M HKA Ensembles

M HKA, Antwerp

02 May 2021 - 29 August 2021

Andrew Webb (1966-2019) was born in Warwickshire. He graduated at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. After a short stay in Spain, in the mid-1990s he moved with his partner Jon Thompson to Belgium, where he lived until 2008, first in Antwerp, then in Brussels. In 2008, he returned to the UK, where he lived and worked in Sandwich.

Andrew Webb set to work in a contemporary way with style elements from Dadaism and surrealism. He made extensive use of language, using visual and phonetic puns and anagrams, featuring humour, eroticism and beauty. Webb's initials – A & W – appear frequently in his oeuvre: this alpha and omega indicates Webb's search for cosmic connection.

Initially, Andrew Webb's work consists of objects and collages with a strong conceptual character. From 2011 onwards, he focuses more on painting, developing a typical oil paint brushwork. He creates very colourful canvases, with references, wordplay and poetic ambiguities. The paintings that are found after his death in his studio in Sandwich often refer to his important three-dimensional works and his collages and sculptures in which the frequent references to missals are notable.

This intimate homage exhibition, organised in collaboration with Annie Gentils Gallery, provides a coherent overview of Andrew Webb's artistic practice. Paintings and installations are supplemented with artist's books, sketches and other documents from his archive.

One of Webb's works, Heavenly Flowers, was purchased by the M HKA, along with one of his artist's books.

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