Knight's images are notable for their emotional realism regarding dancers, travellers and circus performers - subjects and scenes that were and are routinely romanticized in pictorial art.
'Allez allez oop!' - the painting above is one such mix of glamour and exertion. The bareback riders/acrobats are so young - surely under ten, if not six or seven - and evidently nervous as they jump on and off moving ponies in the ring.
The formal qualities of the image are as striking as the feeling - legs and arms in folded sequence, greys, yellows and pink for colour palette, spotlight and shadow, brilliantly dynamic movement of figures and mount.
End of next month Milton Keynes Art Gallery holds a scholarly day on site and online.
Details:
The Show is On: Laura Knight’s Career and ContextsConference – Janet Axten, Linda Bassett, Ella Nixon, Lily Ford, Catherine Wallace, Hannah Starkey, Annette Wickham, Alice Strickland, Hester Wetley, Damian Le Bas
- 28 January 2022
- 10:00 – 7:00 pm
- A one-day conference on the career and legacy of Laura Knight on the occasion of the exhibition Laura Knight: A Panoramic View
- Milton Keynes, MK Gallery
Session 1
Chaired by Sarah Victoria Turner (Deputy Director, Paul Mellon Centre)
11.45–12.05 Janet Axten (Social Historian), ‘“Fast, Smart and Outrageous”: Art School Fashion in Laura Knight’s Painting’
12.05–12.25 Linda Bassett (PhD candidate, University of Bristol), ‘The “Sew” Must Go On: The Dressmaker in the Work of Laura Knight’
12.25–12.45 Ella Nixon (PhD candidate, Northumbria University), ‘Laura Knight and the Regional Art Gallery’
12.45–13.15 Panel 1 discussion and questions
13.15–14.15 Lunch
Session 2
Chaired by Fay Blanchard (Head of Exhibitions, MK Gallery)
14.15–14.35 Lily Ford (Filmmaker and Historian), ‘Aerial Bodies: Laura Knight’s Barrage Balloon Paintings’
14.35–14.55 Catherine Wallace (Freelance Art Historian), ‘Technique and Experiment: Drawing as the Foundation of Laura Knight’s Success as an Artist’
14.55–15.15 Hannah Starkey (Artist), ‘So, I ask you Laura Knight – how did this great work come about?’
15.15–15.45 Panel 2 discussion and questions
15.45–16.00 Comfort Break
Session 3
Chaired by Annette Wickham (Curator of Works on Paper, Royal Academy of Art)
16.00–16.20 Alice Strickland (Curator, National Trust, London), ‘Creating a Legacy – Dame Laura Knight RA (1877-1970)’
16.20–16.40 Hester Westley (Artists' Lives Interviewer, National Life Stories, British Library), ‘“Like a Half-Rolled Map”: Tracing the Borders of Female Self-Narration in the Careers of Laura Knight and Subsequent Women Artists’
16.40–17.10 Panel 3 discussion and questions
17.10–17.30 Damian Le Bas (Writer and Poet), ‘The Broken Tongue’
17.30–19.00 Drinks reception
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