Artists

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Anthony Cudahy, Louise Giovanelli, Harry Gruyaert, Celia Hempton, Susan Meiselas, Marlo Pascual, Prem Sahib, Pádraig Timoney, Rose Wylie

Press release

This summer, we are excited to collaborate for the first time with The Courtauld in developing and staging a public exhibition in the Courtauld Gallery, to be conceived and curated by the students on the MA Curating the Art Museum programme. 

Good Morning, Midnight will showcase The Courtauld's rich Post-Impressionist collection, with highlights by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Georges Seurat, in dialogue with contemporary artists from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, including Anthony Cudahy, Louise Giovanelli, Celia Hempton, Prem Sahib and Rose Wylie.

The exhibition takes its title from a 1939 modernist novel by Jean Rhys in which a woman, alienated and lonely, traverses the cafés and bars of Paris. Central to the exhibition is Toulouse-Lautrec’s painting In a Private Dining Room (At the Rat Mort), where electric light illuminates the space with a strange, green glow. The painting sets the tone for the exhibition’s exploration of performance, spectacle and social space at night-time.

In the featured works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, artists use light as a tool to create atmosphere, and often zoom in and crop their compositions, fragmenting the body as they capture fleeting encounters across bars, clubs, stages and screens.