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WARHOL COMES TO DE LA WARR
18.11.2011 / Galleries / 0 Comments
Sally Ann Lycett on the partnership behind Warhol is Here, the last exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion under the direction of Alan Haydon, who died last month
Warhol is Here is the second exhibition the De La Warr Pavilion has presented in partnership with ARTIST ROOMS, the collection of works donated to the nation by Anthony d'Offay, with assistance from the Art Fund, which enabled the acquisition and is supporting the tour. It is clear that all the galleries involved with ARTIST ROOMS work in a different way to get the most out of the collaboration. The Pavilion - not just a gallery but a centre for contemporary arts with an enviable reputation for risky, multi-disciplinary programming - worked with ARTIST ROOMS to create what is, both artistically and in terms of visitor figures, the most successful exhibition since reopening six years ago.
The Pavilion prides itself on commissioning and curating work that is unique to the building and can only be seen in Bexhill. Attracting large numbers of visitors to the town and building a reputation for punching above our weight artistically is the reason for our success. But the Pavilion would not have been able to curate an exhibition of the calibre of Warhol Is Here without the ARTIST ROOMS collaboration. The sheer amount of works (over 120) means that this scale of project would be beyond our limited resources to assemble from scratch. ARTIST ROOMS has given us an extraordinary exhibition with a support framework around it, allowing the Pavilion to stamp its own identity on the season and to experiment with multi-disciplinary programme to accompany it. This includes a fascinating sound installation in our rooftop foyer - The Search For The Voice of Warhol - where Warhol scholar Dr Jean Wainwright has been able, for the first time, to turn her extensive and original research into something public and interactive.
Our existing Random Fridays - well-known to our audiences as a free, experimental evening of high quality work where anything can happen - has, this season, been programmed in the style of Warhol's The Factory, giving opportunities to and a platform for emerging and interdisciplinary artists.
We are also putting together a conference for artists, curators, and academics about Warhol and the influence of his work - an opportunity for the Pavilion to re-instate its credentials as a place for discussion and debate. With extra funding from the Art Fund, we are also commissioning four students to create projects which will be exhib- ited and showcased online in a specially created microsite - a first for DLWP. The core of the partnership with ARTIST ROOMS is one of mutual respect and this is played out to full effect in our relationship with Anthony d'Offay himself. Anthony loves to work hands-on in the gallery, working closely with the curators and techni- cians out of his passion for the art and how it is curated. Impressed by the professionalism and extensive experience of our team on the first ARTIST ROOMS project (Beuys Is Here, 2009), Anthony was happy for his Warhol works to be presented here and spent many hours working with us in the galleries. This gave our team a chance to earn from one of the world's most prestigious contemporary art collectors.
Collaboration has also given us leverage. One of Warhol's key works, The Marilyn Diptych (1962), was not part of Anthony's collection but because of ARTIST ROOMS, Tate was happy to lend it to us and Sir Alan Bowness (former Tate director and responsible for the purchase of The Diptych) wrote about its acquisition for our magazine. The inclusion of such a key work in the Warhol canon re-inforced the message that this is a comprehensive exhibition of major works - not a "sideshow" as Peter York said when opening the exhibition.
For the Warhol season, we found ARTIST ROOMS generous in terms of their branding guidelines with an understanding that DLWP was not
just another room for their collection. There were no branding guidelines for presenting a Warhol image to cover the back of the number 99 bus so, between us, the partnership invented its own!
We know that Warhol would not shy away from the commercial side of his work, and neither do we. Because we knew that Warhol will be in the galleries for five months we extended our retail spaces, re-invented our restaurant and café and refreshed our donations and support programme to make the most of the projected number of visitors. The anticipated commercial success of the season allowed the Pavilion to take more risks within the rest of the year. For example, a season of visual art and music created and inspired by John Cage presented here in April 2011 was an artistic triumph but not huge crowd-puller.
The success of the Warhol Is Here exhibition (40,000 visitors and count- ing) has been marred by the tragic death of the Pavilion's director Alan Haydon, only two weeks after the opening. Alan knew how significant having an artist like Andy Warhol would be for the Pavilion and for Bexhill. Warhol Is Here is another way of saying Warhol is in Bexhill, at the Pavilion - who would have believed it? The fact that Alan did believe it and led his team to the point where the vision became a reality is a testament to his ambition of the Pavilion being recognised as an organisation of international standing.
Warhol Is Here runs until 26 February 2012. www.dlwp.com
Alan Haydon, Director of the De La Warr Pavilion (1949 - 2011).
Sally Ann Lycett is head of communications at the De La Warr Pavilion.
Artist Rooms On Tour is a partner- ship with the Art Fund. Artist Rooms is jointly owned by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland and was established through The d'Offay Donation in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments.
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