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Art At Regent’s Place – Focus On Pecking Bird By Gary Hume RA

Campus life at Regent’s Place retains a strong focus on sustainability; bug hotels, home grown food, local wildlife walks and gardening activities all enable us to promote green spaces and wellbeing. Keen to encourage biodiversity, our most recent additions, Bee Wing box planters, are bursting with lavender, an aromatic herb much loved by bees. Lavender also has medicinal properties and research shows it reduces emotional stress and anxiety.

One of our artists, Gary Hume RA, shares our connection with greenery. Based in London for part of the year, he spends the summer months with his family at his studio in upstate New York’s Catskills Mountains. Here, Hume and his artist wife, Georgie Hopton, enjoy a peaceful retreat, tending their vegetable gardens, ponds and fruit trees, making maple syrup and apple vinegar. Inspired by the natural bounty surrounding this rural retreat, the artworks created there evoke birds, plants and flowers, in fact “all things he sees from his window”.

Pecking Bird by Gary Hume RA at Regent’s Place.

Here at Regent’s Place, our site-specific artwork by Gary Hume (b 1952 UK) draws inspiration from similar themes. Titled Pecking Bird, this monumental 20-panel installation stands almost 14 metres above the traffic and pedestrians at the Brock Street and Hampstead Road intersections. Comprising Hume’s trademark clear lines and bold colours, Pecking Bird was commissioned by British Land for Regent’s Place in 2012.

Initially celebrated for his abstract artworks created using household gloss paint, Hume developed a more lyrical and poetic style, embracing portraiture and his images of natural elements. Turner Prize nominated, Hume studied at London’s Goldsmith’s College during the 1990s and participated in the now seminal Freeze exhibition organized by co-student Damien Hirst in 1988. More recently, a presentation of his work was staged at Tate Britain in 2013 and, in 2017, London’s Royal Academy of Arts hosted a display of his works on paper. He has a show upcoming at Sprüth Magers Gallery in Berlin and is currently featuring in Michael Jackson: On the Wall at London’s National Portrait Gallery.

Michael by Gary Hume 2001. Private Collection. Courtesy of the artist, Sprüth Magers and Matthew Marks © Gary Hume and DACS, London 2018

Inspired? Why not take another look when you’re out and about? Don’t forget, you can download our Art Trail leaflet here and explore more of our world-class artworks. Once you’ve taken a look please do share your thoughts and tag us @RegentsPlace, we’d love to see your photographs!

Image Credits:
Image 1 – Pecking Bird by Gary Hume RA at Regent’s Place.
Image 2 – Pecking Bird by Gary Hume RA at Regent’s Place.
Image 3 – Michael by Gary Hume 2001. Private Collection. Courtesy of the artist, Sprüth Magers and Matthew Marks © Gary Hume and DACS, London 2018.

Michael Jackson: On the Wall is at the National Portrait Gallery from 28 June to 21 October.

Further reading and useful info:
Gary Hume RA – https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/gary-hume-ra
Pecking Bird – http://www.regentsplace.com/news/gary-humes-pecking-bird-at-regents-place
Turner Prize – https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turner-prize-2018
Freeze – http://www.damienhirst.com/exhibitions/group/1988/freeze
Tate Britain – https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/gary-hume
Royal Academy of Arts – https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/art-sales-gary-hume-ra-print-pictures
Spruth Magers – http://www.spruethmagers.com/exhibitions/477
National Portrait Gallery – https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/michael-jackson-on-the-wall/exhibition/

Last updated Sunday 8 October, 2023