Soon, the Beers London art gallery in Little Britain (near London’s Smithfield Market) will be closing its doors for the last time. Its final exhibition, works by several artists, will end on 29 August 2026.
Over the years, we have been visiting Beers, and always made to feel welcome by Kurt, its owner and his assistant, Rebecca. He has a very good eye, and has been exhibiting works by promising, often not too well-known, artists. We have never been disappointed by what we have seen at his gallery.
A few days ago, we were invited to the private view of his final show, which we attended. Kurt welcomed us warmly, and explained that the art market in London is declining rapidly – there is little money around for buying art at present.
After viewing the show, we said goodbye to Kurt, and wished him well for the future.
As we walked away from the gallery, I had a lump in my throat. I had not imagined that the closing of an art gallery would have seemed so sad and affect me so much.
We visit exhibitions in London regularly. The show I am about to outline was one we visited for a particular reason, which I will reveal later.
THE CAMDEN ART Centre on the corner of Arkwright Road and Finchley Road in north London is housed in a Victorian gothic building, which was built originally as a public library, It has been tastefully modernised to be used as an arts centre with good exhibition spaces. A contemporarily designed annex contains a pleasant café. The exhibitions put on at the centre rarely disappoint. Often, they highlight noteworthy artists, whose works are rarely displayed elsewhere in London.
By Donald Locke
The current show, which ends on 30 August 2026, is a collection of works by Donald Locke (1930-2010). He was born in Guyana (formerly ‘British Guiana’), and died in Atlanta (USA). In the 1950s, Donald came to the UK, where he studied art first at Bath Academy of Art, then at Edinburgh University. He moved to London in 1970, and at the end of the 1970s, moved to the USA – first to Phoenix (Arizona), then to Atlanta (Georgia). The Art Centre’s website (https://camdenartcentre.org/whats-on/resistant-forms?elevation=Headline) noted that Locke was:
“… singularly prolific and heterodox artist, this exhibition represents the most comprehensive survey to date of the range of materials and styles adopted by Donald Locke across his life, reflecting his unwavering pursuit to give form and visibility to the ‘unique and hybrid contributions of Black culture to modernity.’”
The exhibition displayed Locke’s versatility. It contains ceramic works, bronze sculptures, photographs, assemblages of objects (mostly created by the artist), a slide show, paintings, and collages. Many of the paintings have images pasted on them, and some have richly textured surfaces. The sculptural works include many cylindrical phallic forms – they might represent fingers, bullets, or phalluses. Although many of the works on display tend to contain abstract images, they are the artist’s way of exploring the historical, political, social, and physical environments in which he lived at different stages of his life.
The exhibition was beautifully laid out, and well worth seeing. An informative printed booklet provided a useful guide to the exhibits and how they related to the different stages of the artist’s life.
One thing the booklet failed to mention, and we found no note of it in the exhibition, is the fact that Donald Locke was the father of the very successful British artist Hew Locke (born in Edinburgh in 1959). Like his father, Hew is a multi-media artist, and according to Wikipedia, he is one of the:
“… (Black) Artists who continue to produce work with a critical message, like Yinka Shonibare and Hew Locke, avoid the open confrontation typical of the 1980s and instead use humour and satire, positioning themselves as cultural insiders, rather than excluded outsiders.”
It was because we were familiar with Hew’s work, when we learned that there was an exhibition of his father’s creations, we decided to see it, and we were not disappointed.
ARCHITECTURE, GOOD OR BAD, is one of the arts, and a practical one at that. Until 12 April 2026, the South London Gallery (part of the former Camberwell School of Art) is holding an exhibition of artworks created because of the artists’ reaction to architecture, real and imagined. Theire interpretations include references to intact buildings, as well as ruins and monuments.
By William Braithwaite
The works I liked best in the exhibition were a series of vertical sculptures made by William Braithwaite using timber and concrete. In his personal website (www.williambraithwaite.com/) he explained:
“I aim to create a dialogue between the two disciplines, considering how they inform and complement each other … While my work may reference architectural forms, it remains rooted in visual and conceptual exploration rather than function. The materials, scale, and context of my sculptures serve as tools to examine the aesthetic and spatial qualities of architecture.”
And this he does very effectively as can be seen when viewing the works on display at the South London Gallery. The sculptures are concrete pillars, square in cross-section, with staircases carved in the concrete of the pillars. These steps spiral up the pillars, and above each flight of steps, one can see what one imagines to be the undersides of other flights.
The other artworks on display were interesting but not as arresting as the sculptures by Braithwaite. Of these, I liked a trompe-l’oeil by Ally Fallon, and a larger than life set of sewing tools (needles, pins, and safety pin), whose connection with architecture was not obvious to me.
There are only a couple of days left before this exhibition ends, and I am glad I was able to see it. Exhibitions held at the South London Gallery rarely, if ever, disappoint. So, if you have missed the one described above, try to see whatever they show in the future (see: www.southlondongallery.org/).
AS I WRITE this on 7 April 2026, the President of the USA has already threatened “… to bomb Iran ‘into the Stone Age’.
In 1940,the Germans, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, had slightly less ambitious evilintentions. They tried to reduce London to no more than rubble, and to some extent they succeeded, as can be seen at an exhibition being held at London’s Imperial War Museum until 1 November 2026. The show, “Beauty and Destruction: Wartime London in Art”, contains a collection of paintings and drawings done by artists who were in London while it was being bombed by the Germans, during the so-called Blitz. There are images by a wide range of war artists, some I had heard of, and others that were new to me. Each image is accompanied by a good explanatory panel.
By John Farleigh
I knew thar during the Blitz, peopled sheltered in deep Underground stations, and that the artist Henry Moore is famous for depicting these makeshift shelters and those sheltering within them. What interested me in the War Museum’s exhibition was that there were pictures of these Underground shelters and other subterranean places by other artists, including: John Farliegh, Edward Ardizzone, Olga Lehmann, and Anthony Gross.
The other pictures on display show the damage done to buildings, aspects of attack and defence, life during the Blitz, and portraits of those who suffered during the attacks. Given what has been threatened by a President of the USA, it was somewhat unnerving seeing the pictures in the War Museum’s superb exhibition.
FACING THE BARMY Arms pub on the Thames riverside at Twickenham and across the water is an islet, which is 610 yards long and 122 yards wide at its broadest point. A footbridge connects the isle with Twickenham. The island is called Eel Pie Island, and it has been used by man since the Mesolithic era (15000-5000 BC), if not earlier. More recently, it was home to the Eel Pie Island Hotel, a building constructed in the nineteenth century. In the 19320s and 1930s, the hotel hosted ballroom dancing. And from the 1950s onwards, it hosted Jazz bands, and later Rock Music groups including, for example: The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Yardbirds, Pink Floyd, and other now famous groups. The hotel went into decline, and in 1969 it was occupied by anarchists who established a hippie commune in it. In 1971, the hotel was destroyed by fire.
We walked across the bridge, and along the island’s single winding footpath. On our way we passed houses and gardens, many of which have been decorated in humorously picturesque ways. At the end of the path, there is a red painted metal door, through which we passed, and entered a large covered boat repair workshop. Beyond that, there is an amazing collection of wackily decorated shacks and sheds, in which artists have studios. There is also a modern block of flats, which looks too conventional for its eccentric surroundings, and a far cry from the alternative atmosphere that prevails on the rest of the island.
Eel Pie Island, apart from being residential, is home to the Twickenham Rowing Club as well as Pie Island Art Studios, which open to the public occasionally, allowing visitors to enjoy and buy the island’s artists’ works.
Although notices proclaim that Eel Pie Island is private, nobody stopped us entering, and the few people we met there greeted us amicably.
WE VISITED BANGALORE’S Chitrakala Parishath, an art school, on the last day of an exhibition called “Hidden Gems of the Western Ghats”. We were alerted to it by a good friend, Ajay Ghatage, who posted something about it on Facebook.
The Western Ghats are a line of hills and mountains that separate the Deccan Plateau from the western coastal strip of India, the shore of the Arabian Sea. The ghats are in the most part forested.
The exhibition included sculptures, many of them beautiful stone carvings, paintings, and a few ‘installations’. Each work expresses its creator’s reaction to the nature and its exploitation (and/or despoliation) by mankind. And the majority of the artworks on display did this well, beautifully, and often highly imaginatively.
Amongst the installations, there was one by Shivanand Shyagoti that particularly attracted my attention. It consisted of a tree trunk into which hatchets had been stuck. On the wooden handles of each of these choppers, there were line drawings of the woodland creatures whose habitat would be disturbed by deforestation.
The other works on display were at least as imaginative as the one described above. What was impressive about the majority of the artworks was that although they often conveyed messages about the fragility of the natural environments of the Western Ghats, they did it subtly, creatively, and, most importantly, beautifully.
DURSLADE FARM NEAR Bruton in Somerset is home to a branch of the international commercial art gallery, Hauser and Wirth. Until 1 February 2026, there is a wonderful exhibition of artworks by Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) and his partner, wife (for a while), and long-term collaborator Nikki de St Phalle (1930-2002). Both artists produced highly original and very imaginative creations.
A collaboration by Tinguely and de St Phalle
The sculptures created by Tinguely are frequently examples of kinetic art in which elements of the sculptures are made to move by motors, which are parts of the artworks. His sculptures often resemble unusual machines. Some of his works were collaborations with Nikki de St Phalle.
Nikki’s works are often colourful, playful, and figurative. In one room of the exhibition, the viewer is introduced to an interesting method of creating artworks used by de St Phalle. She used a rifle to fire bullets filled with paint at various targets. When the bullets hit the targets, they splattered the paint contained within them. A few examples of this procedure are on display in the show.
The exhibition is held both inside and outside the buildings at Durslade Farm. The works outside were by de St Phalle. Those by Tinguely are all inside. Every 10 minutes, the sculptures with motors are activated for a few minutes. They are now too fragile to be run continuously or left in the open air.
Hauser and Wirth Somerset (at Durslade Farm) is now a popular destination not only for its art shows but also for its restaurants, garden, and pricey farm shop. However, its art exhibitions are always superb, and the current one is no exception.
SIR WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN (1872-1945) was born of German-Jewish parents in the Yorkshire city of Bradford. His father was involved in Bradford’s textile business. Trained at the Slade School of Art (part of London’s UCL), William became a well-known painter and cultural figure. Between 1920 and 1935, he was director of the Royal College of Art. Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his work “Gitanjali” to William. One of William’s sons, Michael Rothenstein (1908-1993), who was born in Hampstead, became a noted printmaker. He married Betty Mona Desmond Ayers (née FitzGerald; 1915-2017), who was known as ‘Duffy Ayres’. She was an English portrait painter.
Michael and Duffy had two children, one of whom is Anne Rothenstein (born 1949). She is a self-taught artist, who lives and works in London. Until 12 April 2025, there is an exhibition of her paintings at the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London’s Cork Street. Her attractive paintings, which seem deceptively simple when compared with those made by her grandfather William, depict portraits, interiors, and landscapes. However, they are far from simple. They are subtle and sometimes dreamlike. And as the gallery’s handout noted, her portrayal of perspective is unusual: the landscapes seem flattened. The paintings on display are oddly compelling and this along with their somewhat muted colouring, enhanced my enjoyment of Anne’s art.
As soon as we entered the gallery and I saw the artist’s name, I wondered whether she is related to the famous Sir William Rothenstein. When the gallery assistant informed us that she is from the same family, I was excited. Already, I knew of William’s connections with Hampstead and that he hosted Tagore, when the great Bengali visited London, but I had no idea that both his son and his granddaughter were artists (although far less well-known than him).
DURING THE 1950S and the first half of the 1960s, my mother, Helen Yamey, created sculptures in the sculpture workshops of St Martins School of Art, which was then located on Charing Cross Road. Although my mother was not a student at St Martins, she worked alongside one of the school’s teachers of sculpture, the noted sculptor Anthony Caro (1924-2013). Caro became famous for his metal sculptures that consist of pieces of metal either welded or bolted together. While my mother was making sculptures at St Martins, she like other sculptors including Phillip King, Tim Scott, and William Tucker, was undoubtedly influenced by, and learned from, Caro’s work. She learned welding and created several abstract sculptures that consist of pieces of steel welded together. Unlike Caro, who achieved great fame, my mother, who was unambitious and only created sculpture to fulfil a creative urge, my mother and her sculptures became forgotten.
Today, 8 March 2025, we visited the Annely Juda Fine Art Gallery in central London to see a small exhibition of sculptures by Anthony Caro. Unlike many of Caro’s works, the metal sculptures on display, are not enormous. They are small enough to be fitted comfortably into one’s living room or a small garden. Indeed, one of the sculptures, in my opinion the most attractive, has the title “Table Piece CCCXLI”. It was constructed in oxidised steel. The five Caro pieces in the exhibition display a variety of compositional style, and together demonstrate the artist’s versatility. They were all made between 1970 and 1990. My mother left St Martins before this period, sometime in the mid-1960s. I know that she maintained an interest in Caro’s output, but. Sadly, I cannot recall what she thought of its quality.
UNTIL ABOUT 1991, my widowed father resided in my childhood home in northwest London. For as long as I can remember, there was a collection of black and white photographs in a cardboard Kodak photographic paper box. The photographs contained images of sculptures, which my mother Helen Yamey (1920-1980) had created at St Martins School of Art in London during the later 1950s and first half of the following decade. In 1991, my father married again, and moved from our childhood home to another address. Every now and then, after my father moved, I used to ask him what had happened to the photographs. He used to reply that he did not know where they were. Maybe, he suggested, they were stored somewhere in the garage of his new home. He died in 2020. After that, I thought that it was extremely unlikely that I would ever set eyes on the photographs again.
A year or two after my father’s demise, his widow, my stepmother, arranged to meet me at a café. When she arrived, she was carrying a plastic carrier bag, which she handed to me. To my great delight, I found that it contained the Kodak box filled with photographs of my mother’s sculptures. I posted a few of these images on the Internet. Some months after that, my friend Edesio mentioned that he was impressed by the images of my mother’s sculptures, and suggested to me that I should write something about my mother and her art. This I have done.
When I began writing my mother’s biography, our daughter Mala, who is an art historian and a curator, sent me a pdf file containing the contents of a catalogue of an exhibition held at London’s Grosvenor Gallery in the 1960s. It contained mention of some of my mother’s work that appeared in the exhibition. Mala did a little more research and discovered the existence of catalogues of other exhibitions in which my mother’s sculpture was included. I investigated these catalogues and came across a few more, I was surprised by what I discovered.
During the first half of the 1960s, my mother’s sculptures were selected to appear in exhibitions alongside artworks created by artists, many of whom are now quite famous. These include, to mention but a few, David Hockney, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Howard Hodgkin, Bridget Riley, Kim Lim, and LS Lowry. These exhibitions were held when I was between 8 and 13 years old. In those days, I was not particularly interested in my mother’s artistic activities and was too young for the names of these artists to mean anything to me. In addition, I do not recall even having been told that my mother was participating in exhibitions, let alone showing her work alongside that of these now famous creators. So, until I studied these catalogues more than 40 years after my mother died, I had no idea that for a while she was in the vanguard of 20th century British sculpture. Had I not been stimulated into beginning to write about her, I would not have known that my mother, who never boasted about her achievements, had been an artist of such a high calibre.
I have written my memories of my mother in a book called “Remembering Helen: My Mother the Artist” (available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DKCZ7J7X/) . In it I have tried to describe her upbringing; what she was like as a mother; and her achievements in the world of sculpture. I have included many of the images I found in the box of photographs, and our daughter has written some insightful notes on her grandmother’s sculptural styles and the techniques. I hope that my book will help bring my mother’s artistic achievements out of obscurity. Modest as she was, I feel that it would be good if she were to get at least a little of the fame she deserved.
yamey 