If you want to see some Banksy pieces before summer’s end, you can reserve tickets to Cut & Run in Glasgow (the first official Banksy show in 14 years), wait for the delayed unofficial Banksy show in London to open or head to West Suffolk, which is currently hosting one of the largest contemporary art exhibitions in the UK in partnership with Brandler Galleries.
Four venues—Moyse’s Hall, Bury St Edmunds, the National Horse Racing Museum (NHRM) and Haverhill Arts Centre—are showing more than 300 works by artists like Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Tracey Emin, Sir Grayson Perry and Keith Haring, along with Sherlock, Kaws, Blek le Rat, Bambi, Hush and, of course, Banksy.
The show, titled Urban Frame: Mutiny in Colour, is the “most exciting contemporary arts exhibition anywhere in the UK this summer,” said John Brandler of Brandler Galleries in a release. It also provides an unrivaled opportunity to see some of the most spectacular art of this century in a relaxed and accessible atmosphere.
Among the works on display in Mutiny in Colour is Banksy’s Sandcastle Girl, originally applied to a shop wall in Lowestoft, Norfolk during his Great British Spraycation in 2021 shortly after, or so the story goes, anonymously visiting the Moments exhibition at Moyse’s Hall. Two other never-before-exhibited Banksy pieces are also on display, along with Bomb Hugger, Hula Hoop Girl and Love is in the Air—arguably one of the artist’s most famous works—which is on loan from fractionalized art investment platform Particle.
“We have photographs of seven works Banksy did in Ukraine,” Brandler told Observer. “A photographer managed to get there before they were destroyed in the war, and these images are now all that remain.” The striking life-size photos are on display at the NHRM in the world premiere of The 7: Banksy Under Siege, which preserves the works created during the artist’s 2022 visit to the war-torn nation.
While Mutiny in Colour features a wide variety of works by leading contemporary artists—standouts include the Connor Brothers’ retro pinups and David Shrigley’s childlike paintings—fans of street-art-turned-fine-art are in for a treat.
“There are a lot of seriously interesting artists on display in the Urban Frame exhibition,’ Brandler said. These include My Dog Sighs—nom de guerre of UK artist Paul Stone—whose work focuses on a combination of melancholic and often naïve portraiture with the aid of found materials including abandoned food cans, and Ben Eine, with his playful graffiti typography.
Pure Evil, whose real name is Charles Uzzell-Edwards, has work in two of the show’s venues: I am a Unicorn along with Just Riot and Celebrity Nightmares series are on display at Moyse’s Hall, while Pussy Riot – Putin’s Nightmare, Elizabeth II and American’s Nightmare are at the NHRM.
The West Suffolk Council and the Brandler Galleries made their first foray into contemporary art exhibitions in 2021 with the aforementioned Moments show at Bury St Edmunds. It proved overwhelmingly successful, attracting nearly 25,000 visitors with over 42 percent of tickets being sold to art lovers who traveled to see it—mainly from New York and Scandinavia. Urban Frame: Mutiny in Colour is expected to exceed these attendance figures.
Urban Frame: Mutiny in Colour runs simultaneously at Moyse’s Hall, Bury St Edmunds and the National Horse Racing Museum through October 1. A fourth exhibition is on view at Haverhill Arts Centre through September 12.
