The Roberts Institute of Art

10/12/2024

📢️ NOW BOOKING

RIA Presents: Simeon Barclay, ‘The Ruin’ — a new performance commission.

📆 16 January 2025
📍 The ICA, London
⏰ Two performances: 6.30pm & 8.30pm
🎟️ https://www.ica.art/ria-presents-simeon-barclay-the-ruin

We are thrilled to announce the premiere in London of our new performance commission by Simeon Barclay presented in partnership with the ICA, London.

‘The Ruin’ is the first performance work by the British artist and will see him perform himself for the first time alongside musicians within a work he has conceived to address British identity, particularly in relation to masculinity and class.

The performance will combine spoken word written by Barclay with live percussion by James Larter and horn by Isaac Shieh to question a mythic idea of Britain through a personal lens.

Simeon Barclay is known for his sculptural and installation practice which is rooted in material histories. He uses pop cultural references to explore personal and cultural memory and to navigate imposed and self-created identities.

The commission is part of our Practising Performance programme which debuted in 2023 with an operatic work developed with artist Rachel Jones.

05/12/2024

📢 Exhibition announcement

In Attendance: Paying Attention in a Fragile World
at the Fitzrovia Chapel
8 January – 9 February 2025

Join us in the new year at the historic Fitzrovia Chapel for an exhibition that asks us to reimagine the idea of attention as a practice tied to compassion, curiosity and care.

‘In Attendance’ is curated by the Roberts Institute Of Art, and presents a selection of paintings, sculptures and video by UK and international contemporary artists from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, including Etel Adnan, Phyllida Barlow, Miriam Cahn and Paula Rego.

Also included are early-career artists Emmanuel Awuni and Gabriella Boyd, both of whom have been in residency with RIA this year.

Drawing on the Fitzrovia Chapel’s heritage as a place of sanctuary and reflection, ‘In Attendance’ explores how artists respond to materials, the challenges of human experience and find new ways through their practice to connect to others and the world around us.

There will also be an exciting public programme alongside the exhibition – find out more through the link below.

https://www.therobertsinstituteofart.com/programme/exhibitions/fitzrovia-chapel-in-attendance

8 January – 9 February 2025
Daily 11 am to 6 pm (closed Monday)
Sunday 12 pm to 5 pm
Free exhibition admission

Image:
Rachel Kneebone
‘Trilogy (1) Silence cannot do away with things that language cannot state’ (2006)

17/10/2024

🍎🥚 NOW OPEN!

Immortal Apples, Eternal Eggs
at Hastings Contemporary
Until 16 March 2025

A major new exhibition exploring the rich and complex genre of still life.

Immortal Apples, Eternal Eggs is a meeting of two of the UK’s most significant collections — The Ingram Collection and the David and Indrė Roberts Collection — and includes work from artists including Phyllida Barlow, Anthony Caro, Patrick Caulfield, Elisabeth Frink, Sarah Lucas, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson and Ai Weiwei.

Find out more:
https://www.therobertsinstituteofart.com/programme/exhibitions/hastings-contemporary

16/07/2024

🎟️ Book your tickets for ‘Alleus’ by Prem Sahib at Edinburgh Art Festival.

Following its inaugural performance in London this spring, our co-commission with Somerset House Studios is travelling to Scotland as part of the festival’s 20th birthday edition, where it will be performed in a car park under Edinburgh Castle.

In Prem’s first performance piece using live vocalists, a speech by Suella Braverman is diffused through a polyphony of voices by live singers, pre-recorded voices, and a backing track developed in collaboration with artist Woodsy Bransfield.

📆 16 August, 6.30 & 8.30 pm

EAF and the Roberts Institute of Art have co-commissioned the Scottish premiere of a performance work by Prem Sahib, originally co-commissioned by the Roberts Institute of Art and Somerset House Studios, and presented in London. In their first time working with live vocalists, Prem Sahib presents pe...

21/02/2024

This spring, we are excited to collaborate for the first time with The Courtauld in developing and staging a public exhibition in the Courtauld Gallery, to be conceived and curated by MA students on The Courtauld’s Curating the Art Museum programme.

As the culmination of this twelve-month programme, students work with public art collections to devise a theme for an exhibition, select works from the collections, and design and mount the exhibition, along with a related programme of events.

The exhibition will draw on works from The Courtauld’s collection, and from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection.

Students are currently working on the concept and selection of artworks for the exhibition. Watch this space for more details!

📆 24 May — 7 July
📍 The Courtauld Gallery’s Katja and Nicolai Tangen 20th Century Gallery

📸 Benedict Johnson

24/01/2024

🎟️ Now booking: ‘Alleus’ by Prem Sahib

The Roberts Institute of Art and Somerset House Studios proudly present ‘Alleus’ — a new sound performance work by Prem Sahib.

This co-commissioned work re-orders, re-directs and disrupts an anti-immigration speech by former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, raising the question of how we approach the damaging language often echoed through society in hate speech.

'Alleus’ (Suella spelled backwards) is Prem’s first performance featuring live vocals, and will feature a backing track developed in collaboration with artist Woodsy Bransfield.

The performance will premiere during Somerset House Studio’s Assembly, before travelling to the Edinburgh Art Festival in August 2024, where it will be presented as part of their 20th birthday edition.

🗓️ Thursday 21 March 2024
📍 Somerset House, Lancaster Rooms
🕕 7 pm and 9 pm
👇 Book your tickets
https://www.therobertsinstituteofart.com/programme/performances/prem-sahib-somerset-house-studios

05/01/2024

💌

Philip Guston
‘Drive’, 1969
Oil on panel

‘Drive’ is one of Guston’s earliest figurative works in the bold cartoonish style he became known for. It is also an early introduction to the hooded figure that he viewed as a symbol of evil and would paint often in his career. Guston commented: “my attempt was really not ... to do pictures of the K*K, as I had done earlier. The idea of evil fascinated me ... I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan. What would it be like to be evil?”

The title ‘Drive’ references the car, represented as a brown murky mound that the white hooded figure sticks out of like a snow-topped peak, emerging from the mud with pink fleshy hands in thick oil paint. In Guston’s paintings, the hooded figures turn absurd as they openly partake in regular daily activities, pointing to society’s complicity in evil acts.

Made against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and social and political violence in America, Guston’s paintings can be seen as his attempt to tell the story of a country that he felt had ‘run afoul of its democratic promise,’ and to hold up a mirror up to fellow white Americans, including himself, about systemic racism, saying ‘we’re all hoods!’.

are stories from . Find all of them in the ‘Read’ section on our website.

The first major retrospective of Guston in the UK in nearly 20 years is on-show at Tate Modern until 25 February.

28/12/2023

2023 is almost over and what a year it’s been!

A big thank you to everyone who has been part of our programme and all the audiences who have visited this year.

Here are some of the things we were up to 👇

1: ‘Deep Horizons’ drew together 60 works from the collections of David and Indrė Roberts and the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, where the exhibition took place, and explored ideas around excavation. (📸 Jason Hynes)

2: After a year of development, we premiered our new performance commission by Rachel Jones, ‘Hey, Maudie’. The opera-based performance inaugurated our Practising Performance programme. (📸 Anne Tetzlaff)

3: This spring we were joined by our first-ever writer-in-residence at the RIA Residency in Scotland, Vanessa Onwuemezi. While in residence, Vanessa used her time to begin working on her second book. (📸 Paul Maguire)

4: We collaborated with Hestercombe Gallery on their ‘Design for Life: Art and Architecture - Part 1’ exhibition, lending twelve works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection to be displayed alongside key works from the Drawing Matter Collection. This year, a wide range of works from the Collection were sent off on loan to institutions around the world, from Australia to China. (📸 Jon England)

5: Last month, we continued our Collection Studies series with our ‘Close Looking’ exhibition at Cromwell Place, where we commissioned six writers to respond to six works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection. (📸 Elliott Mickleburgh)

23/12/2023

‘The moon looks at me silently’ / ‘As I press my body’ / ‘leaving my mark’

‘Untitled (for Prem)’ is Osman Yousefzada’s response to Prem Sahib’s ‘User_01’ (2016) – a panel of aluminium and resin evoking the eroticism of sweaty walls in clubs.

Commissioned for our 'Close Looking' exhibition at Cromwell Place, Osman’s poem sensually frames the work by reminding us of the complexity of our bodies and the traces they leave.

Listen to each commissioned writer read you their text in response to six works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection:
https://www.therobertsinstituteofart.com/programme/exhibitions/close-looking-collection-studies-from-the-roberts-institute-of-art

21/11/2023

🔎 Introducing ‘Close Looking: Collection Studies from the Roberts Institute of Art’ – an exhibition bringing six writers together with six works from .

Join us tonight for the opening of our new exhibition at Cromwell Place with a special private view:

📆 Tuesday 21 November
🕕 6–8 pm
📍 4 Cromwell Place, London SW7 2JE
🔗 RSVP: https://events.cromwellplace.com/events/cromwellplace/1034529

The evening will feature readings by Imani Mason Jordan, Osman Yousefzada and Marina Warner at 7 pm in Gallery 7.

🖋️ This exhibition is about close looking and reading with specially commissioned texts that span from poetry to storytelling:

Renee Gladman on Ayan Farah
Imani Mason Jordan on Ellen Gallagher
Julie-Ezelle Patton on Eva Hesse
Heather Philipson on Emma Talbot
Marina Warner on Paula Rego
Osman Yousefzada on Prem Sahib

🗓️ On show 22 November – 3 December

🎟️ Free entry – more info here: https://www.therobertsinstituteofart.com/programme/exhibitions/close-looking-collection-studies-from-the-roberts-institute-of-art

Image:
Ellen Gallagher, ‘Untitled’, 2005 (detai

26/10/2023

📣 Introducing our next Practising Performance artist, Simeon Barclay.

We are excited to announce the second artist in RIA’s commissioning programme, Practising Performance.

Simeon Barclay’s practice often takes the form of sculptures or installations rooted in a strong relationship with material histories. Barclay has an intense interest in the body and the self, investigating how self-image is created and grappled with. Fashion, dance, the theatrical, posing and adornments are intricately woven throughout his work and will inform the research and development of a new performance work.

Find out more: https://www.therobertsinstituteofart.com/programme/performances/ria-commission-practising-performance-with-simeon-barclay

27/09/2023

What an evening!

🎼 Thank you to everyone who joined us for the premiere performance of ‘Hey, Maudie’ by Rachel Jones last week. We are over the moon to have finally been able to share this work and with such engaged audiences.

⛪️ In the spectacular setting of St James's Piccadilly, Rachel was joined on-stage by lead soprano Gweneth Ann Rand, a choral ensemble, and a seven-piece orchestra, conducted by Otis Lineham.

A huge thanks to all the musicians, collaborators and partners who made the evening possible.

Stay tuned for more 🎶

‘Hey, Maudie’ (2023). A collaborative performance conceived by Rachel Jones. Commissioned and presented by the Roberts Institute of Art.

Creative Director: Rachel Jones
Co-Librettists: Victoria Adukwei Bulley & Rachel Jones
Composer: Joseph Howard
Clothing: ROKSANDA

Supported by: Thaddaeus Ropac
Venue partner: St James's Piccadilly

Photos: Anne Tetzlaff