I Cheer a Dead Man's Sweetheart is an exhibition about painters and studios. Significantly it is about how a long life in the studio fosters great richness, inventiveness and playfulness, as well as a depth of achievement that is pursued as each studio-picture poses new questions to which subsequent works must attempt to hypothesise answers. Studios are places of single-minded and often soliatry making, thinking, erasing and re-making. This exhibition, through the selection of works and through its display - relying on spaces that are not rooms, but that each give new vistas into other spaces - allows the singularity of each painting to forge new conversations with paintings made in other idiosyncratic studios.

Drawing on the extraordinary late works of Jeffery Camp, Leon Kossoff, John Wonnacott and Frank Bowling, the exhibition includes mid career and younger artists too, for whom the life in the studio is just beginning.

The title of the show is drawn from the closing stanza of A E Housman's verse Is My Team Playing (A Shropshire Lad, 1896) wherein two friends talk about their shared lives, although only one of the friends is still alive. The sense it is not painting that dies, but merely painters, is certainly at the centre of this show, and importantly too is the understanding that living painters have many conversations with other painters of their own time and of other times in and through their own work. The title arrives at this exhibition by way of the Carel Weight painting of the same name housed in the nearby Jerwood Gallery. Carel Weight himself feels like a tangible presence in the studios and galleries of Britain today, and perhaps, much like the apparitions that populate his own canvases, he too haunts this show.

Just as if one were asked to organise an exhibition of video art in Britain today, or of sculpture, it would be expected that the show would not be static. So too of painting; I Cheer a Dead Man's Sweetheart includes temporary changing displays of mobile, wearable and specially commissioned works by Bruce McLean, Lisa Milroy and Jessica Warboys. The gallery too becomes the site for making (Gary Wragg leads a painting day which begins with roof-top Tai-Chi) and for conversation (Marcus Harvey, Peter Ashton Jones, Matthew Burrows, Katrina Blannin and Dan Coombs discuss strategies for retaining criticality in the studio), both of which are fundamental to the live-ness of painting, today and at all times.

I Cheer a Dead Man's Sweetheart:21 Painters in Britain is curated by Dan Howard-Birt and David Rhodes

A 54pp softback book designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio accompanies this exhibition including texts by all of the artists* describing their method and process of making painting. This book is available at a special price of £3.50 (inc UK postage) by emailing dan [at] lidoprojects.com
* the Auerbach and Unwin texts are not by the artists themselves

The exhibition was reviewed at length in Apollo (here) and Journal for Contemporary Painting (here)

Films of Dan Howard-Birt and Alessandro Raho discussing the themes and process of making this exhibition, and Alessandro's own works in the show can be found here and here

Sophie von Hellermann, A Shorpshire Lad; Alessandro Raho, Ben

	Jessica Warboys, Sea Painting; Box Painting; Hinge Bow

[l-r]: Bruce McLean, Some Cardboard Caro Cards with Henry, plus Henry Barry Henry Barry and Constantin; Lisa Milroy, Party of One

Henry Krokatsis, Untitled (Braitrim 01)		Alessandro Raho, Young Kim		Joella Wheatley, Between Two Modes

[l-r]: Christopher le Brun, Carry; Hayley Tompkins, Digital Light Pools		[l-r]: Lisa Milroy, Woven Painting; Hayley Tompkins, Digital Light Pools; Alessandro Raho, Young Kim

[l-r]: Sophie von Hellermann, Field Day; Bruce McLean, A Carefully Peeled Golden Wonder Potato Sculpture; Phoebe Unwin, Copy Table

Adrian Wiszniewski, Shepherds		Frank Auerbach, To the Studios	John Wonnacott, The Blue Dressing Gown

Christopher le Brun, Carry		William Daniels, Untitled		Jacqui Hallum, The Rest on the Flight

	[l-r]: Gary Wragg, After the Rain; John Wonnacott, The White Cat; Jacqui Hallum, The Rest on the Flght; Adrian Wiszniewski, Shepherds

Andrew Kerr, Untitled

[l-r]: Marcus Harvey, Katrina Blannin, Matthew Burrows, Dan Howard-Birt, Dan Coombs and Peter Ashton Jones talk about painting; [on the wall]: Jessica Warboys, Sea Painting		Phoebe Unwin, Copy Table

Frank Bowling, Skowhegan Green 4 Julie McGee		Paintbox: a studio workshop

Hayley Tompkins, Digital Light Pools		[l-r]: Phoebe Unwin, Curtains Open, Curtains Shut; Leon Kossoff, Cherry Tree and Young Girl

Bruce McLean, A Carefully Peeled Golden Wonder Potato Sculpture		Henry Krokatsis, Black Mirror

	[l-r]: Jacqui Hallum, Like Reading as an Extension of Dreaming; Sophie von Hellermann, A Shorpshire Lad; Alessandro Raho, Ben; John Wonnacott, The White Cat; Jacqui Hallum, The Rest on the Flght

all photos by Nigel Green except Panel (Annabel Tilley), Paintbox (DLWP), J Warboys (DLWP), J Hallum / S von Hellermann / A Raho / J Wonnacott / J Hallum (DH-B)