Haim Steinbach, accelerate your escape, 2006, Lithograph on 200gsm Arcoprint EW paper, 29.7 x 42 cm © Haim Steinbach
Howard Hodgkin, Indian Tree, 1990-1991, Intaglio print with carborundum from one aluminium plate, hand colouring in tempera, 107 x 137 cm. Image courtesy of The Estate of Howard Hodgkin and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London.
Darren Almond, Fullmoon@Kitandara: Mountains of the Moon, 2010, Color photogravure. Published by Crown Point Press and printed by Asa Muir-Harmony
Etel Adnan, Pink Whale, 2017, Gravure. © Etel Adnan / Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.
Noémie Goudal, Observatoire III, 2013, Lambda print, © Noemie Goudal. Courtesy of Edel Assanti
Past Exhibition
25 August 2020 – 3 January 2021
*This exhibition closed early on 15 Dec 2020 due to Government Health Advice
Selected by British Artist Gary Hume, important works by renowned artists including Etel Adnan, Darren Almond, Edward Burtynsky, Keith Coventry, Willie Doherty, Nan Goldin, Noemie Goudal, Howard Hodgkin, David Hockney, Alex Katz, Simon Keenleyside, Ron Nagle, Yves Oppenheim, Victor Pasmore, Tal R, Eduardo Paolozzi, Kathleen Ryan, Thomas Ruff, Prem Sahib, Haim Steinbach and Alison Wilding, are on public view for the first time from the Hiscox Collection. The series forms part of the Gallery’s ongoing commitment to showing rarely seen public and private collections.
For Hume, making and viewing art are a means of escape. Hume invites us to escape the every day and to find new joys and sorrows in the myriad worlds imagined for us by the artists he has selected.
Taking his title from a work by Haim Steinbach Hume explores the urge to ‘accelerate your escape’. Renowned for glossy hard-edged paintings inspired by pop and news media, Hume finds transcendence in colour and form. Luminous pigment glows in Yves Oppenheim’s vivid abstract painting, while modernist master Victor Pasmore uses line to suggest erotic, biomorphic forms. At the same time, Hume revels in the poetics of the everyday with Nan Goldin’s peeling bathroom suffused with light or Kathleen Ryan’s bejewelled sculpture of a rotting lemon.
The theme reveals unexpected story lines – Noemie Goudal’s concrete Observatory evokes a science fiction dystopia, while Keith Coventry’s bronze cast of a broken sapling is a poignant reminder of life in gritty council estates.
All these and hundreds of other works spanning the last five decades of contemporary art are featured in a book accompanying these displays.
Podcast transcript available, please click here.
Global insurer Hiscox have been collecting modern and contemporary art for over 50 years. The collection comprises 1000 works by renowned artists, including Grayson Perry, Tacita Dean and Peter Doig. With no single work ever in storage, this living collection is displayed across the company’s 35 global offices – on the walls of common areas and meeting rooms, enlivening the working environment with art that provokes thought or sparks creativity.
25 Aug 2020 – 3 Jan 2021
Free, booking required
Considering the ways in which lockdown has affected experiences of art and culture, Whitechapel Gallery’s Youth Forum, Duchamp & Sons, presents a virtually curated display featuring artworks drawn from the Hiscox Collection.
This comprehensive catalogue explores Hume and Calero’s selections with texts by both artists, as well as images of the works exhibited. The book also serves as a reader of the last fifty years of contemporary art.
