In the heart of Sussex, England, Charleston House has four galleries open to the public, on two sites: the house, its gardens and galleries in Firle, and its new cultural centre in Lewes. It offers a year-round programme of exhibitions, events, and festivals on a diverse range of artists and themes, marking its part in the legacy of the Bloomsbury literary group, and, currently, three exhibitions with strong Scottish connections.
Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: Artists, Lovers, Outsiders looks at the two Ayrshire artists who met at Glasgow School of Art in 1933 and became lovers and creative partners, playing a vital role in mid-20th century British art – influencing contemporaries including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and John Minton.
This is the first exhibition in England looking at their work since 1962 and surveys their remarkable creative journey from 1930s Glasgow through wartime Europe, London during the Blitz, their time in Lewes (1947-49) supported by their Bloomsbury Group patrons, and enjoying a wild alcohol-fuelled life they could ill-afford. In Sept 1962, exhausted working on his show, Colquoun died in MacBryde’s arms, aged 47: devastated, MacBryde moved to Ireland, continued to drink heavily, and was knocked down and killed by a passing car.
Curated by writer and broadcaster Damian Barr, the show celebrates the personal and artistic bond which shaped their lives and careers, and their lasting impact on European modernism.
The Scottish connection continues with an exhibition of Glasgow-based artist Trackie McLeod (b. 1993), who pits humour with nostalgia and everyday west of Scotland culture, transforming them into something novel. The show is the result of a new commission for Charleston, and brings together sculpture, textiles, print, sound and found objects reflecting Trackie’s interest in the formative spaces, social codes and friendships of modern-era west-coast Scottish adolescence.
Also echoing the west-of-Scotland theme is Robert Montgomery’s light sculpture The People You Love Become the Ghosts Inside of You (2010), which was inspired by the loss of his close friend, the artist Sean Watson, in a meditation on loss, memory, and love beyond death. Montgomery grew up in Prestwick in Ayrshire, near Colquhoun and MacBryde’s childhood homes of Kilmarnock and Maybole. A painting by Montgomery, newly-commissioned by Charleston, imagines Colquhoun, MacBryde and their friends appearing in the dawn of 4th September this year – when Barr’s novel about them was published.
Charleston’s other gallery, in Firle, East Sussex, is showing an exhibition of influential English 20th-century painter Roger Fry.
