Spotlight Talks on Sylvia Sleigh

Drop-in talks on the artist Sylvia Sleigh by Selina Ogilvy, Gallery Assistant, will take place in the galleries throughout the course of the exhibition. June 15, 29 July 6, 20 August 10, 17, 24 An entire room in the exhibition is dedicated to the realist paintings of Sylvia Sleigh, with whom Ursula Hauser built a strong bond during her visits to New York, where the British artist was based from the early 1960s. Following Sleigh’s death in 2010, Ursula Hauser bought the house she had so often visited, preserving Sleigh’s legacy by installing her paintings and restoring many of her original features, including the mirror in which Sleigh is painting in ‘Working at Home’ (1969). Motifs of domesticity are common and can be seen in the patterned wallpaper and fabrics, house plants and furniture. Sylvia Sleigh’s portraits of women rejected traditional notions of the male gaze and female idealisation, resulting in a body of work that is poignantly contemporary. These are free events and all are welcome.