Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely: Myths & Machines @ Hauser & Wirth Somerset

Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely

Myths & Machines

Hauser & Wirth Somerset

17 May 2025 – 1 February 2026

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely 

in front of their home and studio ‘Auberge du Cheval Blanc,’ 

Essonne region, 3 March 1967

Harry Shunk and Shunk-Kender Photographs

Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20) 

Gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in Memory 

of Harry Shunk and Janos Kender 

@ J. Paul Getty Trust

Courtesy Niki Charitable Art Foundation and Hauser & Wirth 

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely

Nana dansant (Nana mobile), 1976

Painted polyester, iron stand with electric motor

by Jean Tinguely

43.5 x 20 x 14 cm / 17 1/8 x 7 7/8 x 5 1/2 in

© 2025 NIKI CHARITABLE ART FOUNDATION

All rights reserved

Courtesy Niki Charitable Art Foundation and Hauser & Wirth 

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely

La Grande Tête, 1988

Painted polyester, electrical system

225 x 225 x 140 cm / 88 5/8 x 88 5/8 x 55 1/8 in

Photo: Laurent Condominas

© 2025 NIKI CHARITABLE ART FOUNDATION

All rights reserved

Courtesy Niki Charitable Art Foundation and Hauser & Wirth 

‘We couldn’t sit down together without creating something new, conjuring up dreams.’—Niki de Saint Phalle, ‘A little of my story with you Jean’ (1996)

Niki de Saint Phalle (1930 – 2002) and Jean Tinguely (1925 – 1991) are reunited in a major site-wide takeover at Hauser & Wirth Somerset in collaboration with the Niki Charitable Art Foundation. The first exhibition dedicated to both artists in the UK illustrates Saint Phalle and Tinguely’s visionary artistic output and enduring creative collaboration over three decades. Two emblematic figures of contemporary art, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely defied conventional artmaking and were fuelled with rebellion, in both life and art. The exhibition features unseen works on paper and art décor by Niki de Saint Phalle, alongside her Shooting Paintings and monumental open-air sculptures. Iconic kinetic machines by Jean Tinguely range from the 1950s to the final year of his life, in addition to multifaceted collaborative works made by the duo throughout the 1980s. 

The Bourgeois Gallery introduces the artists’ distinct visual language, production methods and social commentary that developed in parallel, and through collaboration, over the course of their careers. The Tinguely works within this space are exemplary of his sculptural practice as research, exploring art based on movement, chance, relative speed and sound. His ‘anti-machines’ feel more relevant now than ever before, constructed from scrap metal and an assemblage of found materials, designed to highlight the flaws of modern technology and society’s displacement of humanity. Overlooking these works stands Saint Phalle’s ‘Big Lady (black)’ (1968/1995). By 1965, Saint Phalle began to introduce polyester to create more voluptuous dancing figures that could be displayed in public parks and other outdoor locations, as seen in ‘Les Trois Graces’ (1995 – 2003) that is presented in the farmyard in Somerset. 

The Rhoades Gallery features Saint Phalle’s first functional sculptures, made for the film ‘Un Reve plus long que la nuit’ (1976). The film was written, directed and acted by Saint Phalle, alongside Tinguely and her daughter Laura Duke. Art and life were interchangeable in Saint Phalle’s universe and the decorative elements for the film, such as thrones, tables and mirrors, instigated a sustained interest in making art to be lived with, which resulted in larger-scale immersive projects. It was Saint Phalle’s passion for fantasy and mythology that contributed to Tinguely’s monumental sculptural work, ‘Le Cyclop’ (1969 – 1994), in the forest of Milly-la-Forêt, France, a project of boundless action between artists and a dream of utopia. A mutual source of inspiration can be seen in ‘Le Grande Tête’ (1988), a union of Tinguely’s robust mechanical base with Saint Phalle’s mysterious abstract face as a silent observer, a motif she began developing from the 1970s, in response to multiple realities and dream states that can exist simultaneously. Skating amongst the gold furniture is ‘Patineuse’ (c. 1967), from her most famous and recognizable series, the Nanas. Saint Phalle’s army of brightly colored Nanas interrogate the various roles of women, often liberated from tradition and radiating energy and vitality.

The Pigsty Gallery pays homage to Saint Phalle’s Shooting Paintings, which began in 1961 against a backdrop of political violence and unrest in France. Saint Phalle fired a rifle at canvases or low reliefs resembling altars or effigies, often exploding bags of hidden paint across the work’s surface. The process of creation was a paradoxical destructive act, utilizing sensations of violence and demolition to promote a sense of renewal and catharsis for the artist and the viewer. The performative action was both inward-looking, demonstrating Saint Phalle’s regaining of control and strength over a strict Catholic upbringing and abusive father but, at the same time, responding to the period in which they were made, and bursting with rage at institutional forces and masculinist values. Tinguely was a primary supporter of these works and his own auto-exploding sculptures and incendiarism in art shared this adventurous spirit and eagerness to challenge artistic norms. 

The Workshop Gallery presents an intimate collection of drawings and works on paper by Saint Phalle, many of which reflect on her relationship with Tinguely and the creative stability and trust they provided for one another. The repetition of birds, snakes, dragons and mythical creatures appear frequently in Saint Phalle’s writings and sculptural work, drawing from the symbolic language of African, preColumbian and eastern cultures. Birds are often believed to be messengers from one world to the next, representing complete freedom and immortal reinvention. In addition to independent works by Tinguely, including ‘Radio Sculpture’ (1961), ‘IBM’ (1960) and Rocker III (1963), stands a final collaborative work, ‘Pallas Athéna (le chariot)’ (1989) that relates to the seventh card in the Tarot which appears in Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden in Garavicchio, Italy. 

Saint Phalle’s extraordinary combination of architecture, the enchantment of nature, and the spiritual world is integral throughout her practice, most notably in her ambitious vision for the Tarot Garden. This is prominent across the open-air presentation in Somerset, including ‘The Prophet’ (1990), ‘Tête de mort I’ (1988), ‘Le Poète et sa Muse (1999) and ‘Les Trois Graces’ (1995 – 2003), alongside Tinguely’s ‘Fountain III’ (1963), a large motor-driven fountain on display in the Rhoades Gallery lobby that is activated throughout the summer. 

Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle

back from the Cyclop, La Commanderie,

Dannemois, France, 1973

Photo: Laurent Condominas

© Laurent Condominas

Courtesy Niki Charitable Art Foundation and Hauser & Wirth 

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely met and started working together in Paris, France in the late 1950s and were married in 1971. The pair forged an extraordinary personal and artistic relationship that continued to renew itself across multiple projects until Tinguely’s death in 1991, when Saint Phalle took over stewardship of his works until she died a decade later. The artists’ legacy and work are continued through the work of Niki Charitable Art Foundation and Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland. The basis for the collection at the Museum Tinguely was provided by Niki de Saint Phalle’s donation of 52 sculptures from the Estate of Jean Tinguely, alongside many letters, graphics and archives. 

HAUSER & WIRTH SOMERSET

Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane

Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NL

www.hauserwirth.com

Phyllida Barlow Exhibition @ Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Bruton - ‘Phyllida Barlow. unscripted’

Phyllida Barlow. unscripted 

Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Bruton  

25 May 2024 – 5 January 2025 

Phyllida Barlow, Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles CA, 2022

Courtesy the Phyllida Barlow Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Emma Louise Swanson

Phyllida Barlow

untitled: folly; awnings; 2016/2017 (detail), 2016-2017

Timber, plywood, paint, cement, PVA, pigment,

polystyrene, polyurethane foam, spray paint, steel

666 x 387 x 603 cm / 262 1/4 x 152 3/8 x 237 3/8 in

Installation view, ‘Phyllida Barlow. folly’, British Pavilion,

57th Venice Biennale, Italy, 2017

© Phyllida Barlow Estate © British Council

Courtesy the Phyllida Barlow Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Ruth Clark

The work of Phyllida Barlow (1944 – 2023) takes over Hauser & Wirth Somerset in a celebration of the British artist’s transformative approach to sculpture, marking the 10th anniversary of the arts center that was inaugurated by Phyllida Barlow’s solo exhibition ‘GIG’ in 2014. Over a career that spanned six decades, Phyllida Barlow took inspiration from her surroundings to create imposing installations that can be at once menacing and playful. Barlow’s restless invented forms stretch the limits of mass, volume and height as they block, straddle and balance precariously. The audience is constantly challenged into a new relationship with the sculptural object, the gallery environment and the world beyond. 

Curated by Frances Morris, ‘Phyllida Barlow. unscripted’ brings together a collection of the artist’s signature elements from several major installations, as well as a number of free-standing sculptures ranging from the early 1970s to work made in the last year of Barlow’s life. The landscape, courtyards and gardens beyond the galleries are animated and disrupted by a selection of sculptures, including ‘PRANK’, a series of seven wonderfully—and deliberately—ungainly sculptures Phyllida Barlow made for New York’s City Hall Park in 2023, shown for the first time in the UK. The exhibition also features previously unseen smaller-scale works, including drawings and maquettes. These works reinforce the important role the studio played in Barlow’s practice, whilst conveying the restless energy, endless curiosity and unabated ambition which are as much a part of Barlow’s legacy as are the works themselves.

‘Over the last 10 years, Phyllida Barlow kept her fans and followers on the edge of their seats as she brought new and ever more audacious projects to life in venues across the world. Unfolding as a running commentary on the tragedies and absurdities of our time, each work formed part of an ongoing and intensely experimental investigation into the techniques and materials of art making, seeking visual equivalents to her own personal experience of living and looking.’—Frances Morris, 2024

The title ‘unscripted’ refers to the experimental and iterative nature of Barlow’s working process, allowing each project to evolve through a process of making, unmaking and remaking, involving chance and mishap as well as changes of mind. She saw this working practice as akin to processes of growth, decay and renewal in nature. Phyllida Barlow was aware of the forthcoming exhibition and had begun to think seriously about bringing her interest in painting to the fore.

The Bourgeois gallery opens the exhibition with singular works that span almost four decades of Barlow’s career, ranging from the remake of ‘shedmesh, 1975 – 2020’ (1975 – 2020), to two of the artist’s last works, ‘untitled: hollow; 2022’ (2022) and ‘untitled: modernsculpture; 2022’ (2022). These works are part of a continuous investigation of the language and possibilities of sculpture, which emerged as Barlow found her voice as a student through exploring the legacy of British and European post-war sculpture. Key works in this display make references to other artists who became part of her internal conversation for many years, notably Alighiero Boetti, Eva Hesse and Tony Smith. These works engage critically with the grid and cube of minimalism, post-minimalism’s resistance to geometry and the materiality of Arte Povera.

In contrast, the Rhoades Gallery combines large-scale elements originally conceived for several different installations including ‘folly’ (2017), Barlow’s acclaimed British Pavilion for the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. This gallery engages with the artist’s ongoing interest in states of urban destruction and unrest, reflecting on Barlow’s fascination for natural and human-driven disaster, stretching back to her memories of bomb-damaged London, as well as her interest in monuments and fallen monuments. During her final years, Phyllida Barlow was increasingly recycling elements of one project into another, or enabling individual items a future life liberated from its original context. This gallery takes this habit as its methodology; key gatherings of works are inspired by juxtapositions Phyllida Barlow made from disparate parts and which can be found in photographic documentation of her exhibitions. Other choices and sequences take care to respect some of Barlow’s key principles and preferences, for example she preferred to block entrances and exits, inducing curiosity in the viewer. She often placed obstacles in the way of visitors, in their pathway or disturbing their line of site. 

There were periods in Phyllida Barlow’s life where her principal activity as an artist took place in the studio. This was the case for months and years during her teaching career when significant exhibition opportunities were harder to come by, whilst raising a young family, and was also the case more recently during lockdown. The Pigsty gallery focuses on these more private aspects of Barlow’s practice and speak to forms of ‘open’ experimentation. ‘TORSO’ and ‘LOAF’ (1986 – 1989) are among the earliest works included, alongside maquettes and drawings, often made in the genesis of larger-scale works and have never been shown in public. 

Phyllida Barlow

untitled: double act, 2010

Plaster, fabric, scrim over polystyrene core, plywood,

expanded foam, timber, bonding plaster, PVA, wire

mesh, paint, spray paint, 2 parts

Each: 180 x 180 x 190 cm / 70 7/8 x 70 7/8 x 74 3/4 in

Installation view, ‘Nairy Baghramian and Phyllida Barlow’, 

Serpentine Gallery, London, UK, 2010

© Phyllida Barlow Estate

Courtesy the Phyllida Barlow Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Andy Keate / Serpentine Gallery

Installation view: ‘Phyllida Barlow. frontier’, 

Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2021

© Phyllida Barlow Estate

Courtesy the Phyllida Barlow Estate and Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Maximilian Geuter / Haus der Kunst

Over the course of a long career there were images and forms, materials and subjects that occurred over and over in Phyllida Barlow’s work and held a special significance for her. The Workshop gallery foregrounds ‘untitled: double act’ (2010), and combines two adjacent spheres each speared by a vertical intrusion, one in the form of a ring, the other a disc. The reference to theatre in the title evokes Barlow’s longstanding interest in theatre and the staging of her work for audiences. Here the double act, was effectively an ‘in conversation’ with Nairy Baghramian who she exhibited alongside at the Serpentine Gallery the same year, and point to Barlow’s continuing interest in and responsiveness to her peers.

Phyllida Barlow’s first and last group of paintings on canvas will be on display in the final gallery. Small-scale and captivating, these paintings stand in lieu of what was to have been a major new adventure. The works represent motifs repeatedly explored in her sculpture, including several works on display elsewhere in the exhibition, while others touch on primary themes and interests in her art and life. The painterly experiments were part of a move to larger-scale canvases that were to be debuted in this very exhibition. 

Alongside the exhibition, Hauser & Wirth Learning launches a new Education Lab, ‘Open Art School’, in partnership with Bath Spa University. Taking Barlow’s life-long engagement with arts education and notably her ethos of there being ‘no right or wrong way’ to be creative, the Education Lab draws on the latest thinking within creative pedagogy and experimental learning. ‘Open Art School’ will provide an interactive space for new ideas, experiments and working methods, inviting a multitude of voices and communities to engage through making. In addition, the gallery’s summer artist residency program will welcome guest artists, Jessie Flood-Paddock, Young In Hong, Jack Killick and Hamish Pearch, to spend time living and working in Somerset. Selected by curator Frances Morris, and in the spirit of Phyllida Barlow, the artists are invited to seek inspiration from the exhibition, landscape and architecture of Somerset, as well as conversations that develop between the group.

Roth Bar in Somerset

To coincide with the launch of ‘Phyllida Barlow. unscripted’, and as part of Hauser & Wirth Somerset’s 10th anniversary celebrations, a new site-specific artwork and fully functioning Roth Bar opens in the Threshing Barn.

Oddur Roth, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2024 

© Oddur Roth. Photo: Bjarni Grímsson

Roth Bar, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2024 

© Oddur Roth. Photo: Bjarni Grímsson

Artist Oddur Roth, grandson of the late German-born Swiss artist Dieter Roth, lived and workied in Bruton as artist-in-residence from January – March 2024, alongside his team, Einar Roth, Bjarni Grímsson, Sigrún Holmgeirsdottir, Thrandur Gíslason Roth and Gudmundur Oddur Magnusson. Björn and Oddur Roth were one of the first artists-in-residence in Somerset in 2014, creating the original bar that formed an integral part of the gallery’s on-site restaurant. First conceived by Dieter Roth in the late 1970s, the bar is a dynamic and changing installation and is a continuing element in the Roths’ cross-generational practice.

Inspired by the history of Durslade Farm, Roth Bar in Somerset is composed of salvaged materials and objects from reclamation yards in the surrounding area. The new bar also features an interactive installation conceived as a functional Revolving Door by Björn and Oddur Roth, inspired by the work ‘Allerweltsbild’ Dieter Roth created between 1982 and 1985 together with Björn Roth, Dominik Steiger, Ómar Stefánsson and André Thomkins. Furniture throughout the wider Roth Bar space has been curated in collaboration with Paris-based international architecture firm, Laplace.

HAUSER & WIRTH SOMERSET 

Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane, Bruton BA10 0NL

www.hauserwirth.com

Louise Bourgeois @ Hauser & Wirth Somerset - Drawing Intimacy 1939 – 2010

Louise Bourgeois 

Drawing Intimacy 1939 – 2010 

Hauser & Wirth Somerset 

1 October 2022 – 2 January 2023 

 

LOUISE BOURGEOIS (1911–2010) is one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th Century. ‘Drawing Intimacy 1939 – 2010’ shares with the viewer an extraordinary grouping of works from the artist’s private collection. Exhibited publicly for the first time, the paintings, sculpture and works on paper reflect Louise Bourgeois’s multiplicity of mind and material.  Her exploration of self lives within the dreamscape of touch and expression shared in this exhibition. Embodiment as transient sublimation

‘Louise Bourgeois. Drawing Intimacy 1939 – 2010’ forms a collection of highly personal memories and ideas that in turn reflect the complexity and intimacy of Louise Bourgeois’s practice. The works presented span the breadth of the artist’s oeuvre, from a selection of plaster sculptures to previously unseen paintings, drawings and works on paper. Most of the works on paper were made during the last four years of Louise Bourgeois’s life, and often feature words or phrases which evoke associations and memories. The interaction of image and text crystallizes the interplay of past and present.

The exhibition is curated by Benjamin Shiff, who played a major role in the re-emergence of printmaking in Louise Bourgeois’s practice in the late 1980s, and who remained an important force in her creative use of the medium up until her last years. Unfolding across two galleries in Somerset, ‘Drawing Intimacy 1939 – 2010’ highlights the sensitivity and strength of Bourgeois’s artistic vision: ‘It is not an image I am seeking. It is not an idea. It is an emotion you want to recreate, an emotion of wanting, of giving and of destroying.’ 

This autumn, ‘Louise Bourgeois. Paintings’ traveled from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York to the New Orleans Museum of Art, showing until 1 January 2023. ‘Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child’, previously on view at The Hayward Gallery, London, runs at the Gropius Bau, Berlin until 23 October 2022. 

HAUSER & WIRTH SOMERSET

Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane

Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NL

www.hauserwirth.com

______________

Gustav Metzger @ Hauser & Wirth Somerset

Gustav Metzger

Hauser & Wirth Somerset

26 June – 12 September 2021

GUSTAV METZGER practicing for a public

demonstration of Auto-destructive art using acid

on nylon possibly by John Cox, for Ida Kar

2 1/4 inch square film negative, 1960

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Courtesy The Estate of Gustav Metzger and Hauser & Wirth 

GUSTAV METZGER

Painting on Cardboard, c. 1958

Oil paint on found box lid, cardboard and wood

64.7 x 54.5 x 2.2 cm / 25 ½ x 21 ½ x 7/8 in

Photo: Damian Griffiths

© The Estate of Gustav Metzger and The Gustav Metzger Foundation

Courtesy The Estate of Gustav Metzger and Hauser & Wirth 

‘Gustav Metzger remains a moral compass, a constant reminder that integrity comes at a price, and that fighting for your convictions can indeed change the world. Metzger has done more than raise awareness. His art and philosophy are a stark testimony to the alternative world for which he strove.’ – Mathieu Copeland quoted in Gustav Metzger, Writings 1953-2016, published by JRP|Editions (2019)

GUSTAV METZGER (1926-2017) radically challenged our understanding of art, its relation to reality and our existence within society. His uncompromising commitment to combat environmental destruction was fundamental to his questioning of the role of the artist and the act of artmaking as a vehicle for change. Hauser & Wirth’s inaugural exhibition of Gustav Metzger’s work in Somerset provides a focused look at works that explore the intersection between human intervention, nature and man-made environments, ideas the artist continued to interrogate over a six decade career.

At the heart of Gustav Metzger’s practice was a passionate engagement with the notion of creation as a continual counterpoint to themes of destruction. A central feature of the exhibition in the Rhoades Gallery is ‘Liquid Crystal Environment’ (1965/2021), one of the best-known examples of Gustav Metzger’s lean towards Auto-Creative Art from the 1960s onwards. The immersive environment utilises heat-sensitive liquid crystals between glass slides, creating colours and patterns that are projected into the space. The evolving artwork is in a state of constant flux, bringing together Gustav Metzger’s interest in both kinetic art and the relationship between science, art and nature.

‘Liquid Crystal Environment’ combines Gustav Metzger’s fascination with scientific discovery and the experience of pleasure and enriching stimulus through art. When discussing the work with Emma Ridgway of Modern Art Oxford in 2016, he commented: ‘We are desperately in need of warmth as a fundamental element in human interactions. With Liquid Crystal it is physically based on warmth, it is based on the transformation of one level of warmth to another. This dialectic is central to the experience.’ It was the idea of inner renewal and sensory phenomena that led to greater cultural fame in 1966, when the work was installed at the Roundhouse, London for performances by The Who, Cream and The Move.

GUSTAV METZGER

Supportive, 1965-1966 / 2011

7 Kodak SAV 2050 slide projectors with control

units, rotating polarised filters, liquid crystals

Collection du Musée d’art contemporain, Lyon

Photo courtesy MAC Lyon

Photo: Blaise Adilon

© The Estate of Gustav Metzger and The Gustav Metzger Foundation

Courtesy The Estate of Gustav Metzger and Hauser & Wirth 

The Bourgeois Gallery spans three important bodies of work from the 1950s until 2006, including: early paintings and drawings (circa 1950s), Acid Nylon painting (1960/2004) that is a key example of Gustav Metzger’s Auto-Destructive work, and later works on paper which he called ‘portraits of landscapes’, depicting the nature he saw around him (2003-2006). Each series of works are closely linked to the artist’s fast, gestural mark-making as a means to document his lifelong connection with nature and the environment, relentlessly tackling the reality and politics of his time.

Several of Gustav Metzger’s early paintings and drawings were made on found, readymade materials such as cardboard packaging, magazine and newspaper pages. The furious, jagged marks appear as if he was attacking the canvas with a physicality that reoccurs later in his acid paintings of the 1960s. Even with traditional painting materials, Gustav Metzger was exploring the act of destruction in art, reducing representational forms to a purely emotional response that is completely alive to the world. His tutor, David Bomberg proved to be a formative influence, not only in regard to artistic practice but also the ways in which he held art as an embodiment of social force. Following Metzger’s Auto-Destructive Art manifesto in 1959, he was able to realise his vision of transient art that leaves no material behind. By painting with acid on nylon he was able to embody the intensities of feeling and movement, violence and vulnerability in tune with his anti-capitalist position, distrust in political structures and increasing concern for natural ecosystems.

The exhibition is organised in partnership with the Gustav Metzger Foundation. During his lifetime, Metzger defined the organization’s mission by envisioning not only exhibitions of his work and furtherance of the political and philosophical ideas he espoused, but also through support for individuals working in the fields of the arts and environmental studies, and for initiatives ‘to combat the risk of global extinction arising from the activities of humans.’ The exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Somerset is the first of the gallery’s global projects to implement a new carbon budget.

GUSTAV METZGER

Gustav Metzger was a visionary artist and radical thinker, profoundly rooted in activism in both the political and artistic realms. He lived and worked in East London throughout most of his career, having travelled to the UK from Germany in 1939 with his younger brother as part of the Refugee Children’s Movement. Later, his grandparents, parents and older brother were killed in the Holocaust. By 1958, Metzger had become heavily involved in anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist movements and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

In 1960, he was a founder member of the Committee of 100 and this led to a short imprisonment in 1961 with Bertrand Russell and other members of the Committee for encouraging mass non-violent civil disobedience. His auto-destructive art, meant as a public art form that would instigate social change, sought to provide a mirror of a social and political system that he felt was indifferently progressing towards total obliteration.

In 2009 the Serpentine Galleries, London, staged the most extensive exhibition of Gustav Metzger’s work in the UK, ‘Decades 1959 – 2009’. The same year Gustav Metzger installed ‘Flailing Trees’ (2009) at the Manchester International Festival (now in the collection of the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester) a group of willow trees upended in concrete with their branches cut down and their dead roots exposed to the air. In 2015 he led the large-scale project ‘Remember Nature’, in which he urged arts professionals and students to participate in a Day of Action to highlight the topic of extinction, climate change and environmental pollution.

HAUSER & WIRTH SOMERSET

Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane, Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NL

www.hauserwirth.com

Henry Taylor @ Hauser & Wirth Somerset

Henry Taylor 

Hauser & Wirth Somerset 

Through 6 June 2021 

HENRY TAYLOR 

2020 

Photo: Fredrik Nilsen 

© Henry Taylor 

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth 

HENRY TAYLOR

Untitled, 2021

Acrylic on linen

Photo: Ken Adlard

© Henry Taylor

Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Henry Taylor culls his cultural landscape at a vigorous pace, creating a language entirely his own from archival and immediate imagery, disparate material and memory. Through a process he describes as ‘hunting and gathering,’ Henry Taylor transports us into imagined realities that interrogate the breadth of the human condition, social movements and political structures.

For his inaugural exhibition with Hauser & Wirth, the American artist has taken over all five galleries in Somerset to present a major body of sculptural work and paintings evolving in unison across the spaces. Throughout his four-decade long career, Henry Taylor has consistently and simultaneously both embraced and rejected the tenets of traditional painting as well as any formal label. He has amassed a staggering body of highly personal work rooted in the people and communities closest to him, often manifested alongside poignant historical or pop-cultural references. In preparation for the exhibition, Taylor extended and unraveled his studio practice within the galleries at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, followed by an artist residency at Hauser & Wirth Somerset this winter – energetically building, stacking and affixing a vast array of collected objects together to create a holistic record of his everyday routine and the materials that define them. With a guiding sense of human connection, Henry Taylor layers reoccurring visual cues associated with his own personal experiences and broader cultural references that lead us through a multifaceted narrative in sculpture and painting.

Although his subjects are wildly diverse – family members, peers and acquaintances – Taylor’s ability to seek out the truest sense of a person and their sociocultural framework is evident throughout. This sharp focus has shifted inwards during the UK’s national lockdown with two new self-portraits. The first, a head and shoulder profile, depicts a regal-looking Taylor as Henry V and is a play on the artist’s childhood nickname of Henry VIII, since he is the youngest of eight children. The second is a full body image of Taylor in Somerset adorning pinstripe pyjamas and flanked by sheep, placing him firmly in his new rural environment.

Henry Taylor’s lean towards standalone sculpture over the past decade has allowed him to reconfigure commonplace objects into stories of his own lived history. Throughout the first two galleries we journey through new installations made over the past six months, including a series of tabletop sculptures that relate directly to the landscape of a city, urban planning and an altered perspective looking down into housing projects. Repetitive objects connected to voyage, sense of place and locality evolve from the first to the last gallery, alongside materials synonymous with Taylor such as heavily painted black milk bottles, a wall sculpture made of toilet paper rolls and a return to horses as a symbol of freedom and power, or alternatively of power restrained and fenced in. Taylor’s heightened awareness of art historical predecessors is continually prevalent throughout, ranging from references to Philip Guston, Bob Thompson, Yayoi Kusama, Louise Nevelson and Cy Twombly.

A series of miniature box paintings in the Pigsty gallery act as a conduit between Henry Taylor’s painting and sculpture, serving as a continuous thread in his studio practice. This will be the first time these works have been presented on a scale of this size in Europe. The earliest, made in the 1990s while Taylor was still a student, are painted on cigarette, cracker, and cereal boxes, surfaces that were on hand at the time. Acting as fleeting thoughts and records, the miniature works span intimate domestic scenes to prison visits and playful reinterpretations of the boxes’ original logos. Tactile, expeditious, and recognizable, Taylor repurposes the box both as substrate and subject.

Several miniatures exist more fully in the realm of sculpture, with painting extending across multiple sides, whilst others act as a starting point for the manifestation of large-scale works. Such is the case for Henry Taylor’s first outdoor bronze sculpture placed within Oudolf Field, relating to a conversation he had with his older brother Randy in the 1980s. Randy was a founding member of the Black Panther chapter in Ventura County, California and was faced with an explicit bumper sticker using a racial slur. The memory of this encounter stayed with Taylor and was realised in both a miniature work in the Pigsty gallery and the more recent outdoor bronze.

HENRY TAYLOR lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Taylor’s work is currently featured in US group exhibitions ‘i’m yours: Encounters with Art in Our Times’, at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston MA and ‘Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America’ at New Museum, New York NY. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA is preparing a major survey exhibition of his work for 2022.

Henry Taylor has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United States and internationally, and his work is in prominent public collections including the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, France, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx NY, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh PA, The Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA, Museum of Fine Art, Houston TX, Museum of Modern Art, New York NY, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham NC, Pérez Art Museum, Miami FL, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York NY, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY.

In 2018, Henry Taylor was the recipient of The Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize in 2018 for his outstanding achievements in painting. Taylor’s work was presented at the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY in 2017 and the 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy in 2019.

HAUSER & WIRTH SOMERSET

Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane

Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NL

www.hauserwirth.com