28 JUNE 2014

Giles Bailey in conversation with Gustav Metzger

A conversation between Gustav Metzger and artist Giles Bailey, organised and recorded by Pavilion. The video was presented publicly at Harewood House in the presence of Metzger, who previously lived at the site.

The video was also presented at The Follies of Youth exhibition at the Hepworth Gallery (Wakefield) alongside new works made by Giles Bailey, Amelia Crouch and Ruth Lyons.

Artist Gustav Metzger (b. 1926, Nuremberg) came to England through the Kindertransport scheme in 1939. From 1941–2, he studied carpentry at the ORT Technical College on Roseville Road in Leeds and in 1943–4 worked as a joiner at the Harewood Estate. During this time he developed ‘a love affair’ with Temple Newsam House where curator Philip Hendy installed the Leeds Art Gallery collection and staged a series of exhibitions by modern artists, including Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Paul Nash. Having attended art school, on the advice of Moore, Metzger published his Auto-Destructive Art Manifesto in 1959, shortly followed by his first public art demonstration at the Temple Gallery, London. In its destructiveness, his practice addresses the susceptibility of industrial society to catastrophic events. He has said, “Facing up to the Nazis and the powers of the Nazi state coloured my life as an artist.”