Laura’s Place
Private View: 26th June - 6pm to 8pm
Exhibition Continues: 27th June – 6th July 2014
Laura’s Place is an exhibition of fresh new artworks, in a diverse range of media from painting to performance, in which artists have been asked to respond to an 18th century portrait in the Holburne Museum Collection. The painting is of Henrietta Laura Pulteney, 1777, by Swiss painter Angelica Kauffmann.
The subject, known as Laura, who is depicted as a girl of eleven, was at the time the richest young heiress in Europe. In adulthood, as the 1st Countess of Bath, she was responsible for developing much of eastern Bath, giving her name to Henrietta Gardens, Pulteney Road, Great Pulteney Street and Laura Place.
The curators, Katie O’Brien, (44AD’s director), and Melissa Wraxall, (a 44AD studio artist), wanted to find a painting which would have a strong connection with the history of Bath, to inspire new twenty-first century artworks for their fundraising exhibition. All proceeds are in aid of 44AD’s move in August 2014 , to fantastic new premises in Bath’s City Centre. The Holburne Museum has so many wonderful artworks to choose from, but this beautiful little oil painting by Kauffmann really won them over. They are enormously grateful to the Senior Curator of the Holburne Museum, Amina Wright, who has been enormously helpful and supportive of their project.
The artworks sent in will be photographed and published in book form after the exhibition.