Peter Blake

Peter Blake: A Museum for Myself
Linbury Gallery
Admission £6.50 / £5.50

Sir Peter Blake has been collecting for as long as he has been making art and the two activities have been intimately linked throughout his life and career.

This exhibition is the first time that Blake has shown his collection together with his own art. We are thrilled that, in a Museum built around a personal collection, Peter Blake has helped us develop this extraordinary and revealing exhibition to celebrate our re-opening

Blake is one the country’s most enduringly popular and important living artists. He made his name as a pioneering figure in the Pop Art movement of the 1950s and 60s and created in the Sergeant Pepper cover one of the period’s most iconic images. Through his collection and his work you can trace his lifelong engagement with popular culture, his friendships with fellow artists and musicians, but perhaps above all his sympathy for the quirky and the overlooked.

Here you will find inadvertant collages, folk art, pop ephemera, works by his artist friends, showbiz memorabilia and marching troupes of toy elephants. Among the treasures and curiosities on display will be General Tom Thumb’s boots, a hare with antlers, Max Miller’s shoes and Ian Dury’s Rhythm Stick.

The exhibition will show these wonders together with important works from throughout Blake’s career including such groundbreaking early works as Locker (1958), and sculptures and collages of found objects from throughout his career including the title work A Museum for Myself (1982) Elvis Shrine (2003) and his series of Museums of Black and White.

The exhibition is accompanied by a beautifully illustrated book containing a unique photographic record of Blake’s studio and collection designed by Fuel and featuring an interview with Peter Blake by Alexander Sturgis