Opposing Forms explored at Chichester’s Pallant House Gallery

A selection of works from the gallery’s collection by modern artists born or working in Britain will be shown alongside invited contemporary artists, Gillies Adamson Semple (b1996), Mary Hurrell (b1982), Zara Ramsay (b1993) and Asha Vaidyanath (b1983), in the Gallery’s Queen Anne townhouse.

Spokeswoman Yasmin Hyder said: “The exhibition takes its title from a 1970 portfolio of screenprints, Opposing Forms by Barbara Hepworth, one of which will be on display in the exhibition. The duality held in this body of work runs through the rhythm, texture and movement of Begum’s curation.

“Rana Begum’s own work distils spatial and visual experience into ordered form. Through her refined language of Minimalist abstraction, Begum blurs the boundaries between sculpture, painting and architecture.

“Begum has brought this approach to her curated selection, using the architectural context of the historic townhouse as a lens through which to explore the Gallery’s collection. She approached it intuitively, drawn to qualities of movement, colour and mark-making. She has chosen works across a wide variety of media, from sculpture and painting to printmaking and drawing, focusing in particular on the immediacy of works on paper.

“Artists whose work Begum chose from the collection include Michael Andrews, David Batchelor, Felim Egan, Nigel Hall, Barbara Hepworth, Ivon Hitchens, Tess Jaray, Ciarán Lennon, Kim Lim, Ben Nicholson, Mary Potter, Peter Schmidt, Richard Smith, Victor Vasarely, Stuart Whipps, Rachel Whiteread, Alison Wilding and Paul Winstanley.

“Connecting contemporary works with works from the collection is an underlying rhythm that moves between opposing forces; tension and release, abundance and absence, movement and stillness, dense forms and empty voids. This sense of oscillation echoes with the architecture of Pallant House Gallery, and the ideas, processes and questions that connect artists across generations.

“The exhibition sits alongside Begum’s No 1367 Mesh (2024), a site-specific installation made for the staircase of the 18th-century house. Sculpted from painted mesh, the suspended organic forms cascade down the stairwell, allowing it to be seen from multiple viewpoints. Rana Begum Curates: Opposing Forms will be on display on the ground floor of the townhouse alongside Begum’s installation.”

Rana said: “I’ve loved exploring Pallant House Gallery’s collection and thinking about how it resonates with my own practice and contemporary artists I admire. I wanted to create a show that celebrates the joy of movement and colour, capturing a unifying melodic visual language and the underlying rhythm of mark-making, pattern, form, colour and light.”