HERE IS A GALE WARNING
ART, CRISIS & SURVIVAL
KETTLE’S YARD

22 March – 29 June 2025

Exhibition curated by Dr Amy Tobin, Curator, Contemporary Programmes, Kettle’s Yard.

Kettle’s Yard is delighted to present ‘Here is a Gale Warning: Art, Crisis & Survival’, a major exhibition exploring the capacity of artworks to both warn us of political, social and ecological upheaval, and to serve as a source of replenishment. It brings together eight contemporary artists working across forms, territories and generations, each responding to specific moments and broader systems of instability, from housing crises and ecological breakdown to racialised violence and colonial displacement. These artists may attest to a broken world, but they also work to heal, mend and imagine new possibilities for survival.

Drawing together artists working in different media and distinct contexts, the exhibition finds points of connection and solidarity across generations, moments, priorities and struggles.

The exhibition borrows its title from the 1971 work Here is a Gale Warning by Rose Finn-Kelcey, a hand sewn flag originally installed at Alexandra Palace. Bearing its matter-of-fact message in block capitals, the flag broadcasts of an emergency already in progress, alerting us that perpetual crisis nonetheless demands vigilant attention.

Kettle’s Yard

THE WONDER AND THE WARNINGS OF ROSE FINN-KELCEY
FRIEZE MAGAZINE

Reflecting on the artist’s enduring influence as her flag flies over Tate Britain in London.

Written by Goshka Macuga

..."It is remarkable to me that, in the early 1970s, Finn-Kelcey was already commenting on the relationship between humans and their environment in the context of climate change. Yet, 50 years on, we have done little to heed those ‘gale warnings’. Finn-Kelcey argued that flags reflect upon ephemerality, value and the power of words, highlighting how we communicate, interpret and amplify messages. Moreover, by their very nature, flags demonstrate how a message can change from truth to absurdity with a sudden shift in the wind. They can also be read as metaphors for a political climate, a commentary on how attitudes change in fundamental – though not necessarily truthful – ways, depending on which direction the winds of history blow. In the current social and cultural context, this seems highly poignant."

Frieze Issue 240

ROSE FINN-KELCEY
WOMEN IN REVOLT! ART AND ACTIVISM IN THE UK

8 November 2023 - 7 April 2024

The first of its kind, this exhibition is a wide-ranging exploration of feminist art by over 100 women artists working in the UK. It shines a spotlight on how networks of women used radical ideas and rebellious methods to make an invaluable contribution to British culture. Their art helped fuel the women’s liberation movement during a period of significant social, economic and political change.

Tate Britain

ROSE FINN-KELCEY
FRIEZE MASTERS 2023

11 - 15 October 2023

Kate MacGarry and the Estate of Rose Finn-Kelcey are delighted to present key conceptual works by Rose Finn-Kelcey (1945-2014) from the 1970-80s at Frieze Masters 2023.

Working in a variety of mediums, Finn-Kelcey’s work explored the relationship between the subjective and the personal: several of her works were staged in public spaces, ranging from broadcasting corporations to churches, energy suppliers and government buildings.

Finn-Kelcey’s early work in the 1970s was predominantly performance-based. It was important to her that art should be seen by, and engage with, the life around it. Engagement implied that the artist should be involved with or should be a part of the work itself and meant that her pieces from this period were often ephemeral.

Kate MacGarry

ROSE FINN-KELCEY AT
KATE MACGARRY

14 February - 04 April 2020

Curated by Andrée Cooke, Artistic Executor for the Estate of Rose Finn-Kelcey and artist and curator Simon Moretti.

Andrée Cooke and Kate MacGarry are delighted to present a solo exhibition of works by Rose Finn-Kelcey (1945-2014). The exhibition focuses on key pieces from the 70’s to the 90’s, exploring a breadth of work central to Finn-Kelcey’s practice. She first came to prominence in the early 1970s as an artist central to the emerging communities of performance and Feminist art in the UK. The nature of Finn-Kelcey’s work is richly diverse, both in form and subject matter, however it is consistently conceptual and “characterised by a dry wit that belies the formidable intelligence and deep humanity that drove her practice [1]”.She deftly offers humour as a point of access into her work, allowing a wide and varied audience to consider topics as varied as life, death and spirituality communicated with great depth and profundity.

Kate MacGarry
27 Old Nichol Street, London E2 7HR

ROSE FINN-KELCEY: BUREAU DE CHANGE ON SHOW AT TATE BRITAIN TO COINCIDE WITH THE EY EXHIBITION, VAN GOGH AND BRITAIN.

27 March - 11 August 2019

This major exhibition brings together 45 works by Vincent van Gogh to reveal how he was inspired by Britain and how he inspired British artists.

We are delighted that Rose Finn-Kelcey’s Bureau de Change will be on show to coincide with Van Gogh’s exhibition.

Bureau de Change, 1987, consists of a large-scale rendering (2290 x 1520 mms) of one of Vincent van Gogh’s (1853–1890) iconic Sunflowers paintings (see, for example, Sunflowers 1888, National Gallery, London), made using £1,000 worth of British coinage laid out flat on a fragmented section of wooden flooring. The image of the coin ‘painting’ is lit using a theatrical lighting rig. To one side sits a uniformed guard and a video monitor suspended from the ceiling displays an image of the coin ‘painting’ fed to it by a CCTV camera directed at the work. The installation is completed by a viewing platform from which the piece can be appraised.

Finn-Kelcey’s initial motivation for making the work was the sale at auction in 1987 of one of van Gogh’s Sunflowers to the Yasuda Insurance Company of Japan, for the then record price for any work of art, of £24.5 million.

Read more about Bureau de Change on the Tate’s website.

EY Exhibition Van Gogh and Britain.

MARCUS TOMLINSON: MADONNA, SKETCH LONDON

Curated by Andrée Cooke
20 March – 10 May 2019 

sketch presents an exhibition of fashion and landscape photographs, films and wallpaper designs by film and image-maker Marcus Tomlinson.

London-based Tomlinson presents a series of photographic and film works spanning thirty years of his career. Large-scale fashion and landscape photographs and short films are set against a backdrop of wallpaper designed by the artist.

‘Madonna’ is an installation celebrating the essence of the idealized woman through the dual lens of fashion imagery and imagery of ‘mother nature’, Tomlinson’s personal passion.

Tomlinson has created visionary photographs and films that uniquely combine art and fashion sensibilities. His intensely crafted, highly stylized, studio-based imagery has won him international acclaim with showcases in prestigiousfashion and lifestyle magazines, as well as in galleries and museums internationally.

sketch, 9 Conduit St, W1S 2XG

DENIS MASI 1968 - 1972

Curated by Andrée Cooke and Dan Edwards, celebrates some of Masi’s most significant performance and photographic pieces from that period. 

In 1968, Denis Masi started presenting himself in his pieces as the subject, using his body as material for creating artworks, during which time Body Art became an international trend.

Masi’s artwork and reputation from the 1960s to the 1980s became affiliated with the artistic movements in Europe of that time, and with the genres of Performance and Installation Art.

The exhibition is at Darbyshire London, N1, 26th April to 27th July 2017, viewing by appointment only. 

LIFE, BELIEF AND BEYOND AT MODERN ART OXFORD 15 JULY - 15 OCTOBER

The Estate of Rose Finn-Kelcey proudly announces the first posthumous exhibition of works by the highly acclaimed and influential artist Rose Finn-Kelcey (1945–2014). Life, Belief and Beyond at Modern Art Oxford.

Life, Belief and Beyond focuses on Finn-Kelcey’s explorations of power, performance, political commentary, and perceptions of the self, belief and spirituality.

The exhibition presents works from the early 1970s to 2014, including Divided Self (Speaker’s Corner), 1974; The Restless Image: a discrepancy between the seen position and the felt position, 1975; Glory, 1983; Bureau de Change, 1987; and It Pays to Pray, 1999. These examples of Finn-Kelcey’s diverse and exacting practice are presented alongside photographs, collage, performance documentation, preparatory material and sketches in progress – never before exhibited.

Finn-Kelcey’s work is conceptually powerful, profound and is characterised by a dry wit that belies the formidable intelligence and deep humanity that drove her practice. A central figure in the performance and feminist art scene in
Britain for over four decades, her work is intimately concerned with social dialogue, populism, activism, and how these tools of communication intersect with complex systems of power.

Finn-Kelcey’s far-reaching influence on conceptual art in the 1970s and 1980s extended locally to the generation of YBAs (Young British Artists) in the 1990s as she began to realise large-scale and technically complex installations. Avant-garde in her ideas both in art and politics, Finn-Kelcey’s endlessly inventive practice demonstrates the artist’s interest in creating socio-political statements with a visually arresting quality, often object-based, frequently combining her creative investigations with contemporary technologies.

Life, Belief and Beyond is a celebration of Finn-Kelcey’s work and pays tribute to her extraordinary practice and
influence.

Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford OX1 1BP
 

REVOLT OF THE SAGE CURATED BY SIMON MORETTI AND CRAIG BURNETT 24 NOVEMBER - 21 JANUARY 2017 AT BLAIN |SOUTHERN

Revolt of the Sage is an exhibition featuring sixteen artists that takes its title from a work by Giorgio de Chirico painted in 1916.

Selected curated pieces reflect a ‘metaphysical interior’, crowded pictorial spaces overflowing with ephemeral things. Picking up on de Chirico’s vision of a ‘metaphysical interior’, Revolt of the Sage gathers a range of artists who use collage, juxtaposition, fragments, framing devices and layered imagery to explore ruptures in time and the alluring mysteries of the everyday. 

Andree Cooke is proud to announce that a selection of works by Simon Moretti, developed with her, will be on show at this exhibition. For private studio visits or exhibition tours please contact cookeandree@gmail.com

Pictured: Paloma Varga Weisz, Woman, boarded, 2015, Courtesy of the artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London

NEW LINDER WORK AT  BRITISH ART SHOW 2015

Having introduced Linder to Dovecot Studios in 2013 the resulting collaboration  
 Diagrams of Love: Marriage of Eyes will feature in the British Art Show 2015, opening in Leeds City Arts Gallery from 9th October. 

Northern Ballet Performance, incorporating Diagrams of Love: Marriage of Eyes in Children of the Mantic Stain, Broderick Hall, Leeds City Museum, 20 November 2015

Image credit
Linder Sterling, Diagrams of Love: Marriage of Eyes (detail), 2015, rug created at Dovecot Tapestry Studio with Jonathan Cleaver, Vana Coleman and Dennis Reinmüller, image courtesy Dovecot Tapestry Studio, Stuart Shave/Modern Art, photo credit Michael Wolchover.