The Beautiful South: The best exhibitions to see in the South East of England in 2016

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

The best exhibitions to see in the South East in 2016 - updated throughout the yearOxfordshire

The big new spring show at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum is Andy Warhol: Works from the Hall Art Foundation (February 4 – May 15 2016) which presents, for the first time in public, an important private collection of artworks by the pop art pioneer who died in 1987.

Warhol exhibitions are fast becoming like Turner and Pre-Raphaelite shows in English museums and galleries - such is their ubiquity - but this show promises to reveal the artist’s lesser known works whilst also spanning his entire output - from iconic 60s pop pieces to the experimental works of his last decade.

There’s also an intriguing installation in the pipeline with Elizabeth Price: A Restoration (February 4 – April 10) in which the Turner Prize winner responds to the Pitt Rivers and Ashmolean Museum collections with a twenty minute, two screen video that “figuratively reconstructs” the Knossos Labyrinth within the museum’s computer server, to create “a virtual chamber” through which museum objects “digitally flow, clatter and cascade”. (Talulah) gosh.

Summer brings a haul of archaeological treasures from the seabeds of the Mediterranean in Storms, War and Shipwrecks: Treasures from the Sicilian Seas (June 21 - September 25).

Among the pearls of the Ancient world recovered from the ocean floor is an example of a Byzantine ‘flatpack’ church sent out across the seas by the Emperor Justinian (c. 482–565), in an effort to fortify and regulate Christianity across his empire.

The autumn show is Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural (October 20 2016 - January 15 2017) featuring over 100 spectacular objects including dream-books, talismanic charts and amulets from Morocco to China.  

It’s going to be an interesting year at the city’s temple de art-moderne, Modern Art Oxford, where they are celebrating 50 years in the business with a year-long programme of interlinked exhibitions under the moniker of KALEIDOSCOPE.

First up is The Indivisible Present (February 6 – March 20) featuring works that are old and new to the gallery by the likes of Douglas Gordon (24 Hour Psycho), Yoko Ono (Eye-Blink) and Elizabeth Price (Sleep) alongside new pieces by Pierre Huyghe, John Latham, Dog Kennel Hill Project and Viola Yeşiltaç.

Heading into the cloisters, quadrants and dreaming spires, the Christchurch Picture Gallery has Printing Ideas and Ideas for Printing: Select examples of Venetian printing culture (until February 15) and A View of Venice (until February 8) which shows a rare, unknown panorama of Venice from the late 16th century.

All of which makes for a nice entrée into Filippino Lippi and Drawing in 15th century Florence (March 3 – June 6) which includes the gallery’s very own Filippino Lippi painting The Wounded Centaur (one of their collection highlights) which has an intriguing unfinished drawing of the Triumph of Love (?) hidden on its reverse that will be visible to the public for the first time.

At the North Wall Arts Centre, Shapes and Meanings: A Retrospective - Hugo Powell (April 27 – May 21) celebrates the life and work of the English sculptor who died in 2014 aged 94 by bringing together work from his whole career for the first time, from early abstractions in wood, through to his magnificent bronze, Dancing Phoenix.

Buckinghamshire

Over the border from Ox into Bucks, the MKG in Milton Keynes, continues its major gallery redevelopment, but a series of small archival exhibitions online and in MK Gallery’s Project Space called Flashback (until March 31 2017) keeps the flames alive by looking back at some of the gallery’s major exhibitions whilst the main building is being expanded.

The Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury has PHOTOGRAPHY! The work of the British Institute of Professional Photography (January 16 – March 5) offering the chance to see stunning and exciting contemporary images including portraits, landscapes, architecture, advertising and fine art.

Spring brings The Art of Islam (March 26 — September 24) with treasures including carpets, paintings, furniture, metalwork, jewellery and calligraphy from across the Near East, Pakistan and Muslim India whilst Roald Dahl’s Bucks (July 2 2016 – January 7 2017) charts the influence of the county on the great children’s author.

Berkshire

Reading Museum's A Sense of Place (until May 8) features the best of the gallery's twentieth century landscape paintings including works by Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash, Joan Eardley and David Bomberg, as well as a chance to see the huge Reading Tapestries by John Piper.

While you're there check out the charming sketchbook drawings of Jenny Halstead who was artist in residence for the final year of the recent archaeologial excavations at the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum. Silchester: Life on the Dig (until February 7) also includes the artefacts from Calleva excavated by Victorians in the museum’s Silchester Annexe.
 
At Windsor Castle they are getting in on the Shakespeare400 celebrations –  marking the death of the Bard – with Shakespeare in the Royal Library (February 13 2016 — January 1 2017) an exhibition of paintings, documents and artefacts examining his life, work and connection to the Royal court.

Kent

From Bucks we hop down to Kent where the wonderful gem that is Mascalls Gallery in Paddock Wood opens the year with Alice Pattullo: A-Z of Animals (January 9 – February 20). A young illustrator whose work is firmly anchored in the best traditions of twentieth century practice and design, Pattullo's illustrations and limited edition prints are both nostalgic and vibrantly aesthetic.

Not so far away, Tunbridge Wells Museum has Wycinanki: The Art of Polish Papercuts (January 15 – April 17) which brings together examples of the Polish folk art Wycinanki, from the collections of the Horniman Museum and Gardens – including work by renowned artists such as Apolonia Nowak from the Kurpie region and Helena Miazek from Lowicz.

And if Star Wars fever has gripped you, then head to The Beaney in Canterbury for May The Toys Be With You (until March 6) a celebration of the now highly collectable vintage toy line and the iconic design work and art of the Star Wars movies.

Down on the coast in Margate the seaside town's shining beacon of art, Turner Contemporary, begins the year by welcoming the great narrative (and seemingly naïve) canvasses of highly rated Kent-based painter Rose Wylie (January 17 – March 31) for a major exhibition.

In February, Joachim Koester: The Other Side of the Sky (February 4 - May 8) brings a selection of the Danish artist’s atmospheric films, installations and photography to the first floor gallery spaces.

Inspired by his research into JMW Turner, Koester’s eponymous film The Other Side of the Sky (2015) explores Turner’s depiction and experience of storms via the analogy of psychedelic trips.

Summer will have visitors Seeing Round Corners (May 21 — September 25 2016) which is the first UK exhibition to explore how artists have responded to the phenomenon of the circle, the disc or the sphere. With the focus on 20th century artists, the show features works by Barry Flanagan, Anish Kapoor, Barbara Hepworth, Paul Nash, David Batchelor, Richard Long and Ben Nicholson, among many others.

Autumn brings Turner and Colour (October 8 – January 8), which promises the fullest survey of the artist’s watercolours of Margate yet to be shown at the gallery - among more than 70 works in both oil and watercolour.

Sussex by the Sea

In Sussex we start in the East at Jerwood Gallery in Hastings where the wonderfully titled John Bratby: Everything but the Kitchen Sink including the Kitchen Sink (January 30 — April 17) is a publicly sourced but carefully curated show of paintings celebrating the talents of the man who put everything into his art

A short drive down the coast, Bexhill's De La Warr Pavilion hosts the meditative, place-inspired sculptures of London-based Brazilian artist, Tonico Lemos Auad (January 30 – April 10) who has developed a fitting new series of garden and seaside-inspired works for the Modernist venue.

And there’s more locally inspired art in the work of Steve Farrer: New Work for Bexhill (January 30 – March 13), a filmwork shot at the De La Warr Pavilion’s auditorium. The principle sequence is based on a mesmerizing dream-like scene, The Kingdom of the Shades, inspired by the French choreographer Marius Petipa’s La Bayadère, which was first performed in 1877.

At Towner Eastbourne, Art from Elsewhere (January 23 – April 3) is the Hayward Touring exhibition focusing on socially engaged art practices in a global context via the work of 50 works by 26 internationally celebrated artists. A variety of media will be on display by the likes of Mohamed Bourouissa, Omer Fast, Jenny Holzer, Imran Qureshi and Józef Robakowski as well as famed conceptualists Ana Mendieta, Robert Smithson and Nancy Spero.

Recording Britain (February 6 – May 2) then offers another welcome chance to see the results of the Sir Kenneth Clark-commissioned scheme during World War Two to paint the “places and buildings of characteristic national interest”.

Featuring works by John Piper, Kenneth Rowntree and Barbara Jones, along with a number of lesser-known contributors, the exhibition also includes the contemporary artworks of Conrad Atkinson, Richard Long, David Nash and Laura Oldfield Ford.

In Brighton, where the sad, rusting skeleton on the town’s West Pier can still be seen offshore there’s a chance to catch Simon Roberts' photographic love letter to the English seaside pier in Pierdom (until February 21) before spring brings Fashion Cities Africa (April 30 – January 8), an intriguing and colourful exploration of the contemporary fashions currently gripping Casablanca in Morocco, Lagos in Nigeria, Nairobi in Kenya and Johannesburg in South Africa.

And if you’re in Brighton this spring seek out Fabrica whose Ron Haselden: Luminary (April – May 2016) is a spectacular new sculptural work comprising twelve, ten-metre high ‘light’ drawings of older people spilling out of the gallery and into the streets of the seaside city.

Heading north into the Sussex Downs to the beautiful Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, The Animals of David Jones and Mark Hearld’s Wunderkammer continue until March 6 before spring brings Edward Johnston: A centenary of the Underground typeface; Signs of Ditchling: A tradition of lettering from 1800 to the present day and The Village of Type: A public programme of contemporary lettering across Ditchling (dates TBC).

The last essential stop in Sussex is of course Pallant House Gallery in Chichester where the winter exhibition programme continues with David Jones:  Vision and Memory (until February 21) and Evelyn Dunbar: The Lost Works (until February 14).

Spring then ushers in a strong programme of exhibitions beginning with a wonderful insight into the multifaceted world of John Piper.

John Piper: The Fabric of Modernism (March 12 – June 12) is the first major exhibition to explore Piper’s textile designs and explores key motifs in the artist’s work such as historic architecture, abstract and religious imagery with fabrics displayed alongside key paintings and drawings.

The major summer show is a comprehensive overview of the English painter Christopher Wood (July 2 – October 2) featuring over 80 works celebrating the magnitude of his achievement during the ten years before his untimely death in 1930, aged just 29.

Paintings, set designs and drawings created on both sides of the channel, are featured in the show which also explores Wood's immense personal struggles with opium, depression and the conflict between the reserved sensibility of his English heritage and the hedonism of the Parisian avant-garde.

The autumn exhibition Classicism in Modern British Art (October 22 2016 – February 19 2017) is the first major exhibition to explore how Modern British artists were drawn to the antique, and explores how they developed a distinctive form of modern art that referenced the past, whilst also reflecting social and artistic concerns of the 20th century.

Surrey

At The Lightbox in Woking they continue to display the Ingram Collection of Modern Art in The Ingram Collection: Not all Contemporary Art is Rubbish! (February 2 – April 10). Featuring some of Chris Ingram’s most recent acquisitions from up-and-coming artists, either fresh from University or made at the beginning of their art-making careers, the show includes works by artists such as Haroon Mirza, Suki Chan, Emma Vidal, Liseth Amaya, Miroslav Pomichal and Mark McWilliams.

Next up is Heath Robinson - Saved for the Nation (February 6 — March 13) which celebrates the acquisition by the William Heath Robinson Trust of over 400 works by Heath Robinson with a cross-section of his wonderful cartoons from the inter-war years.

The gallery completes a trio of top exhibitions with John Constable: Observing the Weather (February 13 — May 8) providing an in-depth examination of Constable’s fascination with weather and its ability to change a landscape – both in mood and physical appearance.

On show are works that range in medium from pen and ink studies to watercolour and oil sketches meant for his own personal use, to finished pieces meant for display.

Autumn brings Quentin Blake: Inside Stories (October 10 – January 17) which promises a unique insight into the origins of some of Blake’s most characteristic and popular creations. From Roald Dahl's ‘The Twits’ and ‘Danny the Champion of the World’ to his own ‘Clown’, and ‘The Boy in The Dress’ by David Walliams.

At Watts Gallery near Guildford there’s still time to catch Brothers in Art: Drawings by Watts and Leighton (until February 19) before the spring brings a trio of intriguing exhibitions and displays including Watts Landscapes (March 1 – June 5) which offers “an intimate view” of Watts’ landscape paintings which range from studies of Egypt, to the heart of the Surrey Hills and the peaks of the Alps.

Poetry in Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelite Art of Marie Spartali Stillman (March 1 – June 5) brings together 20 landscapes, portraits, subject paintings and photographs by one of the most admired women artists of the 19th century who was also an integral part of the Pre-Raphaelite circle of Burne-Jones and Rossetti.

Summer at Watts Gallery ushers in Close Up & Personal: Victorians & their Photography (June 14 - November 6) which explores some of the ways early photography was enjoyed by a society obsessed with the new technology.

Hampshire

At the ever exploratory John Hansard Gallery you can catch Aura Satz’ sound installation The Trembling Line (until January 23) before Barthes/Burgin (February 13 - April 16) places the little-known drawings of Roland Barthes within a new projection works by self-confessed Barthes obsessive Victor Burgin.

The University of Southampton-based gallery will be upping sticks later in the year to a new city centre location in Guildhall Square – watch this space.

At Southampton City Art Gallery there’s still time to catch the hyper-real paintings of Ben Johnson (until January 23) and Stencilism: A Cut Above (also until January 23) featuring emerging and established artists from the world of street art.

Jane Joseph: Seeing the Space (until March 28) features a selection of artworks by the printmaker and draughtsman of Scottish harbours and London rivers as well as his linocuts. Alongside, Joseph has selected a series of drawings from the collection by the likes of Frank Auerbach, Dennis Creffield and Stanley Spencer. 

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/places-to-go/art543487-the-beautiful-south-the-best-exhibitions-to-see-in-the-south-east-of-england-in-2016