Bryan Charnley, The Art of Schizophrenia.
16 February -22 May 2015. Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
The first major retrospective of this British artist, Bryan Charnley will also be the inaugural exhibition in Bethlem’s new Museum of the Mind.
The paintings of Bryan Charnley (1949-1991) used visual metaphor and symbolism to vividly illustrate the physical experience of schizophrenia, an illness Charnley lived with from adolescence until his premature death in 1991. Bringing together works from the Bethlem collection and many rarely seen works from the Estate of Bryan Charnley, this exhibition looks back at Charnley’s life and work – from his early photo-realist inspired portraits and cityscapes to the direct expression and communication of his later allegorical paintings, many inspired by other works in the Bethlem collection. ‘Here I saw art stripped of all esoteric and conceptual pretensions’, he wrote, ‘I gladly adopted this approach which seemed to be more vital than any current “-ism”’
Scratch the Surface, 14 -27 March 2016. Bryan Charnley exhibition and audience with James Charnley chaired by British Contemporary artist, Stuart Semple. Bryan Charnley: The Self Portrait Series – a short film about Bryan Charnley’s final work.
