“The later pieces – a bronze cast of a high-heeled shoe stained with blood, for instance – tend often to be rather too literal. They lose their lightness of spirit and with it their entrancing charm. But, for the most part, by a process of strict paring down, curators return the visitor to a sense of how fresh, how uplifting, this art must once have felt.” (Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times, 19 June 2012)
Dickens and the artists, Watts Gallery, Compton, Surrey, 19 June – 28 October
“At this bicentenary of his birth, The Watt’s Gallery’s new exhibition Dickens and the Artists (19 June – 28 October 2012) explores this fascinating and symbiotic relationship between the writer and art. The exhibition will be divided into two sections that reflect this symbiotic relationship : ‘Dickens as Art Critic’ and ‘The Influence of Dickens on Artists’. The first will explore Dickens’s tastes and artistic friendships; his strong like and dislikes; the second will explore the profound impact that Dickens made upon a generation of artists, not only who those drew upon his novels as a source for painting but those who created a painterly equivalent to his novels, rich visual narratives of the Dickensian world.” (Yale University Press website)
