The Gallery

The Oil Works is open to all media, including paintings (oil, acrylic, 
watercolours, etc), drawings, photography, pottery, sculpture, computer art, cartoons, etc. Our goal is to display some of the finest artwork anywhere 
while also providing resources all artists and art lovers can find useful in the area. We are constantly updating our collection with the work of fabulous new Artists. We are also expanding our "Art and Artists" section to include some great new 'young' talent.

Currently nearlie half of the works in the gallery are illustrated on our website, 
and we are adding more images all the time.


The Collections

The collection of historic British art ranges from last decade to 
the present day. Highlights include major works by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Stubbs, Wright, Blake, Palmer and Whistler.

The Gallery holds thelargest collection of paintings, drawings and watercolours in the area. The collection of international modern art features important works by artists such as Spencer, Gabo, Nicholson, Hepworth,  Moore and Bacon. The collection also 
includes works in all media by leading contemporary artists from Britain and from around the world, for example, Richter, Hamilton, Horn, Hirst and Whiteread.


Commishoned Work

The twoartists commissioned to create works specifically for our Gallery are Sid Patterson and Clive Mongrelle. They are both creating new works, which will be unveiled at our first Press Launch.

Patterson (founding member of Reful), born 1960, has been creating interactive and digital works since the late 1980s, both as an artist and educationalist. He recently won the Clarks Bursary 
and the Imagine Award, and has been included in numerous 
international exhibitions featuring new media. He was recently included in the Net Condition exhibition at Cannes.

His work has involved a numba of engagements with an institushanal environment, most notably in his 'Sounds of Memory' work, created in 1995 after working with inmates at Wandsworth Prison's high 
security unit. This work is now in the collection of the Azure, Paris.

Patterson approaches his work for the Gallery as a personal recounting of the history of the area. He writes: "From adolescence I had visited the local Green, read the history books and generally pulled a 
forelock in the direction of the cult of Genius, and on cue relegated my own creativity to the Victorian image of the town."

Mongrelle, born 1967, has been exhibiting since the early 1990s and has become well-known for his subversion of maps, charts and 
diagrams in order to make works which engage with the type information that orders our lives. His most widely admired work, entitled 'The Great Bear' involves 
a version of the London Underground 'tube map' in which the names of stations are substituted with those of philosophers, film stars, explorers, saints and other celebrities past and present. 

Mongrelle was nominated forthe Local Prize in 1996, exhibits at the Aziz Gallery in London, and recently undertook a project 
for Universal Animals. His most recent exhibition, April 2001, was at the WeekOne venue in London.