Event category: Type

William Morris was a key figure in the development of domestic garden design, helping to popularise the Arts and Crafts garden among the artistic middle class in England and the US. His gardens at Red House and then Kelmscott Manor supplied endless inspiration to Morris, his family and friends.

The Enchanted Garden explores how Morris’s contemporaries and subsequent generations of artists – from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Bloomsbury Group – have responded to the allure of garden spaces, using them as stages for the magical, menacing and romantic.

Many works in the exhibition reference real gardens that still enchant visitors today, including Morris’s Red House and Kelmscott Manor, which supplied endless inspiration for him, his family and friends.

Featured artists include Claude Monet, Lucian Pissarro, Edward Burne-Jones, Stanley Spencer, Beatrix Potter, Cicely Mary Barker, Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell.

The exhibition is organised by the Laing Art Gallery in association with the William Morris Gallery.

Image: Claude Monet, Water-Lilies, Setting Sun, c.1907 © National Gallery, London

Lola Lely (designer and textile artist), Laura Anderson (sculptor and woodcarver) and Harriet Warden (illustrator and printmaker) come together to seek ways in which the designs and traditional processes synonymous with William Morris can find artistic form and relevance in the contemporary and culturally diverse setting of Walthamstow in 2019.

Local printmaker Kirsten Schmidt is inspired by our connection to nature, and the urban spaces where we can make these connections.

This exhibition celebrates the artist’s respondes to Lloyd Park, home of William Morris Gallery, and other green spaces in the borough.

Madge Gill was born in Walthamstow and spent most of her years living in East London.

A self-taught, visionary artist, she created meticulous artworks, many of which she attributed to Myrninerest, her spirit-guide that she came to embody.

This landmark exhibition in her home town brings together drawings, newly uncovered large-scale embroideries, textiles and archival objects, many of which have never been exhibited before.

Accompanying Madge Gill is an exhibition by the celebrated French “outsider” artist Marie-Rose Lortet, whose work has been greatly influenced by Gill’s. On display will be Lortet’s distinctive embroidered masks and fabric sculptures.

In 1942, Chairman Mao Zedong declared that all art should serve the worker, peasant and soldier. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76) this policy was vigorously implemented.

Images of the leader appeared everywhere: bold, colourful posters combined text and image to promote political messages. The predominant colour was red – colour of the revolution – and when Mao was shown, it was always amid a glowing light.

Traditional landscape styles were reimagined and now incorporated symbols of modern and industrial achievement. Even the traditional folk art of the delicate papercut, used to decorate windows at home, promoted ‘Mao Zedong Thought’.

This exhibition displays a selection of Cultural Revolution propaganda posters, revolutionary landscapes, images of the leader and intricate papercuts all of which were collected in China during the 1970s.

This is a touring exhibition organised by the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

Haiku Adventure: The Craft of Games explores the intersection between traditional Japanese woodblock prints and videogames – two different media separated by centuries and yet linked by a common sensibility.

Small Island Games present the development of their ‘indie’ title Haiku Adventure, juxtaposing its creative process with its artistic influence: the ukiyo-e prints of Edo-era Japan. The display follows on from the Gallery’s 2017 exhibition, Sheer Pleasure: Frank Brangwyn and the Art of Japan, which was formative to the game’s conception.

This exhibition showcases original Japanese prints alongside interactive game displays and an overview of the development process, allowing visitors to experience a modern adaptation of an ancient craft.

The Yellow Wallpaper is an exhibition of new portraits by American artist, Kehinde Wiley. This is the first solo exhibition of new work shown by Wiley at a UK museum and also the first to feature exclusively female portraits. The works feature women that the artist met on the streets of Dalston and offer a visual response to American novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s acclaimed feminist text, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892).

‘The Yellow Wallpaper is a work of literary fiction that explores the contours of femininity and insanity. This exhibition seeks to use the language of the decorative to reconcile blackness, gender, and a beautiful and terrible past.’ — Kehinde Wiley

Gilman’s text is a semi-autobiographical tale which sees her narrator confined to her bedroom after being diagnosed with hysteria and explores the disastrous consequences of denying women independence. In Wiley’s new portraits, each woman is positioned as autonomous, as powerful, as open to individual interpretation and as an emblem of strength within a society of complicated social networks. They wholly embody myriad positions with regard to social class, status, religion, colonialism and the negotiation of gender.

For over fifteen years Wiley has sourced William Morris’s iconic floral designs for his paintings. Building on his interest in the relationship between the human body and the decorative, Wiley’s models are depicted in reimagined fields inspired by the William Morris oeuvre. Wiley’s portraits offer a rubric through which to engage with the beautiful yet fraught histories and traditions that black women — and all women — are heir to.

This exhibition in the Story Lounge highlights the lives led by the women of William Morris’s social circle alongside portrait photographs of them from our collection. In the nineteenth century individuals might only be photographed a few times in their lives so many photographers specifically designed images to capture the essential character of their sitters.

William Morris’s mother, the stately Emma Morris, is seen leaning on an ornate urn while his industrious sister, Isabella Gilmore, embroiders in her deaconess uniform. Images of Jane Morris, captured as a gentle mother or a languid muse, throw light on the varied aspects of her personality.

However, portrait photographs of women could also shade parts of their lives from view. Simple seated portraits of Rosalind Howard reveal nothing of her radical politics, where a male sitter in her position may have been captured at a writing desk or next to a collection of political books.

Within The Reach of All: The Century Guild is the first exhibition in 20 years to explore the pioneering aesthetics and lasting legacy of this influential association of artists, designers and craftspeople.

The Century Guild was established by the architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851 – 1942), who later helped found the William Morris Gallery, and his assistant, Herbert Percy Horne (1864 – 1916), in close collaboration with designer Selwyn Image (1849 – 1930). They aspired to elevate crafts to the status of art, integrate both art and crafts in domestic interiors, and democratise good design. Within The Reach of All: The Century Guild will explore the group’s key figures, along with its influence on Art Nouveau, 20th-century design and modern publishing, through works from the William Morris Gallery, which holds the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of Century Guild works.

The exhibition coincides with the publication of a new book on the subject by Stuart Evans and Jean Liddiard. Arts and Crafts Pioneers: The Hobby Horse Men and their Century Guild is published in the UK by Lund Humphries on 28 January 2021.

Pioneers: William Morris and the Bauhaus is the first exhibition in the UK to fully explore the relationship between the English Arts and Crafts movement and the Bauhaus, the ground-breaking German art school established by Walter Gropius. Timed to coincide with the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus in 1919, it brings together over 60 objects from nine international and domestic lenders, some of which have never been displayed in the UK before.

The exhibition uses Morris’s key principles of Unity, Craft, Simplicity and Community as a lens to explore the early years of the Bauhaus, from its establishment as a radical new school in the conservative city of Weimar, to its move to a purpose-built campus in Dessau. Along the way, the Bauhauslers embraced a diverse range of ideas and aesthetics as they adopted and adapted the messages of the Arts and Crafts movement in their quest to design a better world. In showing objects made at the Bauhaus alongside Morris’s own pioneering designs, the exhibition invites visitors to explore alternative perspectives on the Bauhaus, as well as see Morris’s legacy in a new light.

Alongside the exhibition is a display of three pieces by acclaimed London-based fashion designer Mary Katrantzou, who is lending garments from her Autumn/Winter 2018 collection, which combines Bauhaus prints with patterns inspired by William Morris. There is also an installation by Bauhaus Artist in Residence, Nicholas Pankhurst.

Pioneers: William Morris and the Bauhaus has been funded through Art Happens, the Art Fund’s crowdfunding platform.

A principal founder of the Arts and Crafts Movement, William Morris was responsible for producing hundreds of patterns for wallpapers, furnishing fabrics, carpets and embroideries, helping to introduce a new aesthetic into British interiors. While it has long been acknowledged that Morris was inspired by Islamic art, this is the first exhibition to examine this important aspect of his artistic journey in depth.

Alongside his own iconic designs, outstanding examples of Islamic textiles, ceramics, metalwork and manuscripts from Morris’s personal collection – now belonging to major UK institutions including the British Library, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge – are brought together for the first time to reveal the wider impacts of these objects, their designs and impressions on Morris’s creative output.

The umbrella terms “Islamic world” and “Islamic art” are widely used to facilitate the categorisation of art produced in areas where Islam was the dominant religion or the religion of those who ruled. However, they perpetuate the notion that there is a single identity or uniformity within the vast output of production from across huge geographical regions. These ideas will be explored and discussed further in the exhibition and public programme.

Featuring over 90 works, the exhibition demonstrates how some of Morris’s best-known designs such as Flower Garden (1879), Wild Tulip and Granada (1884) were directly inspired by Islamic surface design and its technical application. This exhibition sets out to enrich our appreciation of Morris’s work and broaden our understanding of the underlying influences of this quintessentially British designer. The exhibition is made possible thanks to funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Garfield Weston Foundation.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a new publication, Tulips and Peacocks: William Morris and Art from the Islamic World (Yale University Press).

William Morris & Art from the Islamic World is curated by Rowan Bain, principal curator of William Morris Gallery, and Qaisra M. Khan, Curator of Islamic Art.

Images:
Peacock, c.1870, Iran, hollow brass with pierced decoration and turquoise. © The Society of Antiquaries of London (Kelmscott Manor)
Wild Tulip, 1884, designed by William Morris for Morris & Co., block-printed wallpaper. © William Morris Gallery

Muslims on Morris

A film commissioned by the Gallery to accompany the exhibition. In this short film we hear from three Muslims creatives who share their experience of William Morris and how they relate to his work and legacy today. Featuring Tayybah Tahir: Trainee Curator, William Morris Gallery, Yasim Hyatt: Traditional Artist, Wallpaper and Fabric Designer, Zarah Hussain: Digital Artist.

Directed by Navid Akhtar. Watch the film

Object Stories: Young people’s 2024 Curatorial Interpretation course

William Morris Gallery, with support from National Heritage Lottery Fund, offered adults aged 18-25 the opportunity to take part in a curatorial interpretation professional development course, inspired by the temporary exhibition that was opening at the Gallery in November 2024, William Morris & Art from the Islamic World.  During the summer of 2024, 20 young people with an interest in this exhibition were recruited for the course to enhance the interpretation of objects and stories in the exhibition. This five-day professional development opportunity was run by Shaheen Kasmani, artist, curator and educator.

You can read Object Stories produced by participants on this dedicated page.

Bayt Al Fann

To celebrate the exhibition William Morris & Art from the Islamic World, William Morris Gallery has collaborated with Bayt Al Fann to present a specially curated, limited-edition digital publication, William Morris & Islamic Art: Women Artists, crafted as a unique dialogue between pioneering women artists whose work is rooted in Islamic art and the legacy of William Morris. You can pick up a copy at the Gallery with a suggested donation of £2 or view it as a digital download. Read more about the project.