Exhibitions

An-My Lê

Born in Vietnam in 1960, Vietnamese-American artist An-My Lê’s adolescence was marked by conflict. In Saigon, she grew up experiencing nightly mortar attacks and the daily presence of American soldiers. In 1975, the final year of the war, she and her family were among those airlifted to safety and they finally settled in the United States as political refugees. An-My Lê graduated in biology from Stanford, before turning to photography, which she studied at Yale University. The recipient of many awards, including the prestigious MacArthur Genius Award (2012), she is widely recognised as one of the most significant photographers working in the world today. This exhibition surveys four major series: peaceful scenes evocative of conflict, in Viêt Nam, (1994–1998); fictional scenes staged by hobbyist war re-enactors in Small Wars, (1999-2002); a film showing the American military training for the Iraq war in 29 Palms, (2003-2004); and the most comprehensive showing yet of Events Ashore (2005-2014), a magnum opus, ten years in the making, which depicts the US navy on missions across the globe. Also shown for the first time are drawings by An-My Lê inspired by images and texts engraved on replicas of zippo lighters owned by American troops in Vietnam. Lê has consistently explored the myth and memory of war through photography and film. While her personal experience of conflict has shaped both her life and her artistic subject matter, Lê’s work transcends that personal story. She avoids simple representations and simple judgements about the US military machine, and, like many great photographers maintains a certain distance from her subject in order to create nuanced pictures. ‘My goal has been to... address issues of power and fragility. My intention is not to dictate a message. It is a call for perspective, not a call to action.’ The exhibition has been programmed to coincide with the centenary of the First World War, and will subsequently be presented at the Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Sweden (20 February – 17 May 2015). An-My Lê's work will be included in Tate Modern’s group exhibition Conflict, Time, Photography (26 November 2014 – 15 March 2014).

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How to Construct a Time Machine

This January MK Gallery presents How to Construct a Time Machine, an exhibition of over twenty-five historical and contemporary works that explore how artists play with media in innovative ways to transform our experience of time. What is time? How do we order the past, the present, and the future? Why are artists interested in time? How is art a machine, vehicle, or device for exploring time? How is art a means by which time ‘travels’, and how does art permit us to travel in time? Consideration of these and other questions has provided the exhibition rationale for guest curator, Dr Marquard Smith, Head of Doctoral Studies/Research Leader in the School of Humanities at the Royal College of Art, London. The show’s title is taken from an 1899 text by the avant-garde French writer, Alfred Jarry, written in direct response to H. G. Wells’ science fiction novel The Time Machine (1895). Wells invented and popularised a distinctively modern, fictional concept of time travel, with the time machine as a vehicle that could be operated ‘selectively’. Jarry’s response crafted a pseudo-scientific fiction that presents the time machine and time travel as an instance of ‘the science of imaginary solutions’. Taking this idea of the time machine, time travel, and perhaps even time itself as an instance of ‘the science of imaginary solutions’, the exhibition is divided thematically across the galleries and includes works by John Cage, Martin John Callanan, Jim Campbell, Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher, Mat Collishaw, Ruth Ewan, Tehching Hsieh, On Kawara, the Lumière Brothers, Chris Marker, Kris Martin, Georges Méliès, Manfred Mohr, Melvin Moti, Nam June Paik, Katie Paterson, Elizabeth Price, Sun Ra, Raqs Media Collective, Meekyoung Shin, Maja Smrekar, The Otolith Group, Thomson & Craighead, Mark Wallinger and Catherine Yass. Film work ranges from George Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902), an iconic silent movie which follows a group of astronomers as they explore the moon, to Thomson & Craighead’s The Time Machine in alphabetical order (2010), a complete rendition of the 1960s film version of the Wells’ novella re-edited into alphabetical order. Sculptural work includes Mark Wallinger’s Time and Relative Dimensions in Space (2001), a polished stainless steel version of Dr Who’s ‘Tardis’ police box that simultaneously disappears into the space-time continuum and reflects its own surroundings, and Ruth Ewan’s We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted to Be (2012), a decimal clock which divides the day into ten (rather than twenty-four) periods, echoing a bold 18th century French Republican attempt to redefine and rationalise the day. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, designed by Herman Lelie, featuring an extended Introduction by the exhibition’s curator and a translation of Jarry’s How to Construct a Time Machine, together with essays by Dutch cultural theorist and video artist Mieke Bal and radical philosopher Peter Osborne. The exhibition will be supported by a range of related events including tours by the curator and artists, seminars, academic conferences, and film screenings.

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Ellen Altfest

This spring MK Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery of paintings by Ellen Altfest (born New York City, 1970). The exhibition will include early paintings of rocks and trees in the landscape, paintings of plants and gourds in the studio, and works from a series of male nude studies that Altfest first began in 2006. Altfest’s work calls to mind the precise naturalism of early Lucian Freud, and finds affinities in others who painted from life such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Stanley Spencer, but she has developed her own distinct approach to figurative and representational painting since graduating with an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1997. In Milton Keynes, Altfest will be showing almost twenty oil paintings from 1998 to the present, including three new works. Altfest’s small-scale oil-paintings are painstakingly executed and drawn from life and realised over a long period of time. Compositionally, images are tightly cropped and framed. Folds of skin, tufts of hair and surfaces of bark are deeply scrutinized and rendered in exquisite, almost excessive, detail so that the subjects can appear both familiar and unfamiliar. But, as observed by American art historian and poet Barry Schwabsky, Altfest’s work is perhaps best considered as being ‘image-based’, rather than representational in the sense of the Western art tradition that developed from the Renaissance. Altfest titles all her works with a blunt descriptiveness: Gourds, Armpit, Two Logs, Green Plant, Penis, The Hand, and Torso, for example. When painting the human body, Altfest frequently represents hirsute male models. In their immensely topographic detail, these images oscillate between desire and detachment. In Penis (2006), every strand of the model’s hair and folds of the scrotum are depicted with the same immeasurable care as each tangled stem or stalk of an uprooted tumbleweed. Altfest has commented that ‘The paintings of men seem to have an inverse relationship to still life, with the men becoming less like human subjects and more like still life objects.’ The exhibition will be accompanied by a range of related events, including an opportunity to hear the artist In Conversation, and a publication containing texts by Ellen Altfest, Barry Schwabsky, Linda Nochlin and Morgan Falconer amongst others.

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MK Calling 2015

This summer MK Gallery presents the work of almost 70 artists, musicians and performers from Milton Keynes in MK Calling 2015. This exciting show selected from an Open Call for submissions, is designed to explore the breadth of creativity in or inspired by Milton Keynes. The event builds on the hugely popular MK Calling exhibition in the summer of 2013, with approximately a third of the exhibitors making a welcome return. This year is characterised by a higher proportion of artists than performers, and work by talented amateurs will sit alongside that of recent graduates through to established practitioners. The selected work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, film, sound, photography, poetry, music and performance, which will be presented in broad thematic groupings, such as figures, landscape and geometry/abstraction. This year’s exhibition marks the end of the Gallery building in its current form, before work begins on the Gallery’s expansion. The ambitious new Gallery will open in 2017 as part of the celebrations for MK50 - the city’s fiftieth anniversary year. Speaking about the exhibition, MK Gallery’s Director Anthony Spira, said: “MK Calling 2015 provides a great opportunity for artists and audiences in Milton Keynes to meet, share ideas, and participate in workshops, training and mentoring. This project celebrates the end of the first phase of the Gallery’s history and launches our exciting expansion.”

MK Calling 2015 Participants

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MK Calling 2017

This spring, MK Gallery showcases new and exciting work by over 70 emerging and established artists in MK Calling 2017. This exhibition is designed to celebrate the breadth of creativity around Milton Keynes and will include a wide range of art forms alongside a dynamic programme of events and participatory sessions. Building on the highly popular MK Calling exhibitions in the summer of 2013 and 2015, this year’s show will see artists utilise and transform unusual spaces within the Gallery. Provocative, humorous, sensitive and brash, the exhibition includes artists of all backgrounds; all of whom have a connection to the city, either through locality or their practice. Diverse themes and subjects will be explored through painting, drawing, sculpture, video, installation and much more. Many of the artists have chosen to respond directly to MK Gallery and its expansion plans and will present site-specific work that looks at architecture and the fabric of the building in its current form. Over the last few months, the Gallery has been examined by architects and builders through digging, drilling and other physical interventions to test the foundations, structure and services in anticipation of our major expansion. For this exhibition, the basic access and health and safety have been temporarily restored to enable the building to be opened up for one last time before construction begins. With the exhibition designed to make the most of the makeshift quality of the building, artists and visitors will have exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the entire ground floor, including the old workshop, loading bay, shop and other improvised areas. Speaking about the exhibition, MK Gallery’s Director Anthony Spira, said: “We’re delighted to celebrate both the 50th anniversary of Milton Keynes and this exciting chapter in the Gallery’s development by bringing together the diverse creative community for MK Calling 2017 and offering opportunities for all those with a connection to the city to meet, share ideas, network and participate in mentoring and workshops.”

MK Calling 2017 Participants

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Vivian Maier: Anthology

10am – 5pm

The exhibition at MK Gallery features over 140 black and white and colour photographs, as well as film and audio which reveal the breadth of Maier’s work and her fascination for observing and recording everyday life.

Exhibition events

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The Lie of the Land

Through a playful and provocative display The Lie of the Land charts how British landscape was radically transformed by changes in free time and leisure activities since hunting and shooting, the recreations of the aristocracy, were enjoyed on the rolling hills of their private estates. In part, tracing a line between Capability Brown’s aristocratic gardens at Stowe and the social, urban experiment at neighbouring Milton Keynes, the exhibition teases out the aspirations that underpin our built environments. The Lie of the Land examines the modernisation of leisure propelled by industrialisation, a theme developed from Canaletto’s painting of the fashionable public entertainment venue, Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The Victorian era, with its social reforms aiming to improve urban living conditions, is represented by the Parks Movement. Alongside works by early science fiction writer Jane Loudon and the founder of the Garden City Movement Ebenezer Howard, the exhibition also includes the first-ever lawnmower, John Ruskin’s rock collection and influential horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll’s gardening boots. From the late-18th century, large-scale public spectacles became hugely popular as a result of technical advances. Hot air ballooning, horse racing and concerts heralded the commodification of leisure. By contrast, grassroots-initiated activity such as raves, carnivals and urban sports are traced in the work of, for example, Jeremy Deller and Errol Lloyd and use of public spaces for protest are explored, including the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp occupation. As the 20th century progressed, in Milton Keynes, chief architect Derek Walker proposed a city greener than the surrounding countryside where cars, electronic communication and nature reinvented the idea of the town-country for the 1970s. Radical urban theory was to be combined with the LA lifestyle and the thrill of pop culture – also reflected in the art of Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi. The Lie of the Land highlights campaigns to democratise space, from the 17th century egalitarian Levellers to the 1930s Ramblers. We look at how people use public space, and the communities that have been excluded through structures of race, gender, disability and class, explored in works by artists including Jo Spence, Rose Finn-Kelcey and Ingrid Pollard. Overall, the exhibition aims to capture a visionary spirit of grand designs tempered by the realities of political expediency. Public resources are under increasing pressure and ‘placemaking’ and ‘regeneration’ remain central to urban development. The Lie of the Land looks reflexively at the role of culture in this process, drawing inspiration and seeking lessons from the past. Artists and designers: Edward Alcock, David Alesworth, Archigram, Edwin Beard Budding, John Berger, James Boswell, Boyd & Evans, Charles and Sarah Bridgeman, Thalia Campbell, Canaletto, Philip Castle, Ithell Colquhoun, John Csaky, Caroline Devine*, Jeremy Deller, Sarah Ann Drake, Malcolm Drummond, Susanna Duncombe, Rose English, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Elisabeth Frink, William Powell Frith, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Gainsborough, Walter Goodall, Walter Greaves, Richard Hamilton, Emma Hart, Ebenezer Howard, Julius Caesar Ibbetson, Helmut Jacoby, Bob Jardine, Gertrude Jekyll, Gareth Jones, Michael Kirkham, Laura Knight, Mabel Francis Layng, Ann Lee, Lawrence Lek, Peter Dunn and Loraine Leeson, Linder, Errol Lloyd, Jane Loudon, John Loudon, Laurence Stephen Lowry,  Edwin Lutyens, Andrew Mahaddie, Mark Leckey and Martin McGeown, Robert Medley, Brian Milne, Henry Moore, Marlow Moss, Joseph Nash, Paul Nash, Balthazar Nebot, Nils Norman, Marianne North, Eduardo Paolozzi, Joseph Paxton, Olivia Plender, Ingrid Pollard, Joan Littlewood and Cedric Price, Project Art Works, Jacques Rigaud, Bridget Riley, John Robertson Reid, William Patrick Roberts, John Ruskin, Benton Seeley, Yinka Shonibare CBE, David Shrigley, Alison and Peter Smithson, Jo Spence, Thomas Struth, Superstudio, James Tissot, James Walker Tucker, Joseph Mallord William Turner, John A. Walker, Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, Ed Webb-Ingall, Carel Weight, Stuart Whipps, Rachel Whiteread, Althea Willoughby, Audrey Weber, Stephen Willats, Harold Williamson, John Wootton, James Wyld, John Yeadon Curatorial team: Fay Blanchard, Tom Emerson, Niall Hobhouse, Sam Jacob, Gareth Jones, Anthony Spira, and Claire Louise Staunton.

This exhibition was made possible with support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and a Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Research Grant from Art Fund.

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Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance

Showing works spanning her entire career since the 1960s, this is the first major retrospective of Rego’s work in England for over 20 years. The exhibition includes previously unseen paintings and works on paper from the artist’s family and close friends, which reflect Rego’s perspective as a woman immersed in urgent social issues and current affairs. The selection of works focuses on the moral challenges to humanity, particularly in the face of violence, gender discrimination and political tyranny. There are paintings and etchings related to children sold into slavery in North Africa (1996-98), abortion (1998-2000) and female genital mutilation (from 2009). Many of the images begin with the artist’s Portuguese roots and childhood experiences or respond to current affairs. This exhibition addresses challenging subjects. Parental and carer discretion may be required. MK Gallery will be the only venue in England for the exhibition which will subsequently travel to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh and to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin where it will be the first ever retrospective of Rego’s work in Scotland and Ireland.

An exhibition organised with the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. This exhibition has been made possible as a result of the Government Indemnity Scheme. MK Gallery would like to thank HM Government for providing Government Indemnity and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity.

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George Stubbs: ‘all done from Nature’

George Stubbs: ‘all done from Nature’ presents the first significant overview of this renowned eighteenth century artist-scientist in Britain for more than 30 years. The exhibition brings together 80 paintings, drawings and publications from the National Gallery’s life-size portrait of the stallion Whistlejacket to pieces never previously seen in public. Alongside his celebrated paintings of horses are some of the first credible paintings of ‘exotic’ animals in Western art, including a rhinoceros, moose, cheetahs and many others. In order to understand the natural world, Stubbs taught himself anatomy and produced forensic drawings of humans and animals at different stages of dissection. These are presented in the exhibition alongside the finished paintings, and the skeleton of the greatest ever racehorse, Eclipse. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication that includes new writings and extensive catalogue entries. A version of the show will tour to the Mauritshuis in The Hague where it will be the first-ever exhibition on the artist in the Netherlands.

We would like to extend our thanks and appreciation to the George Stubbs: 'all done from Nature' Circle of Friends, including David and Jennifer Adams, George and Kirsty Anson, The British Sporting Art Trust, Robert and Felicity Waley-Cohen, Charles and Jane Whitbread and those who wish to remain anonymous. The exhibition has been funded through a grant from the Weston Loan Programme - a scheme created by the Garfield Weston Foundation and Art Fund to directly fund and empower regional and smaller local authority museums to borrow major works or collections of art from the UK’s national museums and galleries.

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MK Calling 2020

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Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning

Curated by Gilane Tawadros, with the artist "A chilling, revelatory show" ★★★★ Florence Hallett, the i "Subtly and without neat punchlines, this exhibition slowly drags into view an embedded history of the African people who came to Britain" ★★★★ Hettie Judah, The Guardian Ingrid Pollard (born Georgetown, Guyana) is one of the leading figures in contemporary British art. This first major survey of her 40-year career includes delicately hand-tinted landscape photographs, a flotilla of small ceramic boats and a cast of protagonists that includes boxers, musicians, tango dancers and writers. The exhibition also includes two new works – a film that meditates on the human body as it moves through space and time, and a triptych of monumental, dynamic sculptures that reference our shared history of power relations and resurgence. Pollard is renowned for using portrait and landscape photography to question our relationship with the natural world and to interrogate social constructs such as Britishness, race, sexuality and identity. Working across a variety of techniques from photography, printmaking, drawing and installation to artists’ books, video and audio, she combines meticulous research and experimental processes to make art that is at once deeply personal and socially resonant. This exhibition is supported by Freelands Foundation and the Freelands Award 2020. Pollard’s work is held in public collections including Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum. She lives and works in Northumberland, UK. Ingrid Pollard is one of four artists shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2022. Winner of the Freelands Award 2020. Exhibition supported by the Freelands Foundation, and a Publications Grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Association for Art History. An Exhibition Organised by MK Gallery in partnership with Turner Contemporary.

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Memphis: Plastic Field

‘With their boldness, bright colours and cartoon demeanour, Memphis provided the board and pieces to play the game of life…’ Financial Times '... a luscious feast of eye-searing colours, polished synthetic surfaces and clashing patterns, executed with brash, swaggering brilliance...' The Guardian Memphis: Plastic Field explores the subversive and irreverent spirit of the Memphis Group, bringing together over 150 of the design collective’s most significant objects whose bold and playful look pushed boundaries and sparked a new era in International design. Their furniture was colourful, kitsch and geometric, drawing on Pop Art, Bauhaus and Art Deco to create an entirely new aesthetic full of punch and vitality. The sensory quality of the object was prioritised over function. Materials like plastic laminate and Terrazzo, previously used in kitchens and bathrooms, were suddenly incorporated into high-end furniture, and monochrome patterns of graphic shapes and squiggly lines paired with vivid yellow became an instant Memphis trademark. Founded by Italian designer and architect Ettore Sottsass, Memphis brought together an international collective of young designers united in their desire to inject humour into the design world and shatter the codes of the 20th century. When the group debuted its first collection at Milan’s Salone del Mobile in 1981 it caused a sensation, breaking the rules of streamlined modernism and challenging notions of functionality and good taste. Memphis changed the course of design, fashion, architecture, music and film. Founding Memphis member Martine Bedin wrote: “The same obsession always; can we imagine a new world by drawing another chair, another table, another light, another vase.” Following this call to action to ‘imagine a new world’, the Memphis group invites us to reconsider, reinvent, and rebuild a new visual language for the future. The exhibition at MK Gallery will feature the iconic designs created by the Memphis Group between 1981 – 1988, including work by important contributors such as Shiro Kuramata, Michele De Lucchi, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Martine Bedin, George Sowden, Michael Graves, Javier Mariscal, Marco Zanini, Aldo Cibic and Peter Shire. 'Memphis: Plastic Field' at MK Gallery is a reinterpretation of the exhibition shown at the The Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Bordeaux 21 June 2019 to 05 January 2020 and Fondazione Berengo – Palazzo Franchetti, Venice 24 May to 25 November 2018. The exhibition is produced in partnership with Memphis srl, Milano with exhibition design by IB Studio, Milan (Architects Isabella Invernizzi & Beatrice Bonzanigo). With thanks to the Memphis Exhibition Circle including Oscar Humphries and those who wish to remain anonymous.

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