Eduardo Paolozzi

A Touring Exhibition from the Hayward Gallery

19 January - 26 February 2023

Most Weekends* and Half Term* for the public

Weedays for pre-arranged school visits

(*check opening times at emftheatre.com) )

12pm to 4pm

Free Entry 

A Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition of screen-prints by Eduardo Paolozzi will be on display at Old Big School Gallery from Thursday 19 January to Sunday 26 February 2023.

Please contact the Gallery Administrator and Curator: claire.hartwhite@tonbridge-school.org if you would like to arrange a weekday group or school visit.  A Gallery Educator can be booked to give free guided tours. 

Our Art Talk on Eduardo Paolozzi, by Independent Curator, Selina Skipwith, will take place on Thursday 26 January, from 7-8pm and the gallery will be open from 6.30pm. It is a free but bookable event* with limited Spaces (*emftheatre.com ). 

The Family 'Drop-In' Workshop with sculptor, Caroline Bugby, will take place on the final day of the show, on Sunday 26 February 12-4pm in Big School, alongside OBS Gallery.  All are welcome to pop into this free event. 

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi CBE RA (1924-2005) was one of the pioneers of the pop movement in the UK.  Born in Scotland, Paolozzi was a compulsive collector and a jumbler of icons.  He is equally revered for his mechanistic sculptures and his kaleidoscopic print projects.  

Paolozzi's canny alchemy is vividly apparent in General Dynamic F.U.N., a series of fifty screen-prints and photolithographs created between 1965 and 1970.  Here Paolozzi employs the technologies of mass-reproduction and gorges on its idols - the household names and familiar faces of consumer advertising, high fashion and Hollywood.  The artist's friend and sometime collaborator, J.G. Ballard, described General Dynamic F.U.N. as a 'unique guidebook to the electric garden of our minds'. 

These prints, with their often-idiosyncratic titles, do not occupy a rigid sequence but can be viewed in any order.  For Paolozzi, the modern age, exposed as ephemera, is a necessarily fragmented collision of visual stimulus and influence, and his work is a 'health warning for an uncreative and thriftless society'. 

Please feel free to visit this vibrant show and let your friends and family know too.

A Private View for Tonbridge students and staff, plus invited guests, takes place on Wednesday 18 January between 6.30pm and 8pm*

* when planning your visit we recommend you check www.emftheatre.com for any updates in opening days or times. The exhibition is not open to the public on Saturday 11 February, Friday 17 February and Saturday 25 February.