Sir Quentin Blake: Ink

7 Oct-12 Nov 2023

Peter Blake, High Places series. Photo courtesy of the artist.. Credit: High Places series. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Overview

Hastings Contemporary are honoured to present this new exhibition by our Artist Patron, Sir Quentin Blake, presenting brand new work by this prolific artist.

This exhibition is part of a running programme of new work created by Sir Quentin especially for our exhibition spaces. Previous exhibitions have included  Feet in Water, Airborne, and The Only Way to Travel, the artist’s biggest ever UK show, bringing 100 pieces to our ground floor gallery space.

For Sir Quentin, his ongoing collaboration with Hastings Contemporary has opened up new possibilities, prompting him to explore new approaches and themes including migration and mental health, in the knowledge that the results will find themselves “sympathetically shown in this extraordinary gallery … they are truly pictures for Hastings Contemporary.”

“For 50 years of my professional life, I stood at the lightbox making drawings, many of them commissioned, with a scratchy pen and a bottle of black ink. More recently I have been exploring the artistic possibilities of a ballpoint pen. However, after 4000 imaginary portraits and many other drawings I thought it was time to go back to scratch.

There are three sets of new drawings here: High Places and Lofty Structures inhabited by bearded sages and vultures; VTT – les velos tout terrain – of my own inventing; and Imaginary Portraits. I would like to say they have been done “without making a single blot” – but that wouldn’t be true.”

Sir Quentin Blake

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