New Regatta Exhibition
Starts: 10 May 2008
Finishes: 6 July 2008
Location
River and Rowing Museum
Mill Meadows
Henley-on-Thames
RG9 1BF
Telephone: 01491 415600
Website: http://www.rrm.co.uk/
Description
A striking new exhibition about the pain of being beaten in competition is coming to the River & Rowing Museum, Henley-on-Thames. Gollon at Henley, by leading British artist Chris Gollon, is the first artistic study of the Henley Royal Regatta to explore defeat.
The exhibition is centred around the major work, Gollon at Henley, commissioned by the River & Rowing Museum. Gollon will use his fascination with tragi-comedy, the grotesque and absurd to portray the pain of losing. The work Gollon at Henley juxtaposes a defeated rower against the colourful Regatta crowd indifferent to his pain. The painting, together with the exhibition’s other works will be revealed for the first time at the River & Rowing Museum. Gollon’s silkscreen prints will be for sale in the Museum shop.
Following its display at the Museum, the exhibition will tour the USA after which the main work ‘Gollon at Henley’ will return to the River & Rowing Museum for permanent display. The work will be hung beside the famous French artist Raoul Dufy’s work Regatta at Henley (circa 1930). Dufy’s Fauvist style of strident colours, simplification and abstraction is in marked contrast to Gollon’s physical approach to painting. Visitors will be able to contrast two very different artistic interpretations of the Regatta painted almost a century apart.