Gill Hedley is a writer, an independent curator and a consultant on contemporary visual arts. This is an archive of projects, exhibitions, events and news she has been involved with. These stories are re-used elsewhere on the site as notes. Divided by year - please use the menu below:
→ press release for the exhibition (PDF)
→ Judith Cowan's website
(www)
Finnegan’s Teeth is a visual journey seen through the eyes of the dog, Finnegan. Taking place around King’s Cross in London, it follows the area as it goes through construction and deconstruction. Photographs of the happenings and events that Finnegan notices on his travels accompany the voices of the street life around him.
preparing for the event
→ Foundling Museum's exhibition note (www)
→ Google search for the event (www)
→ Google search for Terry Smith (www)
Hide and Seek at the Foundling Museum was a multi-discipline, video and sound installation by the artist Terry Smith, commissioned for the Foundling Museum. Playing with ideas of the hidden and the lost, Hide and Seek included images, sounds and deconstructed scores by Handel and Vivaldi, two Baroque composers who supported institutions dedicated to giving vulnerable and destitute young children a second chance at life.
This exhibition presented a series of new paintings by English artist John Kindness. For this exhibition Kindness explored the English eighteenth-century domestic interior through wall paper designs inspired by the graphic art of William Hogarth. Celebrating the importance of comedy in Hogarth’s work and his role as a pioneer of the comic strip, Kindness’ work also takes inspiration from Dudley Watkins, the creator of the comic book character Desperate Dan.
→ Foundling Museum's exhibition note (www)
→ Google search for the exhibition (www)
→ catalogue essay
→ John Kindness' website
(www)
John Kindness Study for Death of the Suitors
interior of the museum
Fifteen contemporary artists were invited to respond to the Foundling Museum's collection. Their works ranged from a cascade of kinetic sculpture above the Museum’s main staircase to a ‘lollipop opera’ inspired by Handel’s Foundling Hospital Anthem. RSVP continued the tradition begun by the artist William Hogarth in providing a platform for emerging contemporary artists: Thomas Gainsborough, whose first well-known work The Charterhouse was produced for the Hospital when he was just twenty-one.
→ Foundling Museum's exhibition note (www)
→ Google search for the exhibition (www)
→ catalogue introduction and essays
Whilst the Norman Foster designer ITN building on the Gray's Inn Road was only partially occupied the Contemporary Art Society, with Gill as Director, curated a series of exhibitions to show off the spaces: large empty floors with wonderful light making excellent sculpture exhibitions. These included Air and Angels featuring sculptures by Antony Gormley and Alison Wilding.
The exhibitions proved highly popular and the spaces were fully let within the year. This was one of the first public exhibitions of the maquette for the now famous Angel of the North by Antony Gormley, a major piece of public sculpture in Gateshead.
Gill was the Exhibition Officer for the 1993 Venice Biennale. Richard Hamilton won the Lion d'Or.
There is further detail on-line from the British Council (www).
The British Council organised a major exhibition of Francis Bacon in Moscow. Gill was the Exhibition Officer. It was an extraordinary event, with consequences in Russia and in the West.
There is a full and interesting account on-line by Andrew Graham Dixon (www).
Site specific piece commissioned by Southampton City Art Gallery in July 1987. Seen here photographed on display in the gallery with Gill Hedley, Keeper of Art, walking across. There is an external review of the piece (www), and a larger version of the photograph.
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