North Yorkshire Council’s Mercer Gallery, Harrogate, is to team up with Goldmark, one of the U.K.’s leading commercial galleries, in an ambitious exhibition. The two aim to showcase the best of the Mercer’s outstanding collection of pre and post war British art augmented by Goldmark Gallery’s own superb collection of works from that era which will be available for sale. This innovative approach will not only result in a visually stunning collaboration but also generate income for the Mercer - an increasing necessity in a time of budgetary stress for councils all over the country. 

The exhibition’s title Look, Look Again! is taken from a quote by one of the most significant artists of the post war period - Prunella Clough. It suggests that visitors to the show will be met with the beautiful, the surprising, the exciting and the strange and if that is what they come expecting then they are unlikely to be disappointed. The show will hang chronologically starting with the pre war Neo-Romantics moving through the, often disconcerting wartime art to the absolute explosion - formally, chromatically, in scale and in gesture - of art in the post-war years. 

Clough’s work will feature significantly in the show thanks to a magnificent donation to the Mercer by the, now deceased, Yorkshire based writer, artist and photographer David Morgan Rees. The Morgan Rees collection – which features 4 exceptional works by Clough – includes original paintings and sketches by the likes of Keith Vaughan, John Minton, Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Leonard Rosoman and John Craxton.