Glyndebourne Opera Festival England 1985
by Homer Sykes
oversize 40 x 30 inches / 101 x 76 cm paper size
signed limited edition print
edition of 5 only this size
printed 2022
Certificate of authenticity provided
Note Other sizes available
Chelsea, London, England circa May 1985. The Chelsea Flower Show. Visitors sheltering, its raining, its summer in Britain. People sitting under their umbrellas.
Homer Sykes
Sykes's father, Homer Warwick Sykes, was a Canadian-born American of English extraction who worked for the China National Aviation Corporation in Shanghai; his mother, Helen Grimmitt, was Canadian-born and raised in Hong Kong. The couple were married in August 1947, but in June 1948, in an early stage of his wife's pregnancy, Homer was killed in an accident at Lunghua airfield. Helen returned to her family home in Vancouver, and the son was born three weeks later, in 1949.[1][2]
When the boy's mother remarried in 1954, the family moved to England.[3] Homer was a keen photographer as a teenager, with a darkroom both at home and at boarding school. In 1968 he started a three-year course at the London College of Printing (LCP),[1][3] while sharing a house in St John's Wood.[4] In the summer vacation during his first year, he went to New York, and was impressed by the work of current photographers – Cartier-Bresson, Davidson, Friedlander, Frank, Uzzle and Winogrand – that he saw at the Museum of Modern Art.[3]
Solo exhibitions
"Traditional British Calendar Customs", Arnolfini Gallery (Bristol), 1977;[14] Side Gallery (Newcastle), 31 August – 25 September 1977.[15]
"Shanghai Odyssey", Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool), 24 May – 20 June 2003.[14][16] Festival of Photography and Contemporary Art (Biella), 2005.[14]
"On the Road Again", Hereford Town Hall (Hereford Photography Festival), 2002.[17]
"Green Man and Friends, photographs from the 1970s", WPS (Hastings), 2009.[18]
"England 1970–1980", Maison de la photographie Robert Doisneau (Gentilly, Paris), 27 June – 12 October 2014.[10][11][19][20]
"My Britain 1970–1980", Les Douches la Galerie, Paris. 5 September – 31 October 2015.[21][22][23]
"Once a Year – Homer Sykes", Lucy Bell Gallery, St Leonards-on-Sea, May–June 2021[24]
Other exhibitions
"Personal Views 1850–1970", British Council touring exhibition, 1970.[3]
"Traditional Country Customs" (with work by Benjamin Stone), ICA (London), 1971.[3][14]
"Young British Photographers", Museum of Modern Art (Oxford), 1971.[14]
Exhibition of photographs by Stone and Sykes of festivals, customs and pageants, Southampton and Birmingham, 1973.[7]
"Reportage Fotografen", Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts (Vienna), 1978.[14]
"Il Regno Unito si diverte". British Council, Milan, 1981. With Chris Steele-Perkins and Patrick Ward.[25]
"The Other Britain", National Theatre (London), and touring in Britain, 1982.[26]
"A British Eye on the World", Museum of Modern Art (Rio de Janeiro), 1986.[14]
"Viva, une agence photographique", Jeu de Paume (Paris), 2007.[27][28]
"How We Are: Photographing Britain." Tate Britain (London), 2007.[29][30]
"No Such Thing as Society: Photography in Britain 1968–1987", Aberystwyth Arts Centre; Tullie House (Carlisle); Ujazdów Castle (Warsaw).[31]
"Unpopular culture." De La Warr Pavilion (Bexhill), 2008.[32]
"The Other Britain Revisited: Photographs from New Society", Victoria and Albert Museum, 2010.[26]
"Goodbye London: Radical art and politics in the seventies", Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (Berlin), 26 June – 15 August 2010. With Stuart Brisley, Victor Burgin, David Hall, Margaret Harrison, Derek Jarman...
Category
1990s Modern Color Photography
MaterialsColor, Archival Pigment
