Today, we’re heading to Flowers Gallery. The gallery is marking the 56th anniversary of its journey, which began on 10 February 1970, with a magnificent exhibition honouring the legacy of its late founder, Angela Flowers (1932–2023): “56 in 26”.
This exhibition, which closes tomorrow (14 March), feels like a time tunnel stretching from the 1960s to the present day. It is more than a retrospective; it is living proof of how post-war and contemporary British art has evolved.
From Pop Art’s Sculptural Canvases to Benches of Mortality
One of the exhibition’s heavyweights is Richard Smith, a pioneer of the British Pop Art movement. His 1965 work Triptych stands on the tense line between painting and sculpture. These enormous canvases, with their three-dimensional, box-like panels protruding from the wall, bring the radical structural experiments of the 1960s into the gallery space.
Right beside them, we see pieces from Tom Phillips’ famous postcard series, which he began producing in the early 1970s while working with Angela Flowers. These works, which Phillips called “fixed vehicles of mortality,” focus on park benches and offer a melancholic and philosophical reflection on the passage of anonymous lives.
Craft and Portrait: A Tribute to Angela
The exhibition also touches on the gallery’s personal history. Glenys Barton’s refined ceramic portrait of Angela Flowers, created in 2005, reminds us that this gallery is not merely a commercial space but a family built on deep friendships. On the sculpture side, Nicola Hicks’ expressive bronze work Tricky Business reflects the dynamism of the 1990s.
Signals from Today: Kinetic Art
The name that connects the exhibition’s chronological span to the present is Tim Lewis. His 2022 kinetic sculpture Die Hacke, with its mechanical movements resembling a rake tilling the soil, questions the relationship between humans, nature, and industry. Lewis describes the movements of this mechanical creature as “like trying to catch radio signals from the air while something gets lost in translation,” adding a modern and unsettling touch to the exhibition.
Exhibition Information
Venue: Flowers Gallery, 21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ
Closing Date: TOMORROW (14 March 2026)
Visiting Hours: 11:00 – 18:00
Admission: Free
If you are in London, you have only a few hours left to visit this historic gallery on Cork Street and either say goodbye to or greet anew 56 years of artistic memory. As residents of Apartment No: 26, we will be there to see how fresh Angela Flowers’ vision remains today.
