ANTHONY FARRELL
Visions of Life from an Iconic Bar, the Thames Estuary and the Island of Kos
New paintings
7 November – 20 December 2025
Anthony Farrell has exhibited with Art Space Gallery for over 30 years during which time he has developed a body of work that concentrates almost exclusively on notions of the crowd in contemporary painting. It is not the location that fascinates him but the people: the sense of multitude and the spectacle of everyday life going on before him.
Although the seaside at Leigh on the Thames Estuary and the harbour on Kos are subjects that Farrell returns to regularly, it is the congregation gathered in the iconic French House in London’s Soho which takes centre stage in this exhibition: the tiny, crowded bar that is one of the few remnants of old bohemian Soho and a vivid reminder of the area’s amazingly rich social and cultural heritage.
All are densely populated canvases and all have emerged slowly over many months, and sometimes years, of relentless observation and sketching; a working routine of ceaselessly recording all that goes on before him. Farrell draws in streets and public places enthralled by the variety of human behaviour. He drifts anonymously into a strategic place to work and will disguise what he is doing by hiding his sketch book in a folded newspaper. And once he has settled on a subject Farrell visits the same spot each day, usually early in the morning, then returns to the isolation of his studio to paint and perfect his canvases.
He draws with lightening swiftness and for each painting he will complete hundreds of images. He has a sense of drama, a love of story-telling, an interest in particular objects and individual characters, and over time he will add, remove, and alter his cast of characters until he is finally satisfied that everything and everybody has its correct place. Nothing can be changed. The picture is resolved.
The figures are painted with a certain rudimentary force but despite this Farrell conveys, through the disposition of forms and masterly use of illusionistic space, a compelling sense of reality and originality of vision. The late Timothy Hyman has written that ‘…we might pick up affinities to early Balthus for example, or Bonnard; to Poussin or to Tintoretto. Like any true Painter of Modern Life Farrell brings to bear all the resources of a lifetime upon a subject that could so easily have been banal but has turned out to be, as he says “limitlessly rich” ‘.
Anthony Farrell (b. 1945) trained at Camberwell Schools and the Royal Academy Schools (1963-68). He has exhibited regularly in private and public galleries including the Serpentine and Hayward and has work in private and public collections including Arts Council England, Manchester City Art Gallery and the Minories, Colchester.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm
A 38 page Catalogue of the Exhibition will be available.
