New Works By Julian Opie Will Go On Show at Pitzhanger Manor in June

This summer, Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery presents a new body of work by contemporary British artist Julian Opie.

For Opie's solo exhibition at Pitzhanger - his first in a London public gallery in four years - he has created new sculptures, LED animations, light box paintings and film that focus on people, buildings and animals. The works create their own landscape, a walk-through environment like a computer game or a journey through a city. Some of the images are animated and others animate as visitors wander around or through them.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a new work, French village 1, an immersive, three-dimensional installation created especially for the exhibition at Pitzhanger. Based on a region of southwestern France, the work invites visitors to explore its empty streets and circulate through imaginary spaces from multiple viewpoints. In the adjoining gallery, French Town and Vic Fezensac 1 and 2, explore similar vistas through lightbox paintings and animation on LED screen.

The exhibition features fourteen works, including eight metal sculptures; Deer 2, Dog 4 and three of Opie's distinctive walking figures. Three new sculptures, produced last year after his visit to Portugal, draw the Baroque buildings of Basílica da Estrela, Universidade and the Sé Catedral de Aveiro.

Opie is recognisable for his distinctive and refined drawing style, distilling the visual information of our everyday reality to a universal language of symbols and signs. Like Sir John Soane, architect and designer of Pitzhanger, Opie reflects a wide range of diverse influences and art historical references within his work.

The exhibition will incorporate works outside, both in front of the Manor and in Walpole Park at the rear. Opie's animated sculpture Crows, five monochrome birds on LED screens, will be installed outside as public art for the first time in the UK. It is accompanied by a new LED monolith titled Curly hair.

Julian Opie said: "Pitzhanger gallery immediately struck me as a beautiful and unique space. The grand house faces a standard busy contemporary London high street and backs onto a large public park with a pond and long vista.

"I have tried to straddle these experiences and use all the possibilities provided. There will be buildings, people and animals to wander past, laid out as statues and paintings in a museum.

"It's the first time I have shown in London for a long while and I wanted to exhibit a varied group of works that makes a compact and coherent story, but uses a full range of the things I have been working on in recent years."

Clare Gough, Director of Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, said: "Julian's striking and playful installations and graphic artworks at Pitzhanger will bring a fresh perspective to Soane's architecture in dialogue with its surrounding parkland in Ealing.

"I am delighted that this exhibition, for the first time, will include installations outside Pitzhanger in the surrounding grounds of Walpole Park: we hope these will engage and draw in new visitors"

Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery reopens on Thursday 27 May with two exhibitions. This is Ealing (27 May - 6 June 2021) is an exhibition of photographs taken by people across Ealing reflecting their lives and experiences during the Covid pandemic and Soane Restored (27 May 2021 - 5 June 2022) reveals the fascinating story of how Pitzhanger was restored to Soane's original vision, brought to life with photos and objects.

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