Eco Cataclysm

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Downing Street

Born in the then British colony of Guyana, Aubrey Williams began painting at an early age, taking lessons from a restorer of religious paintings in Guyanese Churches before the age of 12. He trained later as an agronomist and arrived in Britain in 1952 for an Agricultural Engineering course at Leicester University. He travelled around Europe before settling in London and attending St Martins College of Art in 1954. He was an active participant in London's art world exhibiting work at the New Vision Centre Gallery and winning the only prize at the First Commonwealth Biennale of Abstract Art. In the 1960s, as attitudes to immigrants became more hostile and racism in Britain gained ground, he found himself increasingly marginalised and began to work mostly from Jamaica and Florida in the US. He exhibited in a solo show at the Commonwealth Institute of Art in London in 1981 but it wasn't till after his death in 1990 that his work received the critical attention that it was due. Exhibitions of his work have been held most recently at Tate Britain (2023-4); Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada; Glasgow Museums, Scotland; Barbican Art Gallery, London (all 2022); Somerset House (2021); Perez Museum, Miami, US (2021).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

Artist

Aubrey Williams (1926 - 1990)

Title

Eco Cataclysm

Date

1989

Medium

Acrylic on paper

Dimensions

height: 69cm; width: 82cm; depth: 2.5cm

Acquisition

Purchased from October Gallery, September 2023

Provenance

October Gallery, London UK; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 11 September 2023

GAC number

19196