Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge – serie

Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970 – Now, traces five decades of Sunil Gupta’s (b. 1953, India) pioneering contribution to photography and activism. Intimate and subversive, Gupta’s photography has been instrumental in documenting the fight for queer rights internationally, particularly in India, the UK and United States, laying bare the tensions between tradition and modernity, and public and private spheres.Featuring over 100 images in colour and black and white, accompanied by a selection of Gupta’s writings from the 1980s to the present. Essays by Natasha Bissonauth, Theo Gordon, Tausif Noor, Gregory Salter and Gayatri Sinha offer fresh perspectives on Gupta’s practice, situating it within global, queer and postcolonial histories, and contributing to ongoing debates around photography as both an art form and an agent of change.The book accompanies a major exhibition of Gupta’s work opening in September 2026 at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, before touring to Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2027) and Leeds Art Gallery (2028).

Handpicked: Painting Flowers From 1900 to Today celebrates the beauty and vitality of flower paintings of the 20th and 21st centuries. Beautifully illustrated, this anthology features essays on paintings by significant figures of the 20th century, as well as contemporary artists working with the genre of flower painting in new and often experimental ways today.Artists: Hurvin Anderson, Vanessa Bell, David Bomberg, Louise Bourgeois, Jai Chuhan, Andrew Cranston, Kaye Donachie, Gigi Ettedgui, Anna Freeman Bentley, Marjory Garnett, Tirzah Garwood, Gluck, Lubaina Himid, Howard Hodgkin, Isak of Igdlorpait, Nerys Johnson, David Jones, Poppy Jones, Joy Labinjo, Doron Langberg, Aubrey Levinthal, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Rory McEwen, Cedric Morris, Cassi Namoda, Mary Newcomb, William Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Chris Ofili, Jennifer Packer, Celia Paul, Bryan Pearce, Emma Prempeh, Bianca Raffaella, Eric Ravilious, Anne Redpath, Henri Rousseau, William Scott, Judith Tucker, Euan Uglow, Charlotte Verity, Édouard Vuillard, Caroline Walker, Alison Watt, Christopher Wood, Clare Woods.

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.

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.

Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) is one of the most important and best loved artists in the Kettle’s Yard collection. Nicholson met Kettle’s Yard founder Jim Ede in 1924, and they kept in regular contact over the following decades. Ede credited Winifred Nicholson directly for ‘[teaching] me much about the fusing of art and daily living’ and at Kettle’s Yard he built the largest public collection of her work.This book brings together some of Nicholson’s most eloquent essays with extracts from previously unpublished letters between the artist and Ede, and the words of their mutual friends, the poet Kathleen Raine and collector Helen Sutherland. With an introduction by curator Elizabeth Fisher exploring Nicholson’s relationship with Ede, the book is richly illustrated and included reproductions of all works in the collection, a biography and bibliography.

Christopher Wood (‘Kit’) as he was more commonly known) was born in Liverpool. At 14 he was diagnosed with septicaemia and confined to his bed for three years, during this time he took up drawing. Wood moved to London and worked as an importer of dried fruit, his route to and from work took him through a West End that was still steeped in the bohemian atmosphere of the pre-war years. Inspired by the comings and goings of this exuberant life, Wood would sit sketching for hours. During this time Wood met Alphonse Kahn, one of the best-connected men in the Paris art world, who invited him to Paris.Through extended visits to Paris between 1921 and 1924 he came into contact with the European avant-garde and established himself as a prominent and popular artist winning the admiration of Picasso and Jean Cocteau. Wood was one of the very few British artists to recognise and respond to the new landscape of modernism and have a solo exhibition in Paris at that time. During his Parisian years Wood became addicted to opium and in 1930 was tragically killed by a train at Salisbury station whilst under the influence of the drug.Richly illustrated with over 40 colour illustrations, this is a comprehensive account from the largest public collection of works by Christopher Wood. The book features writings by Jim Ede on Wood, an essay by curator Elizabeth Fisher, the artist John Piper and the poet Max Jacob, alongside previously unpublished extracts from letters between Wood and Jim Ede, Ben and Winifred Nicholson, and his mother Clare Wood.

This publication was published to accompany the exhibition Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, at Kettle's Yard 12 November 2019 - 2 February 2020, curated by Devika Singh with Amy Tobin and Grace Storey.Through photography, sculpture, painting, performance and film, tells stories of migration and resettlement in South Asia and beyond, as well as violent division and unexpected connections. The exhibition themes engage with displacement and the transitory notion of home in a region marked by the repercussions of the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, as well as by contemporary migration. The artists explore intimate and political histories, often contesting borders, questioning common pasts and imagining new futures.The exhibition included new works and works being shown in the UK for the first time by Sohrab Hura, Yasmin Jahan Nupur, Seher Shah, Iftikhar Dadi & Elizabeth Dadi and Munem Wasif, as well as a commission by Desmond Lazaro working with communities in North Cambridge and a performance by Nikhil Chopra. The publication includes contributions by Nancy Adajania, Homi K. Bhabha and each of the artists.