Ten Good Years

The Heong Gallery at Downing College, Cambridge, is ten years old. Since 2016, it has built a significant reputation as a leading platform for modern and contemporary art, with exhibitions by artists including David Hockney, Ai Weiwei and Yoko Ono. In Ten Good Years, the gallery pays homage to its inaugural exhibition Generation Painting 1955–65: British Art from the Collection of Sir Alan Bowness. This exhibition showcased works from the collection of Bowness, a former Director of the Tate Gallery and a Downing College alumnus. Ten Good Years re-shows selected works from this collection by significant mid-twentieth-century artists such as Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, and introduces new works produced over the past ten years by artists with connections to West Penwith, Cornwall, including Lubaina Himid, Veronica Ryan, and Ro Robertson. Ten Good Years is an exhibition about connections through time. It reveals the way in which themes, places and sympathies evident in Bowness's collection extend across generations, by exhibiting a selection of contemporary pieces which specifically resonate with this mid-century work. The exhibition's name derives from the title of Bowness's essay in the Generation Painting catalogue, in which he reflects on the "notion of a decade as a marker of a generation". Ten Good Years features work by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Simon Bayliss, Alan Davie, Pam Evelyn, Terry Frost, Christopher P. Green, Patrick Heron, Realf Heygate, Lubaina Himid, Peter Lanyon, Janet Leach, Siobhan McLaughlin, Richard Smith, Lucy Stein, Mark Tobey, Jonathan Michael Ray, Ro Robertson, and Veronica Ryan. In conjunction with the exhibition, other work from Bowness's collection will be shown at Cambridge's other major galleries: William Scott at Kettle's Yard and Roger Hilton at The Fitzwilliam Museum. The exhibition is curated by Joe Lyward. The exhibition is accompanied by a printed catalogue and free public events, and supported by the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust. The Heong Gallery at Downing College opened in February 2016 as a purpose-built public exhibition space for modern and contemporary art. Designed by Caruso St John Architects, the Gallery won a RIBA East Award in 2017. It was inaugurated by alumnus Sir Alan Bowness (Modern Languages, 1950) and named after alumnus Alwyn Heong in recognition of his generous benefaction.