OUTLOOK 2

with Beardsmore Gallery

OUTLOOK 2

with Beardsmore Gallery

27 June – 1 July 2023

A solo exhibition of works by Birkin Haward

Haward (b. 1939) is a practising architect, trained at the Architectural Association in London and worked with Norman Foster for many years. Since 1983 he has been in partnership with Joanna van Heyningen as van Heyningen and Haward in London, working mainly on heritage, education and performance projects.

‘Despite being born into a family where drawing and painting were regular activities, and a background from which I exhibited my first paintings when I was 18, and although I continued to paint whenever I could, I chose architecture as my primary career. 

However I always had the idea at the back of my mind that I owed it to myself that one day I would take up painting more seriously. So it is now more than ten years ago that that I finally stepped back from architectural practice to draw and paint full time. From the beginning, one of my main starting points subject wise has been in man made structures in the landscape. I have found these quite fascinating and I’ve always been particularly interested in the impact, often rather subversive, of quite ordinary objects sitting in fields or beside the road that can take on an extraordinary quality.

Although I’ve never felt particularly polemical about what I do, looking at the work as whole, I hope it contributes to an idea I’ve always wanted to support – that is a sort of visual counter narrative – a reaction to the more conventional traditions of the picturesque and pastoral that has dominated landscape art for so long.’

– Birkin Haward, 2023.

Outlook 2 27 June – 1 July