The exhibition will open on the 29th July and will be on display until the 8th November .
124 x 249 cm. © Clare Woods. Courtesy the artist and
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London
The Pitzhanger Manor has announced it will be presenting an exhibition focusing on the work of Clare Woods this summer.
Displayed throughout the gallery, Clare Woods: Garden Without Seasons will feature 29 new and recent works — all created over the last four years, including paintings, collages, and prints.
Right at the heart of the exhibition are the flora, still life and natural world that Woods returned to during the pandemic, at a time when familiar objects took on a heightened resonance.
Informed by her early experiences as a sculptor, the artist focuses on the forms of her subjects and the spaces in-between. Now, she has engaged with the historic interiors, architecture, and gardens of Pitzhanger Manor to continue her exploration of not just the natural world itself, but the nature of time, absence, and death.
Among the works on display, are those that concentrate on the act of viewing. Looking at the world through windows became the norm during the pandemic, and several works include views mitigated by glass, from boldly colourful red in Cold Case (2025) to greens and dirty yellows found in an abandoned building’s crosshatch window design in Show All (2025) to the multicoloured concentric circles of Trackwalker (2025).
There will also be plenty of works on display inspired by past greats. The vases that hold plants and flowers such as in Laughing out Loud (2024) and The Inside Garden (2025) are reminiscent of Giorgio Morandi’s vessels, while the specific focus on flowers recalls Édouard Manet’s deathbed paintings of peonies, or exuberant Dutch 17th-century works reminding their contemporary viewers of the transience of worldly pleasures and the passage of time.
Another source of inspiration for Woods is literary sources, such as George Orwell (1903–1950) and his Tribune column ‘As I Please’. Written during and shortly after the Second World War, Orwell treated all subject matter with the same importance, from minor irritations like the price of eggs to serious political concerns, and crucially, seven rose bushes he planted in his own garden. In Woolworth’s Roses (2023), Woods displays these roses in a vase in an indoors setting, with drooping petals. Like Orwell’s garden, which was a counterpoint to the events transpiring across Europe, the flower arrangement in this painting illuminates what appears to be an otherwise gloomy interior.
Talking about the exhibition, Clare Woods said: “The garden is an area that can offer a glimpse of what was there before, and this is why the Pitzhanger Manor and gardens have felt like a perfect place to be able to exhibit these works.”
To find out more about the exhibition visit: https://www.pitzhanger.org.uk/whatson/clare-woods/