A Surreal Dream: David Gill Gallery announces an Edward James-inspired exhibition at Masterpiece 2018

David Gill Gallery returns to Masterpiece with a display that takes curatorial inspiration from the art collection and interiors of Edward James, poet and patron of Surrealism.

Edward James (1907-1984) was a visionary art collector whose Sussex home hosted Surrealist artists as they created works and transformed the exterior and interior architecture of the Edwin Lutyens house into a surrealist masterpiece. Accolated artists including Salvador Dalí, Alberto Giacometti and Syrie Maugham were collected by James. Notably James operated as Salvador Dalí’s patron and the pair set out to achieve a three-dimensional form of Surrealism.

David Gill first met James in Ireland, and later went on to attend the house sale following the collector’s passing. There he acquired a pair of bookcases designed by Syrie Maugham, which had originally stood in E. James’s library. Gill has lived with the bookcases ever since. “One could have bought the whole sale from the point of view of the wish, there were so many treasures.” – David Gill. The bookcases will be exhibited at Masterpiece for the first time in the Gallery’s history and directed the curation for the exhibition.

“This is not a homage, this is a tableau of an idea. The roots come from Edward James and the two bookcases.” – David Gill

The display will imitate James’s original library. It will be adorned with heavy drapery, desks laden with books, and the space accented with side tables and busts in marble. The exhibition will reinvigorate James’s iconic Surrealist vision with twenty-first century artistic thinking and design, including new works by Michele Oka Doner, Barnaby Barford and Mattia Bonetti:

“Bonetti’s imagination is rich and there are times when you imagine him living in some Alice Through the Looking Glass world.” – Jonathan Glancey, ‘Mattia Bonetti’, David Gill Gallery

Alongside Bonetti, the humorously avant-garde marble bust lamp by Sebastian Errazuriz seems suitably at home within the Surrealist setting. New York-based Errazuriz joins David Gill Gallery in 2018 and will host his own solo exhibition at the Gallery this May.

The resulting display will commemorate the surreal legacy of one of Britain’s great inter-war art patrons, and David Gill’s own pioneering role in championing limited-edition furniture and design. David Gill’s museum programme of art, furniture, architecture, and fashion ensures he is a dedicated ambassador to James’s legacy, and Masterpiece offers a fitting stage for this ode to be played out.