Goldmark 34, 2024

This Autumn issue arrives at a bittersweet moment for us at the gallery. The past few weeks have seen the loss of two artists with whom we have been working closely in recent months. Graham Boyd, who was 96 – and still painting every day – had an enthusiasm for art, paint and colour that was wonderfully infectious. Over a 70-year career he never stopped exploring where his vibrant abstractions might take him. We will remember his unending energy with a celebratory exhibition later this October.

It was an extraordinary series of events that saw us reunited with Norman Ackroyd earlier this year, three decades after we had last worked together. That chance meeting subsequently sparked the completion of another exceptional project of Norman’s that had lain dormant for years. I am delighted that we have been able to bring it to fruition – and deeply saddened that Norman, who passed away on the 16th September, just days after the last details were finalised, won’t be here to celebrate it with us. However, for both artists, the work lives on and continues to bring joy, as I hope the other fantastic features in this magazine will too.

CONTRIBUTORS

Ceri Levy is a filmmaker, writer, and ‘gonzovationist’. As a creator of many music videos and documentaries, he is best known for his 2009 film Bananaz, following the cartoon-band Gorillaz. With the artist Ralph Steadman he co-authored the successful Gonzovation Trilogy of books, comprising Extinct Boids, Nextinction and Critical Critters. In 2006, Levy was invited to film the process of Norman Ackroyd’s Alchemy on Anglesey, a project that aimed to produce a series of etchings of Anglesey on plates of copper mined from the island itself.

Mark Haddon is a writer and artist, widely celebrated as the author of the bestselling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, for which he was awarded the Whitbread Award. His latest book, Dogs and Monsters, Haddon’s second collection of short stories, was published by Chatto & Windus in August of this year.

Julian Spalding is an art historian, writer, broadcaster and a former curator. An outspoken critic of the art world, he has frequently contributed to arts, news and current affairs programmes on radio and TV. Spalding was one of Francis Davison’s first critical champions, curating the artist’s sole lifetime retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, 1983. A fuller account of his friendship with Davison, the development of his work, and its unlikely impact on Damien Hirst appears in his professional memoir Art Exposed (Pallas Athena, 2023).