Cage, cage, cage

1966 (repaired 2009), Parviz Tanavoli

This work was made after Tanavoli returned to Iran from America, where he was greatly inspired by pop art. The bird inside or outside the cage can be interpreted in various ways, as a political metaphor or a literal representation of the Iranian custom of placing birds in small cages throughout bazaars, creating a pleasant atmosphere in a hectic market place. Tanavoli’s work explores mass consumer culture in the specific context of Iran, something that other artists in the country had not previously addressed.

Gallery label, February 2016

Nightingale

1974, Parviz Tanavoli

Returning to Iran from Europe in the 1960s, Tanavoli encountered the country’s resistance to western figurative art. He began incorporating symbols, colloquialisms, and calligraphic elements into his work. Tanavoli’s extensive collection and research on Iranian artefacts, such as carpets, richly inform his artistic output. An avid collector, he was also interested in locks, objects believed to have protective powers, and religious posters. The fragmented forms in his prints often originate from these objects. Many of Tanavoli’s works reference Persian poetry and popular religious practices.

Gallery label, March 2025

Poet and Bird

1974, Parviz Tanavoli

Returning to Iran from Europe in the 1960s, Tanavoli encountered the country’s resistance to western figurative art. He began incorporating symbols, colloquialisms, and calligraphic elements into his work. Tanavoli’s extensive collection and research on Iranian artefacts, such as carpets, richly inform his artistic output. An avid collector, he was also interested in locks, objects believed to have protective powers, and religious posters. The fragmented forms in his prints often originate from these objects. Many of Tanavoli’s works reference Persian poetry and popular religious practices.

Gallery label, March 2025

Being Restricted I

1995, Yun Suknam

Being Restricted I 1995 consists of a chair, a painted wooden panel and a piece of black rope. Both the chair and wooden panel are reclaimed objects that have been altered by the artist. Yun added metal nails to the chair’s upholstered seat and the bottom end of each leg. Punctured by spikes and standing precariously on talons, the otherwise ornate chair is rendered functionless and threatening. A female figure, painted on reclaimed wood, stands to the right of the chair. The figure is nearly two metres tall, with an arm suggested by another curved chair leg, a mannequin’s hand and two roughly triangular white shapes attached to the bottom edge so that she seems to be standing on tiptoe. A black rope laid on the ground demarcates a rectangular area; the chair sits within the space, while the female figure has one foot inside and one foot outside the rope. The three elements of the work can be installed in different configurations depending on the dimensions of the gallery space. For instance, the chair can be positioned on the left or right of the figure and the area defined by the rope reconfigured each time. The work’s title relates to both the physical confines created by the rope and the artist’s personal experience of feeling restricted as a woman in her native Korea. Yun made a second work with the same title, Being Restricted II 1996, which is a larger installation with a hanging figure.

Azalea Garden : May 1956

1956, Patrick Heron

Heron first made his name as a critic but by 1956 was well established as a painter. Inspired by his Cornish garden, Heron painted this picture during a period when he saw himself moving from representational art to abstraction. He recalled: ‘I referred to the series as garden paintings, since they certainly related in my mind to the extraordinary effervescence of flowering azaleas and camellias which was erupting all over the garden’. Though he regarded the formal qualities of a painting as paramount, he also believed in the importance of subject matter.

Gallery label, September 2016