Above High Table a new work by our incoming Honorary Fellow, Eileen Cooper RA, joins the Paula Rego and Maggie Hambling paintings.
Eileen painted ‘Perpetual Spring’ for us – a tussling, dancing duo – her work often reflects the divided self, twinning and mirrors – do have a read of the label with further information about the work and the artist. To her right is the painting The Collector that was previously hung in the FDR – it is by celebrated Welsh painter Shani Rhys James MBE.
Opposite High Table is a quartet of exceptional abstract painters of different generations – the Vanessa Jackson and Sandra Blow are joined by a new vibrant donation by Mali Morris called Glide II that was influenced by Matisse’s paper cuts and on the left Expanding Forms, Touch Point Series (Movement Over Sand), 1983-86, by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham – both known as a Scottish painter and a member of the St Ives group. This is generously loaned to us by the Barns-Graham Trust. In the centre is the work Focus by Chinese artist Lin Tian Miao.
Around the servery are two work by Sarah Cawkwell (http://www-art.newhall.cam.ac.uk/the-collection/by/artist/id/72/name/Sar…), the large painting by Lubaina Himid, and a photograph by Maud Sulter, whose work centred around her Scottish Ghanaian heritage, and like Himid used her work to highlight the contribution of black women on culture and history. This portrait from a series called Zabat, is of the muse of comedy and flowers, Phalia, is actually the author Alice Walker, who wrote ‘The Colour Purple’.
Written by Eliza Gluckman, Curator of the New Halll Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.
