Press Release 2019

Jann Haworth: Close Up An exploration of the role of art in community, identity and protest 2 November 2019 – 23 February 2020 Press View: Friday 1 November 2019, 11am – 1pm

Jann Haworth and Liberty Blake, Work in Progress, 2016 – ongoing, Vinyl panels, Photography credit: Alex Johnstone © Courtesy of the artist

This autumn, Pallant House Gallery will be the community groups in America where first UK gallery to display American Pop artist participants created stencil portraits of women Jann Haworth (b.1942) and Liberty Blake’s selected from across history and areas of mural, Work in Progress. The 28ft mural is the influence. The resulting mural comprises of result of a collaborative community project seven vinyl panels featuring over 100 women that celebrates women who were catalysts for spanning over 3000 years, from the Egyptian change in the arts, sciences and social pharaoh Nefertiti and Queen Elizabeth I to 21st activism. Alongside the mural will be a display century icons including Ellen DeGeneres and of Haworth’s sculptural and wall-based works Malala Yousafzai. Over the last 2 years the mural dating from the 1960s to the present day. has travelled to 23 venues across Europe and throughout America. The mural celebrates the Work in Progress evolved from Haworth’s contributions that women have made to culture critical re-examination of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely and social change and raises the question of Hearts Club Band album cover that Haworth, in how these different lives and endeavours have collaboration with her then husband, Peter become unjustly marginalised or forgotten Blake, produced in 1967. Exploring the role of throughout history. art as instigating collaboration and change, Haworth and her daughter Liberty Blake (b. Alongside the mural will be a display of 1968) organised a series of workshops with Haworth’s wall-based and sculptural artworks,

brought together from public institutions and As part of the exhibition, Haworth will select significant private collections. Haworth’s early works from Pallant House Gallery’s collection. work directly challenged the conventional This selection celebrates female creativity and perception of both the form and appropriate ranges across both period and style with a subjects for sculpture - including the elderly, particular interest in the dialogue between the doughnuts, newspaper comic sections, charm figurative and the abstract. bracelets and cowboys - all cast in cloth. This subject matter was informed by her childhood ‘Jann Haworth: Close Up’ will coincide with the experiences of growing up in as a exhibition ‘Radical Women: and daughter of a film production designer. her Contemporaries’ celebrating the role of Spending time on sets and filming sessions, women artists in avant-garde British art Haworth met Hollywood ‘stars’ including Marlon movements in the early 20th century. Brando and Marilyn Monroe and was inspired by the creativity that happened ‘behind-the-scenes’ --End-- from special effects to prop and costumes. Creating life-size and large-scale works, Notes to editors: Haworth engages the viewer in a dialogue with her work. Since her student days at the Slade, For all press enquiries please contact: Haworth’s aim has been to make art that speaks Sarah St. Amand, Rees & Co – to the broadest of audiences. +44 (0)20 3137 8776 / [email protected]

The exhibition will feature key works including The press view will take place Cowboy (1964), part of Pallant House Gallery’s Friday 1 November 2019, 11am – 1pm. Please collection of British , and Old Lady II rsvp to [email protected]. (1967) which are part of a range of soft sculpture works Haworth created in the 1960s. About Pallant House Gallery: She recalls: Pallant House Gallery in is a leading UK museum that stimulates new ways of thinking “What thrilled me about cloth was that in the about British art from 1900 to now. As well as face of the air of male superiority at the Slade- I an original and critically-acclaimed exhibition knew a whole language of expression that my programme and a public programme with male colleagues had no inkling of. I knew the inclusion at its heart, the gallery houses one of language of cloth inside out. I knew how to turn the best collections of Modern British art in the two-dimensional flat fabric into any shape that I country. This includes a significant collection of needed to create a 3-D object/figure/concept. I British Pop art by artists including Peter Blake, knew this opened the door to a vast territory of Patrick Caulfield, Richard Hamilton, RB Kitaj, expression.” and Colin Self - all within a distinctive setting of an 18th century townhouse Haworth became a leading figure in the British and a 21st century gallery. Pop Art movement and was represented by the ground-breaking Robert Fraser Gallery, holding Opening Hours her first solo exhibition in 1966. In the late Tuesday – Saturday: 10am – 5pm (excl. 1990s Haworth moved to , where she has Thursday: 10am – 8pm) developed works that explore irreverent Sundays/Bank Holidays: 11am – 5pm materials and artistic practices, including Mondays: Closed cardboard, patchwork wall pieces and large- scale urban mural projects. The exhibition will be on view 2 November 2019 – 23 February 2020.