I do love to discover a new world in the multiverse that is London.
I’m interested in the work of the artist James Boswell and The Gentle Author pointed me in the direction of an exhibition of his work at The Art Workers Guild at 6 Queen Square, so I went along.
My first discovery was Queen Square. I can’t remember ever seeing it before but looks a promising area. Located just east of Russell Square, it has a long thin rectangular garden at its heart and is surrounded by interesting buildings, a nice pub or two and in one corner the church of St George the Martyr, where Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath got married. I’m reading the classic Sci-Fi novel Stranger In A Strange Land at the moment and using the language of that book I plan to return to the Square to grok it in fullness at a later date.
6 Queen Square is an early Georgian house which the Art Workers Guild bought in 1913 and built a meeting room into the gardens at the rear which was itself opened the following year.
The Guild was set up thirty years previously in 1884 as a place where artists of all varieties, fine and applied, could meet and exchange ideas on an equal footing. Their motto is “Art is Unity” and many of their early members were also members of the Arts and Crafts movement including William Morris. There is more than a whiff of post-christian Victorian muscular artism about the organisation.
But its very charming. It took me a few minutes of ringing the bell before anybody answered the door but it was worth the wait. Wonderfully eccentric old-fashioned people wandered around it. I’d gone to see the Boswell exhibition which was in the front room so I headed there first and it was worth the trip to Queen Square in itself.
I then meandered through a middle room which had a coffee bar in the corner and then a small permanent exhibition with bits of pottery and glassware and piles of books before opening large doors into the meeting room at the back. Its walls are decorated with past members and wooden chairs and a projection set out for a lecture that was due to start imminently. One or two older people appeared to be dozing in anticipation in the seats.
I was on my lunch hour and sadly couldn’t stay for the lecture but walked back through a lovely courtyard into the old Georgian house at the front and then, after a last look round the Boswell exhibition, I was gone.
But I will be back, given the chance. Its a marvellous dusty, creative place. Lovely.
No. 6 Queen Square
The Art Workers Guild
The logo on the doorstep
The light in the hallway
The Courtyard
The meeting room
The front room where the Boswell exhibition
The art of James Boswell
Four lithographs