HASTINGS.- The Jerwood Gallery announces the exhibition Gary Hume: Flashback, a major monographic touring exhibition from the Arts Council Collection.

Gary Hume: Flashback traces a path from Hume’s early works to the present day, including some outstanding early acquisitions of the artist’s paintings by the Arts Council Collection, such as Four Feet in the Garden (1995), as well as key works from the artist’s own collection.

The show follows on from the success of the previous Flashback exhibitions, which featured the work of Bridget Riley and Anish Kapoor. Taking as its starting point the Collection’s founding principle of supporting emerging artists through the purchase of their work, the Flashback series showcases internationally renowned British artists whose works were acquired by the Collection early on in their careers.

Elizabeth Gilmore, Director of Jerwood Gallery said: “Hume is an important figure in British Contemporary painting and we are thrilled to be showcasing both paintings and sculptures spanning his career to date. It is particularly appropriate to be hosting this show in our inaugural year. Hume was born in nearby Kent and has strong family ties to the area. He went on to win the Jerwood Painting Prize in 1997, then one of the UK’s most prestigious painting prizes.”

Caroline Douglas, Head of Arts Council Collection said: “It is a great privilege to be working with a brand new gallery in such a distinctive location. Gary Hume is one of the most important artists of his generation and this exhibition gives audiences outside London an opportunity to explore his work over two decades.”

Hume graduated in 1988 and quickly gained international acclaim in the early 1990s with his series of bold, abstract ‘door paintings’, and he has continued to reinvent himself and confound expectations ever since. Hume was part of the now renowned Freeze exhibition in 1988 which launched a new generation of British art. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1996, and has represented Britain at the São Paulo and Venice Biennales in 1996 and 1999 respectively. In his catalogue essay, the writer Dave Hickey refers to Hume’s subject as ‘the suburban sublime’. Although his subjects have included birds, flowers, snowmen and babies, the work is always underpinned by an intense experience of beauty threaded with melancholy. The eroticism of paintings of cheerleaders in the American Tan series belies an acute awareness of the pervasive power of American culture.

The exhibition will be on at the Jerwood Gallery until 23 September