Facades: Ed Kluz

18 September - 15 October 2019
Overview

‘…we went to Ranelagh. It is a charming place; and the brilliancy of the lights, on my first entrance, made me almost think I was in some inchanted castle or fairy palace, for all looked like magic to me.’
Fanny Burney, Evelina, 1778

Designs for pageantry, celebration and pleasure form the inspiration for Ed Kluz’s third exhibition at John Martin Gallery, Facades. From the Arches of Triumph constructed for the Coronation of James I in 1604,to the Ranelagh Rotunda and Inigo Jones’s unexecuted plans for a new Whitehall Palace, each occupies a significant place in London’s cultural history despite being either short-lived or existing only as engravings and drawings. Elaborate architectural schemes giving an effect of magnificence and opulence were often no more than fragile, temporary facades. In recreating these lost splendours, Ed Kluz’s paintings set out to capture the sense of celebration for which they were designed, pleasures as fleeting and impermanent as their architecture.

 

The exhibition is divided into three parts. Firstly a series of ink drawings of the City of London gates, then an ambitious series recreating some of the Triumphal Arches designed by Stephen Harrison to celebrate the coronation of James I in London in 1604. Finally a group of large scale oil and collage panels of some of London’ most famous buildings from the Whitehall Palace, the Royal Exchange to the Ranelagh Rotunda.

Works