The Remembered Present features paintings, drawings and prints by Andrzej Jackowski from the last two years and follows a major exhibition of his work at the Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal. The exhibition also sees the launch of the first monograph on his work by Black Dog Publishing, with essays by Timothy Hyman, Gabriel Josopovici and Michael Tucker.
Striking in their simplicity, Jackowski’s works engage with both personal memory and the wider historical domain. His works often carry themes of dispossession and melancholy drawn from a childhood spent in a refugee camp.
Poetry is an abiding source of inspiration for Jackowski. He reveals an empathy with an historically wide range of essentially poetic work: from Giotto to Balthus, Carlo Carra and Rousseau; from Louise Bourgeois and Anselm Kiefer; from R.B. Kitaj and Victor Willing to Roger Hilton and Ken Kiff.
Born in Wales in 1947 to parents who were Polish refugees, Jackowski spent the first eleven years of his life in a refugee camp near Liverpool. He studied at Camberwell School of Art, Falmouth School of Art and finally, in the 1970’s, at the Royal College of Art. He was made Professor of Painting at the University of Brighton in 2002. Jackowski has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally.
“When I was eleven years old I moved with my parents to London from a refugee camp in the north of England – where we had lived in huts made out of wood and felt covered in tar. We lived with my half-brother who was a photographer – when I was fourteen my parents separated, about the same time I painted a self-portrait and made a decision to become a painter.” (Andrzej Jackowski)
