British Council marks 90th anniversary with Christie’s auction

• Links to images of the artwork can be found here
• All images should be credited to ‘CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 2024’ in addition to the caption · You can read more about the British Council’s work over the last 90 years here
• Tracey Emin is one of the most significant and influential artists of her generation, her intimate autobiographical work has changed forever the relationship between artist and viewer. The British Council was an early advocate of Emin, supporting one of her first projects Journey across America, in 1994, which she states, ‘gave me the confidence to be an international artist’. From 1994-2000, at the outset of her career, the British Council acquired several works and included them in vigorous exhibition tours across Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, central Asia, and South America – the first time her work was exposed to a wide international audience. In 2007, the British Council invited Emin to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale. I think I love you from 2010 is an unmistakeable classic Emin neon, similar to those which adorned the façade at of the British Pavilion in 2007.
• Ian Davenport was born in Kent, England, in 1966. He graduated from Goldsmiths College of Art, London, in 1988 and as one of the generation of Young British Artists; he participated in the seminal 1988 exhibition Freeze. In 1991 he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, for which he remains the youngest ever nominee, and in 1999 was a prize winner in the John Moores Exhibition, Liverpool. Two years after graduating Davenport had his first solo show at Waddington Galleries, London, in 1990. At this early stage, the British Council acquired its first work by Davenport, a subtle and delicate abstract. It played a starring role in the exhibition ‘New Voices’, contemporary painting works from young British artists that premiered in Belgium in 1992, before continuing to twenty venues throughout Europe, Turkey and Russia. Davenport is well known for his abstract paintings, which explore process and materiality. In recent years his work has consisted of carefully poured lines of acrylic paint down a surface, which puddle and pool at the bottom. Pull is a fine example of Davenport’s bold style, and quite literally describes the gravitation of the acrylic paint itself as it is poured down the aluminium canvas. Davenport employs syringes to dictate the direction of the lines, which then relies on its own materially to glide into the bottom pool.
• Julian Opie studied at Goldsmiths College of Art from 1979 – 1982. He has had major solo presentations throughout the world, and his work is held in numerous public collections. Opie's early works are narrative: irreverent, tongue-in-cheek sculptures based on famous works of art, of everyday objects such as food, furniture and books, made from cut and painted steel. Later works, also made from steel but with an entirely different surface finish, suggested the cool precision of domestic appliances and 'white' goods. The British Council acquired its first work by Opie from one of his early exhibitions in 1983, when he was just 25. It included Opie in an exhibition in 1985 and has continued to show his work around the world ever since – in over 85 exhibitions spanning 34 countries. An iconic and frequently requested work from the Collection is Suzanne Walking (2005) which portrays one of Opie’s common muses. The use of a lenticular print gives the illusion of depth and movement, bringing Suzanne to life as the viewer walks around the work. Sungsic is typical of this later pared down style, which draws from influences as diverse as billboard signs, classical portraiture and sculpture, to classical Japanese woodblock prints.
• Antony Gormley’s iconic sculptural works are renowned throughout the world. His prolific public commissions include what has now become a famous landmark in the north-east of England, The Angel of the North; a vast winged figure erected in 1998 in corten steel standing 20 metres high with a wingspan of 50 metres. The British Council acquired an early sculptural work in 1984, and two more in 1992 and 1999. Throughout the 90s, it toured Gormley’s sculptures to Pakistan, Zimbabwe and South Africa, the first time his work had been seen in Asia or Africa. Gormley’s work is concerned with the body and the relation of mass to space. He works with a variety of materials including concrete, iron, terracotta and lead. Gormley’s body of drawings is an essential part of his practice. In Clearing 85, the experience of the viewer is reversed, no longer seeing the figure from the outside, but experiencing the gestures from within, and the trace left on the page.
• Michael Craig-Martin was born in Dublin Ireland in 1941. He grew up and was educated in the United States, studying Fine Art at the Yale School of Art and Architecture. He has lived and worked in Britain since 1966. His first solo exhibition was at the Rowan Gallery, London, in 1969. He participated in the definitive exhibition of British conceptual art, The New Art at the Hayward Gallery in 1972. The British Council collected drawings from Craig-Martin as early as 1967 and then added further works in the 1970s. These were included in several exhibitions organised by the British Council, most notably Un Certain Art Anglais at the Musee D’art Moderne in Paris in 1979. The exhibition presented a new wave of conceptual art being produced in Britain, which much impressed the French press and audiences, but outraged the more traditional tastes of the British Ambassador at the time. Since then, the British Council has included Craig-Martin works in over 70 exhibitions, introducing his work to new audiences in over 30 countries across every continent.
• Rebecca Warren is a sculptor working in a variety of materials, including clay, bronze and steel. She was born in London in 1965, where she now lives and works. She studied at Goldsmith’s College and Chelsea College of Art. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2006. In October 2020 she was awarded an OBE in The Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to art. Warren’s sculptures hover on the edge of figuration and abstraction, the shapes emerge and collapse into recognisable forms, sometimes cartoonish and eroticized. The British Council acquired a significant sculptural work from Warren in 2001, and immediately sent it on a tour of South America entitled Still Life. The exhibition surprised audiences by presenting new ways that contemporary British artists were addressing traditional subject matters.
• Bridget Riley was born in London and spent the war years living in Cornwall. After a spasmodic start to her education, she returned to London to study at Goldsmiths College, graduating to the Royal College of Art in 1952. Her approach to painting was slow to evolve and it was not until 1960 that she made her first essays into optical painting during visits to Spain and Italy. All her paintings of the early 1960s were in black and white. Riley quickly developed a style comprising regular patterns of line and colour which cover the entire surface of the painting and appear to shift and vibrate while they are in fact static and rigid. Colour was introduced in 1966, first as warmer and cooler greys, then as vivid contrasting pairs such as red and turquoise. The British Council acquired the first of 32 works by Riley in 1963. In 1965, the British Council supported an exhibition of Riley and fellow young artists Peter Blake and David Hockney, at the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, entitled London: The New Scene. It was described by American critics as the moment that ‘the fog lifted on British Art’ and became a high point in the transatlantic export of Swinging London. Riley was selected by the British Council to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1968 and became the first British artist and the first woman to win the International Painting Prize. Since then, the British Council has included Riley in well over 100 exhibitions in more than 50 countries, from Argentina to Iraq, Kazakhstan to Zimbabwe, bringing a buzz and excitement wherever her work is seen.
• Howard Hodgkin was born in London, the son of a prominent artistic family. He studied at Camberwell College of Art and at Bath Academy of Arts, where he returned later as a teacher. Howard often paid tribute to the ‘enlightened’ British Council, which enabled him to travel abroad — to India, where he represented Britain at the Delhi Triennale in 1978 and was commissioned to collaborate with Charles Correa on a mural for the façade of the British Council HQ in New Delhi. He also travelled to Romania, where he was assured, ‘Our greatest export is lovers’. When the British Council chose him to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale (at the age of 52) it was a hugely significant step in his career. ‘There are two outstanding exhibitions this year. One is ... a one-man show by Howard Hodgkin at the British Pavilion. Not since Robert Rauschenberg’s appearance at the Biennale 20 years ago has a show by a single painter so hogged the attention of visitors, or looked so effortlessly superior to everything else on view by living artists.’ Time Magazine 1984. La plume de ma tante (my Aunt’s Pen) comes from a phrase once taught to children learning French, to highlight different ‘a’ sounds. The print celebrates Howard’s love affair with France, which began in 1946, when he was sent at the age of 14, to live with a family in Rennes. He paid tribute to French art in such works as After Corot (also After Degas, Matisse and Vuillard), Croissant, Degas’ Russian Dancers. The print's blue-purple colour refers to mimeographed restaurant menus, as in Paris’s Le Petit Saint Benoît, in the 6ième, where Howard was delighted to see mayonnaise coming out of a tap.
• Hurvin Anderson was born in Birmingham in 1965 to and trained as a painter at the Wimbledon College of Art (1991-94) and at the Royal College of Art (1996-98). He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2017. Anderson’s vivid prints and paintings traverse the genres of still life, landscape and portraiture, and touch on the relationship with his Jamaican ancestry to explore identity, community, and nationhood. The British Council acquired a significant painting by Anderson in 2007, one of the Maracas series of landscapes. Anderson has also worked with the British Council Collection as a curator, selecting works from the Collection by Claudette Johnson and Patrick Caulfield for his exhibition Hurvin Anderson Curates at the Whitworth in 2023. The Mrs. S. Keita prints are based on a painting of the same name from 2001. In both the painting and the prints, a fashionably dressed woman is captured in a confident pose in a living room. She is centred amidst a scene of aspirational domesticity, representative of the everyday Black British experience and culture. In the prints, Anderson worked with renowned print maker Jean Paul Russell at Durham Press, Pennsylvania to layer colour and texture onto the image, in different variations while also contrasting the pattern of the flocked wallpaper behind the figure with the pattern of her dress. The resulting effect is both intricate and stylised, evoking the nostalgia of personal memory together with the playful treatment of a striking image.
• **The proceeds for these lots will benefit The British Council, a UK registered charity number 209131, who will receive 100% of the hammer price.
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The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We support peace and prosperity by building connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and countries worldwide. We do this through our work in arts and culture, education and the English language. We work with people in over 200 countries and territories and are on the ground in more than 100 countries. In 2022-23 we reached 600 million people.