Gateshead, UK - This stunning new Hayward Gallery Touring / British Museum Partnership UK exhibition features works on paper by leading British and American artists from the 1960s to the present, including Lucian Freud, David Hockney and Bridget Riley. There are also some fascinating earlier 20th century European works by artists including Matisse and Picasso. On exhibition 21 July until 2 September, 2007 at Shipley Art Gallery.

The exhibition is drawn from the collection of the late Alexander Walker (1930-2003), the London Evening Standard’s film critic for over 40 years. Walker who bequeathed his works on paper to the British Museum, believed that collecting acted as a form of self-analysis, and the exhibition reflects his wide-ranging tastes.

Walker’s collecting began in the early 1960s, and over the years he built up close friendships with art dealers, valuing these relationships and the education he felt he received through purchasing from dealers and not in the sale room. As his collection grew, it dominated his small London flat in Maida Vale. Every spare surface was used to display works, including the walls of the bathroom and kitchen and even both sides of the cupboard doors. Walker often talked of the pleasure he found in surrounding himself with still images at home, providing welcome relief for his eyes after watching eight or nine films during his working week.

For Walker, collecting art was like film-making: “The first response is emotional/aesthetic. The end result is sometimes a revelation of oneself and one’s tastes, which shows an intention that wasn’t conscious at the time”. He found collecting ‘difficult pictures’ challenging and life-changing, never disposing of a work if his taste subsequently changed.

The exhibition includes approximately eighty works, including drawings, aquatints, etchings, lithographs, screenprints and woodcuts, which have been selected for this new Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition, which will be on display at the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead. A new Hayward Gallery Touring / British Museum Partnership UK exhibition.

The Shipley Art Gallery is owned by Gateshead Council and managed on its behalf by Tyne & Wear Museums. Visit : www.twmuseums.org.uk/shipley/