Alan Cristea Gallery London.
On loan from the artist and Alan
Cristea Gallery. Image © The Artist.
DACS 2016.
Basil Beattie (b.1935) The
Approaching Night, 2008, Janus
Series, oil and wax on canvas, 198 x
183 cm. Image courtesy of the artist
and Hales London New York. Image
© The Artist.
Nick Bodimeade (b.1957) Gas
Truck, 2001. Oil on canvas. On loan
from the artist. Image courtesy of
The Artist © Nick Bodimeade.
Peter Doig (b.1959) Echo Lake,
1998. Oil paint on canvas. On
loan from Tate: Presented by the
Trustees in honour of Sir Dennis and
Lady Stevenson (after Lord and Lady
Stevenson of Coddenham) to mark
his period as chairman 1989-98,
1998. Image © Peter Doig. All rights
reserved, DACS 2016.
Susie Hamilton (b.1950) Blue
Petrol Station, 1996. Oil on board.
On loan from private collection.
Image courtesy of Towner Art
Gallery Eastbourne © Susie
Hamilton.
Gertrude Hermes (1901-1983)
Through the Windscreen, 1929.
Wood engraving, ink on paper.
Towner Collection, EASTG406.
Acquired 1949. Image courtesy
of Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
© Gertrude Hermes Estate.
Sidney Nolan (1917-1992) Convict
in a Billabong, 1960. Oil on canvas.
On loan from University of York.
Image © Sidney Nolan Estate/
Bridgeman Images.
Sarah Raphael (1960-2001)
Colony, 1988. Acrylic on paper.
On loan from a private collection.
© The Estate of the artist care of
Marlborough Fine Art. Image ©
courtesy of Marlborough Fine Art.
Emma Stibbon (b.1962) Rome,
Aqueduct, 2011. Woodcut on
Japanese paper. Image © The
Artist. Photographer: Stuart Bruce.
Amanda Vesey (b.1939) Night
Barn, 1997. Oil on canvas. On loan
from private collection. Image
© The Artist.
Room 4
Hurvin Anderson (b.1965) Untitled
06, from Nine Etching, 2004.
Etchings. On loan from Paragon
Press/Contemporary Editions Ltd.
Photograph Stephen White. ©
Hurvin Anderson and Paragon.
Julian Bell (b.1952) Hong Kong
Dave & the Constellations, 1997.
Oil on canvas. On loan from
The Artist. Image © Julian Bell,
courtesy of The Artist. Photographer
Leigh Simpson.
Nick Carrick (b.1979) Night Shift,
2015. Oil on linen. On loan from
the artist. Image © Nick Carrick,
courtesy of The Artist.
Patrick Caulfield (1936-2005)
Rideaux écartés du haut des
balcons des grèves (Curtains drawn
back from balconies of shores.
Laforgue), 1973. Screenprint, ink
on paper. On loan from Arts Council
Collection, Southbank Centre,
London. Image courtesy of Alan
Cristea Gallery. © The Estate of
Patrick Caulfield. All rights reserved,
DACS 2016.
Prunella Clough (1919-1999) False
Flower, 1993. Oil on canvas. On
loan from Tate: Presented by the
Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest
1996. Image © Tate London 2016
© Estate of Prunella Clough. All
Rights Reserved, DACS 2016.
Michael Craig-Martin (b.1941)
Ashtray, 2015. Screenprint on
paper. Edition of 40. On loan from
The Artist and Alan Cristea Gallery.
Image © The Artist, courtesy of
The Artist and Alan Cristea Gallery,
London.
Betsy Dadd (b.1985) Four AM,
2016. Monotype. On loan from
the artist. Image © The Artist.
James Fisher (b.1972) Night Finds
Me, 2008. Oil on canvas. On loan
from Eagle Gallery.
Ewan Gibbs (b.1973) New York,
2007-08. Linocut, ink on paper.
On loan from Timothy Taylor
Gallery, London.
Susie Hamilton (b.1950) Green
Dining Room, 2006. Acrylic on
canvas. On loan from the artist.
Tom Hammick (b.1963) Violetta
Alone, 2015. Oil on canvas.
On loan from Flowers Gallery.
Hiroshige (1797-1858) Evening Bell
and the Receipt of the Message,
1843-7. Woodcut print for fan, ink
on paper. On loan from Victoria
and Albert Museum. R. Leicester
Harmsworth gift.
Georgia Keeling (b.1989) North
Wood, 2016. Drypoint monoprint.
On loan from the artist.
L.S. Lowry (1887-1976) The Crowd,
1922. Oil on board. On loan from
a private collection care of Crane
Kalman Gallery Ltd.
Danny Markey (b.1965) TV Room
at Night, 2008. Oil on canvas. On
loan from and image courtesy of
The Redfern Gallery. Photo: Doug
Atfield. © The Artist.
Danny Markey (b.1965) Wedding
Store, Ramon Road, 2004, Oil on
board. On loan from and image
courtesy of The Redfern Gallery.
Photo: Doug Atfield. © The Artist.
Edvard Munch (1863-1944)
The Kiss, Fourth Version, 1902.
Woodcut, ink on paper. On loan
from Victoria and Albert Museum.
Image © Victoria and Albert
Museum, London.
Humphrey Ocean (b.1951) After
Dark, 2011. Woodcut, ink on paper.
Edition of 40. On loan from the
artist. Image © Humphrey Ocean.
All rights reserved, DACS 2016.
Humphrey Ocean (b.1951) House,
2007. Aquatint. On loan from Tom
Hammick. Image © Humphrey
Ocean. All rights reserved, DACS
2016.
George Shaw (b.1966) The Next Big
Thing, 2010. Enamel on board. On
loan from Arts Council Collection,
Southbank Centre, London. © The
Artist.
Helen Turner (b.1964) Glittershoe,
2005. Gloss and glitter on paper. On
loan from the artist. © Helen
Turner. Image courtesy of The Artist.
Photograph by Leigh Simpson.
Phoebe Unwin (b.1979) Cinema,
2010. Acrylic, graphite and
household paint on canvas.
Courtesy of a private lender and
Wilkinson Gallery. Photography
by FXP Photography, London. ©
The Artist, courtesy The Artist and
Wilkinson Gallery London.
Alice Walter (b.1992) Untitled,
2016. Oil on panel. On loan from the
artist. Image © The Artist, courtesy
of The Artist and Towner Art Gallery,
Eastbourne.
Rose Wylie (b.1934) Nicole Kidman
(Pink Frock), 2015. Watercolour and
collage on paper. On loan from the
artist and Union Gallery. Image ©
The Artist, courtesy of the artist and
Union Gallery. Photo: Soonhak Kwon.
Room 5
William Blake (1757-1827) I Want,
I Want, c.1793 to 1818. Etching,
engraving, black carbon ink on
paper, leather binding. On loan
from The Fitzwilliam Museum.
Image © The Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge.
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010)
Insomnia, 2000. Drypoint on cloth.
On loan from the Collection of The
Easton Foundation and used by
permission secured from Louise
Bourgeois studio in conjunction
with DACS. Photo: Christopher
Burke © The Easton Foundation.
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010)
Spirals, 2010. Gouache and pencil
on paper. On loan from Hauser &
Wirth and Cheim & Read. © The
Easton Foundation and used by
permission secured from Louise
Bourgeois studio in conjunction
with DACS. Photo: Christopher
Burke © The Easton Foundation.
Matthew Burrows (b.1971) Eclipse
I, 2015. Oil on board. On loan from
Vigo Gallery. Image © The Artist.
Photographer Jonathan Bassett.
Simon Burton (b.1973) Impossible
Memory, 2016. Oil on linen. On loan
from The Artist. Image © Simon
Burton, courtesy of The Artist.
Vija Celmins Night Sky, c.2006.
Screenprint. On loan from
private collection. Image © Vija
Celmins, courtesy of The Artist.
Towards Night | 31
Stephen Chambers (b.1960) This
is a Woman You Know Well, 19931995. Oil on canvas. On loan from
Arts Council Collection, Southbank
Centre, London.
Stephen Chambers (b.1960)
White Light, 2003. Etching with
chine collé. On loan from Flowers
Gallery. Image © Stephen Chambers
care of Flowers Gallery.
Eileen Cooper (b.1953) Night
Gardener, 1987. Charcoal on paper.
On loan from a private collection,
Sheffield. Image © Eileen Cooper.
Photography Todd White.
Andrew Cranston (b.1969)
Incubus, 2012. Oil and varnish
on board. On loan from David
Dimbleby. Image © The Artist,
courtesy, of The Artist and
David Dimbleby.
Peter Doig (b.1959), Daytime
Astronomy, from Grasshopper,
1996. Etching. On loan from
Paragon Press/Contemporary
Editions Ltd.
Peter Doig (b.1959) Night Fishing,
1996. Etching. On loan from
Paragon Press/Contemporary
Editions Ltd.
Will Gill (b.1968), Snow at Night,
2005. Acrylic, copper and wood
inlay on birch panel. On loan from a
private collection. Image © Will Gill.
Tom Hammick (b.1963) Passes
Between Us, 2016. Woodcut, ink on
paper. On loan from Tom Hammick.
Hiroshige (1797-1858) Bush
Warbler on a Plum Tree in
Moonlight, 1840-2. Woodcut print
for fan, ink on paper. On loan from
Christopher Le Brun
Aeneas Book IV, 2015
oil on canvas
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Webb Bequest. Image © Victoria
and Albert Museum, London.
Howard Hodgkin (b.1932) Black
as Egypt’s Night, 2005-2013. Oil on
wood, 48.9 x 56.5cm. On loan from
a private collection, London. Image
© Howard Hodgkin. Courtesy the
artist and Gagosian Gallery.
Andrzej Jackowski (b.1947)
Standing Train, 1998. Etching
with chine collé. On loan from
private collection. Image © Andrzej
Jackowski. Courtesy of Towner Art
Gallery, Eastbourne.
Andrzej Jackowski (b.1947) Study
23, 1999. Oil on canvas. On loan
from private collection. Image ©
Andrzej Jackowski. Courtesy of
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne.
Andrzej Jackowski (b.1947) Study
B. IV, 2000. Oil on canvas. On loan
from private collection. Image ©
Andrzej Jackowski. Courtesy of
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne.
Andrzej Jackowski (b.1947)
Surfacing, 1987. Oil on canvas.
On loan from private collection.
Image © Andrzej Jackowski.
Courtesy of Towner Art Gallery,
Eastbourne and Purdy Hicks
Gallery, London.
Merlin James (b.1960) Another
Pier at Night, 2008-09. Acrylic
on canvas. On loan from the artist.
Georgia Keeling (b.1989) Now
I May Wither, 2014. Etching, ink
on paper. On loan from private
collection. Image © Georgia Keeling.
Courtesy of Towner Art Gallery,
Eastbourne.
Christopher Le Brun (b.1951)
Aeneas Book IV, 2015. Oil on
canvas. On loan from the artist.
Image © The Artist. Photograph
Stephen White.
Sara Lee (b.1956) Ridge, 2012.
Japanese woodcut. On loan from
The Artist. Image courtesy of The
Artist. © Sara Lee.
Samuel Palmer Moonlight, a
Landscape with Sheep, c.1831-3.
Ink on card. On loan from Tate:
Purchased 1922. Image © Tate,
London. 2016.
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) The
Lonely Tower, 1879. Etching. On loan
from Victoria and Albert Museum.
Given by Mrs J. Merrick Head.
Edward Stott (1859-1918) Starlight
Landscape, undated. Oil on canvas.
Towner Collection EASTG2337,
Presented by Arthur and Helen
Grogan through the Art Fund.
Acquired 2009.
Amanda Vesey (b.1939) Night
Horse, undated. Oil on canvas.
On loan from private collection.
Alice Walter (b.1992) The Coveting
of Mrs Hullabaloo, 2016. Oil on
panel. On loan from the artist.
Mark Wright (b.1962) Afterglow,
2013. Oil on linen. On loan from
The Artist. Image © Mark Wright.
Courtesy of James Freeman Gallery.
Any uncited artists’ writings are
from personal correspondence
with Tom Hammick.