Jane Harris: Aloof & The Fugitives
Exhibition Opening Aloof: 3 July – 31 July 2025, CLOSE Project Space, London & The Fugitives: 5 July – 2 August 2025, CLOSE Gallery, Somerset
CLOSE Gallery, founded by AWITA member Freeny Yianni, presents a dual exhibition celebrating the life and legacy of the late British abstract painter Jane Harris.
Presented in partnership with the Estate of Jane Harris, the exhibitions take place across CLOSE’s London and Somerset spaces, offering a rare opportunity to explore Harris’s distinctive visual language, grounded in surface, repetition and the expressive potential of colour.
The two exhibitions coincide with the inclusion of two of Harris’s works in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (17 June – 17 August 2025) and precede a major retrospective at FRAC Limoges opening in October, all underscoring a growing critical and institutional recognition of her legacy.
At CLOSE Project Space in London, Aloof presents an intimate selection of previously unseen works that explore restraint, luminosity and illusion. The title, suggested by Harris’s son George, reflects the quiet generosity and playful spirit that shaped both her life and her painting. These elliptical, shimmering forms invite close contemplation and reflect her lifelong commitment to precision and presence.
In Somerset, The Fugitives brings together large-scale later works that shift in rhythm and hue, reflecting Harris’s deepening engagement with colour and light. Inspired in part by her residencies at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, these paintings shimmer with a sense of internal movement and explore the idea of fugitivity – the fleeting sensations that arise between viewer and surface.
These two exhibitions mark the first public presentation of Harris’s work under the stewardship of Freeny Yianni and Prue O’Day, on behalf of Jiri and George Kratochvil.
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