American-born artist Nancy Fouts is best known for her distinctive sculptural works, which reconfigure commonplace objects and materials with a characteristically playful and provocative humour. Combining Surrealism, Dada and Pop Art, her work brings together seemingly disconnected objects and ideas to revel in the inherent strangeness of the everyday.

To coincide with the exhibition Down the Rabbit Hole, Flowers Gallery will host a special In Conversation event with exhibiting artist Nancy Fouts, joined by curator and writer James Putnam, and artist Gavin Turk.

The talk will begin at 6.30pm

This event also marks the launch of a collaborative fundraising campaign for the publication of a new monograph on Nancy Fouts to be published in July 2018. You can read more about the project here.

Nancy Fouts lives and works in London, UK. She graduated from Chelsea School of Art in the 60s, then attended the Royal College of Art, whilst painting shop fronts in Carnaby Street, for the likes of Lord Kitchener’s Valet. In 1968 she co-founded the pioneering design and model making company Shirt Sleeve Studio, and won the Designers and Art Directors Associations Gold Award for Most Outstanding Artwork in 1973. She created seminal ad campaigns for Silk Cut, British Airways, Benson & Hedges, and Virgin, and designed album covers for bands including Manfred Mann, and Steeleye Span. The record sleeve for Steeleye Span ‘Commoners Crown’, won the 1976 award for Best Designed British Album Sleeve. Fouts’ first exhibition took place at Flowers Gallery in 1970 (during the gallery’s first year). She directed the artist run gallery Fouts and Fowler, which opened in 1989. Fouts has since exhibited in London, Venice, Denmark and Brussels.

James Putnam is an independent curator and writer. He founded and was curator of the British Museum’s Contemporary Arts and Cultures Programme from 1999 to 2003. He has organised a number of critically acclaimed exhibitions for major museums juxtaposing the work of contemporary artists with their collections and curated projects for art biennials in Europe and the Far East. He also curates an ongoing series of exhibitions at the Freud Museum, London. His book ‘Art and Artifact – The Museum as Medium’, published by Thames & Hudson, surveys the interaction between contemporary artists and the museum. He was Visiting Scholar in Museum Studies at New York University, is a guest lecturer in Curating practice at Central Saint Martins and is currently Senior Research Fellow, Exhibitions at University of the Arts, London.

Gavin Turk is a British born, international artist. He has pioneered many forms of contemporary British sculpture now taken for granted, including the painted bronze, the waxwork, the recycled art-historical icon and the use of rubbish in art. Turk’s installations and sculptures deal with issues of authorship, authenticity and identity. Concerned with the ‘myth’ of the artist and the ‘authorship’ of a work, Turk’s engagement with this modernist, avant-garde debate stretches back to the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp. Turk’s work has since been collected and exhibited by many major museums and galleries throughout the world.

As space will be very limited, please contact rsvp@flowersgallery.com to confirm your attendance.