Push Release
Paintings by Ken Sequin / Words by Iliassa Sequin
Poetry e book launch & Private Watch
Thursday 29 February, 6-8
At England & Cos Undertaking House, 2A Sackville Road, Piccadilly, London W1S 3DP.
Exhibition open: Friday & Saturday, 1 & 2 March, 115 Sunday 3 March, 124
England & Co announce a exclusive party at our job area celebrating two new guides by the late poet, Iliassa Sequin (1938-2019), accompanied by an exhibition of paintings by Ken Sequin.
Born in 1941, the artist Ken Sequin grew up in South London. He attended Wimbledon Faculty of Artwork prior to finding out illustration at the Royal Higher education of Artwork. He worked as a freelance designer for a great deal of the 1960s in print media and tv. His guide addresses blend an desire in Ben Shahns stitched line with his beloved Polish University of film posters.
In 1969 he achieved the Greek poet then recognised as Iliassa Papadaki, and the two before long married. Ken created her broadside Enjoy Quintets (1971) and supported her crafting for the next fifty many years. They moved collectively to East Yorkshire in 1974, exactly where Ken took up a educating post at Hull.
In the course of this period, Iliassas operate began to attract visitors amid the New York School of poets and the avant-garde in Europe. She commenced operate on a translation of Andr du Bouchets long poem La Couleur a meditation on lithographs by Bram van Velde which she would proceed to revise, abandon, and commence again throughout the next three a long time.
Iliassas translations of Du Bouchet, and her fragmentary commentary on the course of action, were posthumously released by Distance No Item in 2023 as The Color and Duets. These publications will be released with readings and reception on 29 February.
In 1991, Ken and Iliassa returned to London and settled just off Brick Lane. No lengthier instructing, Ken took up portray once more painting soon after a extended interval. Influenced initially by the architecture of Athens balcony scenes and street website traffic he commenced to explore a looser, non-geometric engage in among abstraction and figuration. Working with a casein-primarily based medium favoured for its opacity and how it handles pigment Ken works quickly in the moment. But genuinely these are slow paintings, revisited and reworked, overlaid with memory and landscape and the slip of recent functions into the historic.
In direction of the Painting is the very first exhibition of Ken Sequins perform because his participation in the RA Youthful Contemporaries in 1960. It incorporates canvases completed in the yrs next Iliassas demise in 2019, additionally a generous variety of earlier works.
Walking around Brick Lane with Ken, what catches his eye? He likes rolls of cloth in shop home windows, notices anybody on the avenue who has type. He stops to examine some intriguing rust, abandoned junk, avenue indicators, tile work, kinds of brick. He doesnt feel significantly of street art these days but likes the uncooked delinquency of outdated school graffiti tags. He enjoys the texture of a beaten-up white wall. Torn posters? Of program
With thanks to Dr Luke Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Modern day Poetry, Division of English at King’s College or university London.