David Hockney (London, 14th November 2023) copyright David Hockney Photo credit: Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima
Celebrating the gallery’s 15th anniversary this spring, Turner Contemporary has announced that David Hockney will create a new work for the Sunley Window.
Measuring seven by ten metres, Hockney’s work will transform the gallery’s iconic floor-to-ceiling window in the Sunley Gallery overlooking Margate’s beaches and the North Sea. It will be the first time a major work by the artist will be exhibited in Margate.
Marking the beginning of spring, Hockney’s window depicts a sunrise in Normandy based on a work he made during 2020, the year he spent there producing a body of work responding to the changing seasons, weather and light.
Originally made as an iPad painting, the work reflects his long-standing engagement with digital technologies.
Hockney’s Normandy paintings have been widely celebrated for their immediacy, optimism and close attention to the natural world.
Hockney has frequently acknowledged his admiration for JMW Turner, particularly Turner’s radical treatment of light, atmosphere, and landscape. Installed on the site of the former boarding house where Turner stayed in Margate, Hockney’s sunrise aligns two artists through a focus on light, the seasons, and the experience of looking.
Clarrie Wallis, Director, Turner Contemporary, said: “Hockney’s sunrise, painted in Normandy in 2020, suggests renewal. Installed in the Sunley Window, it enters into a quiet but powerful dialogue with Margate’s own skies and sea.
Illuminated at night, the work becomes a point of light on the seafront—one that encourages looking, long after the gallery doors have closed.”
The installation coincides with a major exhibition at Serpentine by David Hockney titled A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting. The Sunley Window will offer audiences outside the capital a rare opportunity to encounter work by Hockney.
David Hockney: Sunley Window can be viewed from April 1 to November 1.