The UK/Poland Season 2025 is a diverse programme of over 100 multi-artform events in 40 cities in both countries. The Season will invigorate the UK-Poland cultural dialogue in addressing global challenges and will open new opportunities for cultural leaders and the next generation of artists.
The Opening of the UK/Poland Season 2025 in Poland will be organised on 5 March at the Museum Sztuki - MS2 in Łódź, along with the opening of the exhibition St. Ives and Elsewhere, presenting works from the British Council Collection.The exhibition presents works by British artists associated with the milieu of St Ives, among others Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Terry Frost, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon, Margaret Mellis, Ben Nicholson, William Scott, and Bryan Wynter. These artists developed a specific painting and sculpture idiom, derived from the abstract structures of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson’s works, in which the choice of formal solutions is more or less closely correlated with the saturation and course of the experience of the landscape. Their works enter into an interesting resonance with the achievements of Polish artists of that period, in particular, the works of Sasza Blonder, Katarzyna Kobro, Leopold Lewicki, Władysław Strzemiński, and Adam Marczyński. The two milieus are linked by the work of Piotr Potworowski, an artist active both in British and Polish contexts.
This exhibition emphasizes the performative dimension of the modern artwork, complementary to the formal one. The works gathered in the exhibition manifest a sharpened awareness of being in specific places. This determines the selection of artistic means, which, derived from proven modern art formulas, relate at the same time to the unique qualities of the landscape, and – most importantly – communicate the experience of being in it.