Painter / Poet / Performer
Adrian Henri (1932-2000) trained as a painter at King’s College, Newcastle, and taught at Liverpool Art College in the 1960s. Urban landscapes and comic book heroes betray his early Pop Art sensibility, whilst his crisp hyperrealist “Meat” series contrasts with his later atmospheric landscapes and hallucinatory “urban fantasies.”
Henri came to prominence as a writer alongside Roger McGough and Brian Patten in the groundbreaking and irreverently contemporary Penguin anthology The Mersey Sound (1967), one of the best-selling poetry books of all time (over a quarter of a million copies to date). He went on to publish numerous poetry collections for adults and children. He was also a playwright, novelist and librettist.
Performance was central to his practice: he staged the first ever Happenings in Britain and from the 1960s onwards, he performed his work widely in the UK and abroad. He fronted the poetry and rock band Liverpool Scene, prompting John Peel to call him “one of the great non-singers of our time,” and he collaborated with jazz, rock and classical musicians throughout his career.
What’s On
Tuesday 10 May –
Saturday 16 July 2022
The Likeness of Things: Baum, Cockrill, Henri, Walsh
In 1970, the Neptune Theatre Gallery in Liverpool held an exhibition titled Realist Painting. In 1974, the Sunderland Art Centre presented Five Realist Painters. Two years later, Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery showed Real Life. These exhibitions all included works by the four artists gathered here: John Baum, Maurice Cockrill, Adrian Henri and Sam Walsh.
All four started teaching at Liverpool College of Art in the 1960s, though they had come to the city from different places. They were friends, and part of the same art scene.
Although they had developed different approaches and styles in the 1960s, through the 1970s Baum, Cockrill, Henri and Walsh were often exhibited together under the banner of “realism” in the UK and abroad. During that decade, they concentrated on what John Baum called “the likeness of things”, depicting people, objects and places in a clear crisp manner sometimes described as Photo-realist, in reference to the movement then evolving in the US. This exhibition revisits that work of the 1970s when, with apparent emotional detachment, Baum, Cockrill, Henri and Walsh reappropriated traditional genres like portrait, landscape or still-life painting, and gave them a resolutely contemporary twist.
This exciting new exhibition, curated by Dr Catherine Marcangeli, will feature large-scale works which have not been displayed publicly for some time, as well as works from private collections; one not to be missed. An exhibition catalogue will be available.
The Likeness of Things: Baum, Cockrill, Henri, Walsh. Kirkby Gallery, Tuesday 10 May – Saturday 16 July. Admission is free.
More Information HERE.
March 2019
City Poems and City Music: Adrian Henri and Friends
| 11 April – 9 June | Gallery 2 | Whitechapel Gallery |
| 77-82 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX |
| Tel: +44 (0)20 7522 7888 | WEB LINK | CATALOGUE LINK |
Poets, artists and musicians respond to the experience of urban life in this series of live events and exhibition. A live programme presents contemporary work on the theme of the city with performances from musician Thurston Moore (b. 1958, USA), poet CAConrad (b. 1966, USA) and British punk trio Big Joanie. The events accompany an exhibition drawing on the archives of Liverpool-based painter, poet and pioneering performance artist Adrian Henri (1932 – 2000), whose works from the 1960s and early 1970s focused on the city. The artist also featured in a Whitechapel Gallery 1975 exhibition which inspires this project. City Poems and City Music is guest curated by Catherine Marcangeli, Thurston Moore and Eva Prinz.
October 2017
Sex, Chips & Poetry: 50 Years Of The Mersey Sound
This film celebrating the Mersey Sound can be watched online HERE.
September 2017
Sex, Chips & Poetry: 50 Years Of The Mersey Sound
| Tuesday 3rd October | 9pm-10pm | BBC FOUR |
This hour-long film will celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the best-selling poetry anthologies of all time, The Mersey Sound - and the bohemian Liverpool 8 community during the 1967 Summer of Love.
In the same year that The Beatles released Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Liverpool established itself at the centre of this cultural revolution, thanks to the publication of this crucial poetry anthology.
How did a small group of working class poets take poetry from the dusty shelf and onto the street, fending off criticism from some quarters of the poetry establishment, to become a mainstay on British school syllabuses?
Through the eyes of the two surviving poets, Roger McGough and Brian Patten, and their many followers from Craig Charles and John Cooper Clarke to Willy Russell and Benjamin Zephaniah, this film explores the book’s lasting influence.
( Also on catch-up HERE after the show has aired )
March 2017
BBC Radio4's FRONT ROW - Live from the Bluecoat
Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Catherine Marcangeli discuss the making of The Mersey Sound - the ground-breaking collection of poetry Roger and Brian created with the late Adrian Henri. If you missed the radio4 programme, you can catch up HERE.
January 2017
April to July 2017
Tonight at Noon is a programme of exhibitions and events curated by Catherine Marcangeli to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Mersey Sound. More details HERE.
February 2015
The Guardian newspaper ran a review of First Happenings: Adrian Henri in the '60s and '70s, currently running at the ICA in London. You can read the full review HERE. Additionally, there is an interview with Catherine Marcangeli, author and curator of this exhibition. You can read the interview HERE.
January 2015
New exhibition: First Happenings: Adrian Henri in the '60s and '70s
Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
27th January - 15th March
First Happenings offers a focussed look at Adrian Henri’s pioneering role in the ‘happenings movement’ in Britain, setting up the first ‘Event’ in 1962, through to enabling various collaborative events into the 1970s. More information click HERE.
Related events:
Tuesday 27 January, 6.30pm: Curator's talk by Catherine Marcangeli, (free). For more information click HERE
Saturday 28 February, 2pm: Panel Discussion on Performance, Environments and Happenings, with Bryan Biggs (Artistic Director, Bluecoat Liverpool), Mike Evans(musician, poet, ex-Liverpool Scene), Oliver Gilbert (Tate Research Fellow), First Happenings curator Catherine Marcangeli (Paris-based art historian), Barry Miles (writer), Heike Roms (Professor in Performance Studies at Aberystwyth University). For more information click HERE
November 2014
TOTAL ART at the Liverpool Biennial
Has now been extended until November 25th 2014
More details, including opening times, venue and exhibition HERE
March 2014
TOTAL ART at the Liverpool Biennial: (WEBSITE)
July 4th-October 26th 2014
Total Art at the Exhibition Research Centre (ERC), LJMU, showcases Adrian Henri's multi-faceted oeuvre from the 1960s and 1970s, a period of intense creativity and collaborative artistic endeavours. Although Henri is best known as a painter and poet, this exhibition reveals him to be a pioneer of performance and collective practices in Britain and internationally, taking part in happenings in Liverpool as early as 1962, and crossing over into the world of rock with the touring band The Liverpool Scene.
Reflecting Henri's eclecticism and insatiable curiosity, the exhibition features numerous artefacts from the Adrian Henri estate, including original paintings, collages, prints, annotated scripts and hand-made posters for happenings, objects, ephemera, rock posters, counterculture documents and correspondence, as well as rare audio and video material.
Total Art at the ERC is curated by Paris-based art historian Catherine Marcangeli. A fully illustrated exhibition catalogue will appear in September 2014, published by Occasional Papers.
The exhibition will travel to the ICA, London, in February 2015 and tour venues across the UK and Europe through 2017.
Open Monday to Friday 10am to 6pm
Open weekend 5 and 6 July.
Contact 0151 904 1216 for further details or visit the exhibition website: HERE
April 2013
Adrian Henri Poetry in Art
We are pleased to announce the winning artwork is "Her House Is Air" by Linda Norris with the poem "Peregrine Falcon" by Gillian Clarke. You can view the winning entry HERE.
"The jury chose this work because it was a poetic object in itself, very evocative and mysterious, in the tradition of the best Surrealist assemblages. Besides, it had a subtle intimacy with the poem that inspired it, which made us rediscover the words and images of Gillian Clarke's text. And Adrian would have loved it." (Catherine Marcangeli).
April 2013
January 2013
The closing date for entries for the 'Adrian Henri Poetry in Art' award has been extended to 28th February. You can find out more about the competition on the 'Adrian Henri Poetry in Art' website HERE.
November 2012
A reminder that the very first 'Adrian Henri Poetry in Art' award is open for entries. Entries to the competition, which carries a £10,000 prize, must be received no later than the 14th January 2013. The competition, to be held every two years, is open to British artists, makers and poets working in the visual arts including: two-dimensional, three-dimensional work and contemporary craft. Wenlock Poetry Festival Adrian Henri Prize for Poetry in Art will be held from 6th to 20th April 2013 for two weeks at Twenty Twenty Gallery in Much Wenlock.
October 13, 2012
Paperback Writer, poetry reading in honour of Liverpool writers. Texts by Adrian Henri, Brian Patten, Malcolm Lowry, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Sean Hignett.
September 28 - October 21 2012
Happiness is a warm gun’ exhibition in Cologne, Germany (Räumen des BBK Köln, Frankenwerft 35/Stapelhaus)
April 2012
Adrian Henri often visited Much Wenlock and painted a series of Hedges based on the Shropshire landscape in the 1970s. As part of the the 2012 Much Wenlock Poetry Festival, an exhibition will mark the 80th anniversary of his birth. Adrian Henri, Works on Paper 1960-2000 includes better-known pieces alongside rarely-shown drawings, collages and prints, ranging from Pop works to pastoral landscapes.
For more information, see www.twenty-twenty.co.uk
September-November 2011
Democratic Promenade, Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool
An exhibition that looks at artists who made Liverpool a radical city. The section dedicated to Adrian examines his role as a passeur, his collaborative approach, and his live performances – in poetry readings, rock concerts or avant-garde happenings – breaking down categories between media, as well as traditional cultural and artistic hierarchies.
More at: http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/
September-October 2011
City, solo exhibition at the Chelsea Arts Club, London.
Adrian was a life-long member of the Chelsea Arts Club. This exhibition focuses on Adrian Henri’s urban imagery. It includes 1960s paintings, drawings and collages that draw on popular icons, consumer products and cityscapes, while the darkness of his Bird Dying in the City series is counterbalanced by the ridiculous autocratic figure of Alfred Jarry’s Père Ubu.. The City is also the stage for dream-like visions, as in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or in the Day of the Dead – in this late series, Henri revisits his own 1964 Entry of Christ into Liverpool, relocating the Mexican celebration to Hope Street, with the city’s Catholic Cathedral as backdrop, and a cast of absent friends and heroes (Burroughs, Ginsberg, Khalo, Malcolm Lowry, etc.) carousing with Posada’s Calaveras.
July-September 2011
Honky Tonk, exhibition at the Bluecoat Art Centre, Liverpool
The exhibition celebrates the ‘Nashville of the North’ and its links, through music and popular culture, with the real Nashville and the American south.
More at: http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/
From July 2011
The recently opened Museum of Liverpool displays artworks as well as archive material, ephemera and stagewear borrowed from Adrian’s estate – including the gold lamé pants he revealed through split trousers to emulate PJ Proby’s split-trousers incident. Also on display are 1960s psychedelic posters for Liverpool Scene concerts, ephemera from Happenings and environments.
More at : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-14213444
See Also: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/jul/17/liverpool-museum-opening-paul-mcccartney
Spring 2011
Liverpool Radicals Banners
Liverpool marks a century of radicalism. Banners are displayed around the city, celebrating radical figures who have marked the city, such as Margaret Beavan (first female Mayor and Child Welfare activist), women’s rights activists Ann Clough and Eleanor Rathbone, philanthropist William Lever, social campaigner Margaret Simey, LFC legend Bill Shankly… and Adrian Henri.
More at: http://www.cityofradicals.co.uk/
December 2010
Remembering Adrian, BBC Radio Merseyside.
To mark the 10th anniversary of Adrian’s death, BBC Radio Merseyside recorded a programme dedicated to his life and career. Co-produced by C.Marcangeli and broadcast in December 2010, the show featured contributions from friends and colleagues, including Willy Russell, Roger McGough, Brian Patten, Carol Ann Duffy, Andy Roberts, Bel Mooney, Mike Badger, Alan Peters, Peter Edwards, Celia Mitchell…