Andrew Nairne – författare

Alfred Wallis (1855-1942) is one of the most original and inspiring British artists of the 20th Century. Promoted by the artist Ben Nicholson amongst others, Wallis’s paintings influenced the development of British art between the wars. The directness of Wallis’ vision reflected a lifetime of living by and from the sea. His paintings are of what he knew, remembered and imagined. Yet they are also timeless stories about survival and the nature of our relationship with the world. As Jim Ede commented “Wallis is never local.”With over 70 illustrations, excerpts from letters and texts by Michael Bird, Ben Nicholson and Jim Ede, this book takes a fresh look at this extraordinary artist and his relationship to Kettle's Yard. It includes some of Wallis's best works from the Kettle’s Yard collection including many that are not normally on display, from ambitious paintings such as Saltash to what Wallis knew and loved best: ships and boats.Kettle's Yard, the University of Cambridge's modern and contemporary art gallery, holds the largest public collection of works by Alfred Wallis. Wallis was born in Devon. He was a fisherman and later a scrap-metal merchant in St. Ives. He took up painting in his later years, following the death of his wife in 1922. He was admired by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood, who came across his work when visiting St. Ives in 1928 and included it in the Seven & Five Society’s exhibition of 1929. He died in Madron Poorhouse.

Portia Zvavahera is one of the outstanding artists of her generation. Born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1985, she has developed a unique combination of print/painting techniques to register a private world of dreams, fantasies and figural constructions. She received her art education in Zimbabwe in the early 2000s, and has become recognised in the past decade as one of the foremost representatives of African figuration, showcased at the Venice Biennale in 2022, and in a number of commercial gallery exhibitions in South Africa, the US and the UK. She has not yet had a solo show in a public museum in Europe. This new publication accompanies a major exhibition, curated by Tamar Garb, which will include reproductions of brand new works created on the occasion of this exhibition alongside a selection of recent and older paintings which reveal the depth and richness of Zvavahera’s practice. The focus will be on the theme of dreams, fantasy and figuration, and large details will highlight Zvavahera’s innovative amalgamation of printmaking and painting techniques that build rich surfaces to create her private cosmology of creatures and contexts.The book will feature a significant new essay from curator Tamar Garb and will centre around an extensive conversation between Garb, Sinazo Chiya, Tandazani Dhlakama and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela discussing Zvavahera’s engagement with eros, intimacy and female-centred experience. The book will open up how Zvavahera’s works emerge from dreams; being figurative without being illustrative, registering a world of feminine experience and fantasy.

Megan Rooney: Echoes and Hours is the first monograph to explore the work of one of the most exciting emerging painters of her generation.Rooney’s sensuous and compelling paintings reinvigorate the power of abstraction. They embody a sense of boundless energy and life, whilst reflecting the artist’s deep knowledge of painting and the potential of each viewer’s encounter. Vibrant colour and gesture combine in dense, apparently infinite layers. Each canvas captures the ebb and flow of Rooney’s process, from repetitive overpainting to the use of abrasives to remove pigment.This major new book accompanies Rooney's first solo exhibition in the UK. It explores the variations in her painting practice across a series of new works made for the exhibition. The book illustrates these works including a temporary mural at Kettle's Yard painted directly on the gallery walls, as well as documenting earlier, formative paintings. Three newly commissioned essays and an interview with the artist in her studio explore Rooney's practice and the resonances of her hugely captivating work.

This publication marks the 2018 exhibition Actions. The image of the world can be different, the first exhibition to be held in at the new Kettle’s Yard following its redevelopment.The exhibition is inspired by a letter Naum Gabo wrote to Herbert Read in 1944, in which Gabo reasserts the potential of art as a poetic, social and political force in the world and his belief that “the image of the world can be different”. Actions reflects the energising diversity and breadth of art in the modern and contemporary period within the UK and internationally.Bringing together work across a variety of forms and media made by artists of different generations from the emerging to the renowned, the exhibition features work by 38 artists including nine new commissions by Rana Begum, Jeremy Deller, eL Seed, Idris Khan, Issam Kourbaj, Harold Offeh, Melanie Manchot, Cornelia Parker and Caroline Walker.

Lucie Rie (1902–1995) is one of the finest modern potters of the 20th century. Born and trained in Vienna, her successful early career came to a halt in 1938 when forced to leave Austria to escape the persecution of Jewish people. In exile in London, Rie established a new workshop and over five decades created highly individual bowls, vases and tableware which continue to amaze and inspire today.With over 150 photographs and five new essays, Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery celebrates an exceptional life of creative invention and experiment.With texts by Edmund de Waal, Tanya Harrod, Helen Ritchie, Eliza Spindel, Kimberley Chandler and Nigel Wood.

Published to coincide with Antony Gormley SUBJECT at Kettle's Yard in 2018, this book features installation shots and drawings alongside texts by Caroline Collier and Jennifer Powell, and Antony Gormley in conversation with architect Jamie Fobert.Devised for the new galleries and spaces at Kettle’s Yard, SUBJECT highlighted many of Antony Gormley’s interests, including how sculpture can activate both the space that it occupies and the body of the viewer. The exhibition offered a series of physical and metaphysical encounters, exploring our relationship to space and our sense of self.SUBJECT encompassed both galleries, the Learning Studio and the Research Space. The exhibition included the first in a new series of works, Subject (2018), from which the title of the show derives, and the first UK showing of Infinite Cube II (2018), made of one-way mirror glass and 1,000 LED lights.