We have some very special exhibitions for you in 2023. We hope you will be inspired by the variety of outstanding artworks (including painting, pottery and embroidery) and by enriching creative and cultural stories.
All our temporary exhibitions are free. Please become a Friend or Patron of Kettle’s Yard so we can continue to make original and exciting exhibitions. You can find out more here about the ways you can help us, including our work with local schools and communities, and the difference your support makes. Thank you.
Andrew Nairne, Kettle’s Yard Director
Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery
4 March – 25 June 2023
Celebrating one of the most significant potters of the twentieth century, this major new exhibition is a rare opportunity to experience Lucie Rie’s (1902-1995) ground- breaking practice across six decades. Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery will feature more than 100 works, considering afresh the singular nature of Rie’s achievement, from functional tableware to elegant bowls and vases decorated with sgraffito lines and expressive glazes.
Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery
8 July – 29 October 2023
Ancient, intimate and political, embroidery is arguably the foremost cultural material of Palestine. Practised for centuries, politicised in national struggle and critically addressed by contemporary artists, embroidery in Palestine has been intimately connected to shifting social and political realities in the Middle East over the last 100 years. The garments on display in this new exhibition will span the 20th century, embodying female labour and resilience, and making manifest pivotal moments in Palestine’s recent history, such as the impact of the 1948 Nakba and the First Intifada (1987–1993). The exhibition will include work by contemporary artists who use thread to explore labour, gender and displacement, and to reflect the experiences of Palestinian people today. The exhibition also includes political posters, archival photographs and commissioned films by artist Maeve Brennan who interviews Palestinian women who practise embroidery.
Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia and Friends
11 November 2023 – 18 February 2024
Li Yuan-chia (1929-1994) has had a profound impact on the history of British art and conceptual practices, yet his contribution to the art world and the networks he created – from his emigration to London in 1965, to his experiments with museum-as-artwork in the 1970s and ‘80s – have yet to be explored widely. This exhibition will draw parallels between Li’s LYC Museum and Art Gallery in Cumbria, and Kettle’s Yard, both places motivated by a shared belief in the inseparability of art, friendship and home.
Artists across generational and geographical borders, many of whom exhibited at the LYC and Kettle’s Yard, will be brought together, including Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Winifred Nicholson.
