National Print Gallery

Open by appointment

The National Print Gallery is located in the modest drawing room of a house in Fitzrovia. It is a concept, not a marble edifice. In April, 1997 art dealer and organiser of The Contemporary Print Show, Clive Jennings, realised that very few original artists prints could be seen in the national or provincial art institutions, and organised a Symposium entitled “Towards a National Print Gallery” at the Barbican Arts Centre. Sadly, fourteen years on, the situation has not changed enormously, and prints are still largely marginalised and misunderstood by the art establishment,

Great artists have always considered prints an important part of their oeuvre. From Durer to Goya to Picasso to the Chapman Brothers, but it is still very rare to see prints on display in the Tate or The National Gallery. The National Print Gallery deals on the secondary market in contemporary prints and also publishes new editions. It has all the facilities that a visitor might expect in a major public space, but in a vastly reduced size. These include an Exhibition Space, Permanent Collection, Project Space, Library, Archive, Friends Room (the sofa), Internet Centre (the macbook) and of course a Cafe, Cloakroom, Gift Shop, Information Desk, and an Audio Guide (a vintage walkman). The National Print Gallery is a moveable feast and has organised exhibitions at several London Venues.

The National Print Gallery is proud to be associated with the forthcoming exhibition by Darren Coffield, Masters of Reality, at:
Pertwee Anderson & Gold, 15 Bateman Street, London W1D 3AQ.
April 12 - 30, 2013. Open Mon - Fri: 11-6; Sat: 12-5

In their exploration of the themes of celebrity, identity, the function of representation and how we perceive each other, these works subvert the viewer's instinctive faculties for reading human features to create some of the most stimulating and provocative portraits of recent years. Initially the eyes and the brain struggle to interpret the information that is presented in reconfigured format, prompting a personal reassessment of one of the most basic and instinctive human reflexes: the ability to read another human face.

Coffield explains: "There is now an excessive exposure to faces in the media. We see in the media faces that have been idealised, manipulated and touched up. When viewed, the face creates in the mind a kind of Orwellian doublethink. We know that we are viewing a manipulated 'untruth' and yet we hold the image to be true, a notion of beauty to obtain or aspire to. The face has a strong social, cultural and historical role. An inverted face is not only difficult to recognise but repositions our sensitivity to the spatial relationships between human features. Here, facial features become strange constellations of communication, whilst new facial recognition patterns emerge. "

These works are not a simple, formulaic inversion of the features, but a sensitive reinterpretation of the physiognomy. Like any intelligent portrait they have a dynamic aesthetic, individually tailored to reflect the personality of the subject. Even in their reordered state, the features retain the character of the sitter - muddled features, that hang down like a bizarre veil. Some are famous and iconic celebrities, who are instantly recognisable by their pose, and the viewer is lulled into a false sense of security by the shape of the head or a familiar hairstyle; others are obscure actors staring out from forgotten publicity stills. It is impossible not to become enmeshed in the process of identifying the subject.

In the 175 years or so since the invention of photography, the function of the painted portrait has evolved from its purpose as accurate documentary representation to a more fluid, interpretive role. Technology has progressed but it is facial recognition, the way in which our features are arranged, that still forms the basis of digital and security systems. We intuitively identify faces from birth, expressing ourselves and monitoring others by the slightest change of expression. We interpret any two random circles with a line underneath as a face, the ubiquitous "smiley" for example. It is these primeval conventions that Coffield questions and reinterprets to great effect.

Critic David Sylvester, known for his championing of his close friends Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud, and described in his Guardian obituary as "one of the finest writers on art in the second half of the twentieth century, " described Coffield as "Another of those magicians who (probably without knowing) know how to imbue pieces of matter with light".

In the early nineties Coffield worked closely with Joshua Compston on the formation of Factual Nonsense, a gallery in Shoreditch that became the centre of the emerging Young British Artists scene. The list of participants reads like a Who's Who of young British art, including: Matt Collishaw, Tracey Emin, Angus Fairhurst, Gilbert & George, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, Gavin Turk, Jessica Voorsanger, Gillian Wearing, Sue Webster and Tim Noble. A new book by Coffield about this exciting period in British Art, "Factual Nonsense: The Art and Death of Joshua Compston" is to published in the UK in 2012.

Darren Coffield was born in London in 1969 and studied at Goldsmiths College, Camberwell School of Art and the Slade School of Art in London. He has exhibited widely in the company of many leading artists including Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Patrick Caulfield and Gilbert and George at venues ranging from the Courtauld Institute, Somerset House to Voloshin Museum, Crimea. Coffield was the only artist to be shortlisted for these three major UK Art competitions in 2010: The John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize; The BP Portrait Award at The National Portrait Gallery and The Threadneedle Prize. His work can be found in collections around the world. Coffield lives and works in London.

"The Stately Aquariums of England"
1 - 13 December, 2011

The National Print Gallery is proud to present The Stately Aquariums o f England by David Ferry. This is a stunning new suite of prints that explore an imagined collision of two very different worlds: the commercial efforts of the asset rich, cash poor aristocrats of the 1960’s who grudgingly opened the doors of their ancestral homes to the great British public; and the desire by aquarists to furnish their fish tanks with increasingly bizarre and inappropriate aquarium ornaments from the human world that bear no relation to the natural domain of fish. In Ferry’s luscious images, bemused fish navigate a strange under water kingdom where state rooms adorned with fine tapestries and paintings are furnished with submerged London buses, and pirate galleons are becalmed in the drives of turreted stately homes.

Fish fanciers consider their hobby to be a creative pursuit, the piscine tenants of their fantastic environments bec oming moving elements in a work of art. Ferry has celebrated this conceit and gently acknowledged both the kitsch world of “aquarium ornaments” and the upwardly mobile aspirations of the creators of these miniature environments, a fantasy world in a tank bubbling away on the sideboard. The scale of the images also suggest an alternative interpretation: a sci-fi future in which England is submerged, and giant mutant fancy fish swim freely through the deserted rooms of our great houses. His medium of montage is both a physical and an intellectual pursuit: the interventions he makes in the images, and the juxtaposition of unlikely and disparate aspects of our culture to deconstruct the notion of British national identity and heritage.

Ferry’s Book Arts and Printmaking create a very individual footprint in contemporary art, and bear witness to th e influences of John Heartfield and the classic photomontage tradition. The creative process starts with his defilement of existing books (over 20 in as many years), usually tourist guides from the innocent post war years of the 1950’s and 1960’s, which he deftly subverts using highly selected donor material. In this case, the re-titled “English Aquariums in Country Houses in Colour” whose 28 colour plates Ferry defiled with piscine interlopers. (This unique book was purchased by The National Art Library housed in the Victoria & Albert Museum, for their permanent collection, earlier this year. ) Ferry explains, “The search for donor material is part of the process of creative recycling, adding a new ingredient, a cycle of change and appropriation”. These ideas are then completely rebuilt, reworked and re-interpreted to inform a capsule collection of original prints that convey the spirit of the unique book.

Ferry has exhibited extensively in the UK and throughout the world, including solo exhibitions in Berlin, New York, Poznan and Seoul. His work can be found in public and corporate collections including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Ashmolean, Oxford; Art Institute of Chicago; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He is a past recipient of a Pollock / Krasner major award, and a new seat as Professor of Printmaking and Book Arts was created for him at the Cardiff Metropolitan University earlier this year.