History in the Making (11 January - 10 February 2017) explores work by Pablo Bronstein, Gordon Cheung, Dexter Dalwood, Walton Ford, Paul Noble, Francis Lisa Ruyter, Cornelia Parker and Clare Woods, which make reference to, or appropriate, historical art as part of their working practice. Whether it be painting, illustration, sculpture, photography, architecture or historical objects, each of these artists openly acknowledge their sources of inspiration, which includes collections housed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford and the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. Each of these artists is drawing on history as a way of making new images for the future.

Cornelia Parker’s (b. 1956) interest in the early work of nineteenth century photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot led her to his original collection of glassware, now in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Parker, whose art is about destruction, resurrection and reconfiguration, borrowed the last eight surviving glass objects that were captured in some of the world’s first photographs, and used them to make a series of photogravures prints. In January 2018 Parker will reveal a new artwork made in response to her role as artist of the 2017 UK General Election.

Francis Lisa Ruyter (b. 1968) delves into a very different archive, the Library of Congress’s FSA archive of Depression-era photographs, as source for both paintings and prints. Ruyter openly acknowledges the authorship of the original image – in this case Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans - but transforms the iconic stark black and white photographic image into a vividly coloured relief print or painting.

Gordon Cheung’s (b. 1975) negotiation between the past and presents comes via his use of images of Dutch seventeenthcentury paintings which are held in a free, publically available online archive of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Cheung takes the paintings and uses a computer algorithm to ‘glitch’ the image, making it look as if it is melting or disappearing. Cheung’s selection of this genre of still life is a comment on the fragility of existence, the futility of materialism against a backdrop of Holland’s immense trading power.’

For his first edition with the Alan Cristea Gallery, Pablo Bronstein (b.1977) has been inspired by eighteenth-century architectural engravings, and his own personal collection of eighteenth-century silverware, to make three new hand-coloured etchings, including Design for a cake basket and two muffineers en-suite, 2017.

Dexter Dalwood’s (b. 1960) painting and prints are collages of visual imagery from art history, combined with personal memory and political and cultural events from the past. The Apartment (after Delacroix), a series of four prints, take as their starting point Eugène Delacroix’s painting, Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, 1834, which Picasso also used as inspiration for a set of prints in the 1950s. In Dalwood’s series of screenprints, the women are no longer in the apartment and the four images follow a narrative from night through to dawn and finally to an explosion. Dalwood is reinterpereting the genre of History Painting for a contemporary audience.

Walton Ford (b. 1960) makes paintings and prints in the style of nineteenth-century naturalist illustrations by artists such as John James Audubon, Karl Bodmer and George Catlin. In Pestvogel, 2016, which translates to plague-bird, Ford has taken as his subject a flock of of waxwing, which sometimes have the tendency to go on sudden, massive migrations. A widely recorded waxwing invasion during the winter of 1913-14 was later assumed to be an omen for the First World War which began the following summer. Ford’s print is a literal exploration of what kind of imagery could accompany this fantastic superstition.

Paul Noble’s (b. 1963) first print project with the Alan Cristea Gallery consists of a set of six etchings. Noble has taken details from his drawing Ye Olde Ruin, 2003-4, part of the monumental drawing project Nobson Newtown, and has carefully redrawn them into a copper plate using drypoint and aquatint to create elaborately complex, beautifully detailed, surreal scenes. Noble’s creation of a symbolic city draws inspiration as diverse as ancient Chinese scrolls and Japanese sculpture to Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The blocky geometric font (Noble’s own invention) appears in each image and inspires the set title, To ease to ‘ell one needs two N’s, 2016.

Clare Woods (b. 1972) art historical influences come from the mid-twentieth century British artists and sculptors such as Barbara Hepworth, Eduardo Paolozzi and Henry Moore. She initially trained as a sculptor before making painting her primary focus and her work is often described as ‘sculpting an image in paint’. For this show Woods draws inspiration from the three-dimensional, easily recognisable forms of a reclining figure, a portrait head or a mother and child for a series of hand-painted collages.