Photograph courtesy Peter Mallett, Gazelli Arthouse and the artist
Derek Boshier
Drawings, Paintings & 'Ghosts of Portsmouth'
Preview Thursday 6th September 6-8.30pm
Derek Boshier In Conversation with Marco Livingstone 7pm
Exhibition Dates
7th September to 13th October 2018
An evening of Mr Boshier's Films hosted by the artist
26th September 6-9pm
Pompey born Hertha Ayrton
This is Derek Boshier's first exhibition in his home town of Portsmouth, a city he left many years ago but to which he returns every year and to which he still feels a strong affinity. When we talked about showing his work here at Jack House Gallery over a shared fish and chips at the Still & West Pub watching the ferries and harbour traffic Derek talked fondly and enthusiastically about Portsmouth and the characters both real and fictional that are associated with the city. Little did I know that he would return to his studio and the Los Angeles sunshine mulling over some ideas for a Pompey specific series which he has entitled 'Ghosts of Portsmouth' and which we will be showing here for the very first time. Some of those featured are familiar - Peter Sellars, Charles Dickens, Conan Doyle - others are less so - among them the Renaissance scholar Frances Yates and the marvellous Hertha Ayrton engineer, mathematician, inventor and all round super woman. Alongside these new works will be drawings and prints ranging over a period of years and featuring the original drawings for the CLASH 2nd Songbook born from his tutor/pupil relationship with CLASH front man and friend Joe Strummer. Derek Boshier is a restless artist with inquisitive magpie tendencies who has worked more consistently in drawing than any of the other mediums that he has explored including painting, print, photography and film. This show will also feature two large paintings inspired by his long artistic collaboration and friendship with David Bowie.
We are delighted that renowned Pop Art historian Marco Livingstone, who is also an old friend of Derek's, has agreed to sit and chat with the artist about his long career and artistic and social influences and hopefully elicit some gossip about his artist contemporaries and pop icon associates. Taking place on the opening night of the show this opportunity to sit in on the conversation and ask your own questions should not be missed.
Neither should the film night showcasing Derek's short films taking place later in the shows' run on the 26th September at 6pm when Mr Boshier will talk us through his witty and thought provoking visual journeys in the medium of film.
Inside album cover design by Derek Boshier for Lodger 1979 -Boshier was introduced to Bowie by the Photographer Brian Duffy click for more
Drawing from the Clash Songbook 1979
The CLASH 2nd Songbook- 'Such was the diversity of Boshier’s activities in the 1970s that a great work could appear out of the most unexpected circumstance. One of these, indisputably, is the Clash second Song Book, 1979. Joe Strummer had been one of Boshier’s students on the Foundation Course at the Central School of Art. Years later, and after a chance meeting in Oxford Street, Strummer commissioned Boshier to design the song book'.
Quotes from Rethink/Re-Entry by Guy Brett 2015
More images of the Songbook here
'David Bowie Twice' & 'David Bowie and Teresa Cornelys' both on show here at the gallery - 2 of the large paintings made shortly after David Bowie's death at the time of his upcoming exhibition in LA this article in W Magazine 2017:
'Boshier is turning his retrospective, up now at Night Gallery in Los Angeles through June 17, into something of a send-off for his old friend; he is calling it “On the Road,” a nod to Bowie’s appreciation for Jack Kerouac. The novel reportedly inspired a 15-year-old Bowie to buy himself a saxophone and start painting as soon as he’d finished reading, and Kerouac is featured alongside Bowie in one of the three towering portraits at the centre of the show, which Boshier painted in the months after Bowie's death. The works were a rare exercise in portraying Bowie without his input: in addition to the 1979's Lodger, for which Duffy photographed Bowie as a “fallen man” version of the Elephant Man, the play he was then starring in on Broadway, the duo also collaborated closely on Boshier's album cover for Bowie’s Let’s Dance LP, which has Bowie shadowboxing in front of a projection of a Boshier drawing, Bowie's touch, though, was always light. As Boshier recalled, “David just said, 'Do what you like.'"
For an in depth critique of these more recent Bowie works it's worth reading 'Cascading Over the Decades' and essay by Chris Stephens from 2017 which you can read here
