Complementing our main exhibition, Hogarth & The Art of Noise, was a display, on the first floor of the Museum, of new work by contemporary British artist, Nicola Bealing. Using both print and painting, Bealing’s work took as its starting point the subjects and narratives found within 18th-century broadside ballads – descriptive or narrative songs on popular themes, often sung or sold in the form of cheap sheet music in the streets. Vibrant, bawdy, surreal and humorous in its nature, her work bears many similarities to that of Hogarth’s, an artist she cites as having inspired her.
Nicola Bealing lives and works in Cornwall. She studied at Hertfordshire College of Art & Design and the Byam Shaw School of Art, London. Recent solo exhibitions include Capital Crime, Matt’s Gallery, London (2018); Death and Circuses (2016) and Mono (2019), Kestle Barton, Cornwall; Bad Gardening (2017). Tremenheere Sculpture Garden, Cornwall. Group exhibitions include: The Art of Rivalry (2018), OSR Projects, Somerset; Show Women (2018), Jerwood & Ingram Collections, Gibberd Gallery, Essex; Perspective (2018), Petronilla Silver, London; Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2019), Strange Worlds: The Visions of Angela Carter (2016), RWA, Bristol; The Columbia Threadneedle Prize (2016) London & Palazzo Strozzi, Florence; The White Hotel (2014), Gimpel Fils, London. Nicola Bealing is represented by Matt’s Gallery, London. See more of her work at Artist Nicola Bealing.
