Following the critical and commercial success of the 2015 exhibition David Bomberg and his students at the Borough Polytechnic, Waterhouse & Dodd are pleased to present Beyond Borough. Coinciding with the 60th anniversary of Bomberg’s passing, the show explores his enduring influence on a generation of artists who were not limited to members of the Borough Group or Bottega.
These include Edward Middleditch, a leading figure in the ‘Kitchen Sink School’, who never studied with Bomberg but did visit Miles Richmond in Ronda in 1960. There he produced a series of works that embrace the coursing, visceral aesthetic associated with the Borough Group. Also featured is an early landscape by Joe Tilson, who attended a few of Bomberg’s classes and exhibited with members of the Borough Group. While Tilson eventually embraced Pop, this 1956 work demonstrates his interest in a type of landscape painting championed by Bomberg, which gives our affective response to nature a concrete form.
Beyond Borough still features rare and striking pieces by Bomberg and his closest pupils, including Dorothy Mead and Miles Richmond. Bomberg’s work is represented by a selection of works in different media, including an incisive oil painting of the architect Austen St Barbe Harrison. Also featured are works by Edna Mann, whose rarely seen paintings we were unable to source for the first exhibition. A founding member of the Borough Group, Mann was ostracized by Bomberg when she became pregnant, falling victim to a misogynist worldview that saw artistry and motherhood as mutually exclusive. Although she continued to paint, Mann rarely exhibited her work, which is very seldom on public display. Our show includes two paintings, which are stylistically distinct for their geometric abstraction.
Paintings by Leslie Marr and Dennis Creffield, who are still producing work today, demonstrate the persistence and evolution of Bomberg’s legacy. Creffield’s figurative paintings and energetic landscapes are explored through a selection of works from the 1950s to the 1980s, while Marr’s ever inventive landscapes are represented by works from the 1960s through to 2016.