Nunnery Gallery and Bow Arts Trust (Studios, Gallery and Education)

In January 2015, Nunnery Gallery will open an exhibition featuring paintings and drawings by the prolific outsider artist Mary Barnes. The works will be predominantly from the collection of Dr. Joseph Berke, her therapist and friend. Berke was nick-named “Boo-Bah” in a love letter scaling over a metre high and scrawled in Mary’s inimitable handwriting. This exhibition brings together works spanning her artistic career which began in the 1960s in Bow, east London.

Mary Barnes moved to Kingsley Hall in 1965 following a breakdown and diagnosis of schizophrenia. Here, she joined the Philadelphia Association which was an alternative and experimental treatment community, created by the radical psychiatrist R. D. Laing and his group of colleagues. It was at the same time that Joseph Berke travelled to East London, as a recent medical graduate from New York, to work for R. D. Laing and this is where he met Mary Barnes. They developed a strong bond, famously dramatised in the play Mary Barnes by David Edgar which was itself based on the book “Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness” written by Berke and Barnes. Mary Barnes passed away in 2001, aged 78.

Gallery Director, Rosamond Murdoch says:

“Mary Barnes is a key character in the history of Bow and particularly the radical social history which is embodied in the remarkable Kingsley Hall, one time of home of Mahatma Gandhi. Nunnery Gallery is thrilled to have been invited by Dr J Berke to show this collection of powerful paintings in Bow, where exactly 50 years before he started a remarkable creative partnership with Mary Barnes.”

http://www.bowarts.org/nunnery/exhibitions-and-events/mary-barnes-boo-bah

The exhibition launches the Nunnery Gallery’s season In Dialogue, a year-long exploration of partnerships, artistic inspirations and deeply involved relationships between the artist and the muse.

www.bowarts.org/nunnery/exhibitions

RSVP to Private View (Thursday 15th January 2015) to media@bowarts.com

Suitable for

• Any age

Admission

Free

Website

http://www.bowarts.org/nunnery/exhibitions-and-events/mary-barnes-boo-bah

It is exactly 50 years since Mary Barnes moved into Kingsley Hall in Bromley-by-Bow and lived for 5 years in a therapeutic alternative community set up by RD Laing and the Philadelphia Association. To celebrate this anniversary Nunnery Gallery has launched the exhibition BOO-BAH, profiling the important relatiopnship built between Barnes and Dr Joseph Berke who had a vital role in her development into one of the most recognised and acclaimed "Outsider" artists.

Nunnery Gallery & Kinglsey Hall invite you to fnd out more about this fascinating slice of local history with national significance with an unusual guided walk including a tour of the rarely seen Kingsley Hall.

The walk will aim to show some of the social history of the area, an area of the East End that will have changed over the past 50 years, also setting in a broader historical context of political and social action in Bow.

Points of interest will include Bow Church, Gladstone's Statue, the "Match Factory", Children's House (now a Nursery School) and finally Kingsley Hall. On arrival at the Kingsley Hall, there will be an exclusive tour of the building which is not usually open to the public.

Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes (Gallery introduction 15 minutes, Walk 30 minutes, Kinglsey Hall tour 30 minutes).

Accessibility: Nunnery Gallery is wheelchair accessible, Kingsley Hall has no lifts, but the ground floor is accessible. Please let us know at the time of booking if you have any accessibility requirements.

Suitable for

• Any age

Admission

Tickets via http://boo-bah-walk.eventbrite.co.uk

Website

http://boo-bah-walk.eventbrite.co.uk

Nunnery Gallery welcomes acclaimed playwright David Edgar and Dr. Joseph Berke to discuss the life and works of Mary Barnes.

Born in 1923, Mary Barnes was a painter who produced work prolifically, bequeathing much of her collection to her friend and psychiatrist Joseph Berke (“Boo Bah”). The Nunnery Gallery is showing this unique collection for the first time, exactly 50 years since she arrived in Bow and stayed at the legendary Kingsley Hall.

Mary Barnes started to paint at the age of 42, when she moved into Kingsley Hall under the care of RD Laing and his team who expounded the “Anti-Psychiatry” movement. RD Laing set up an alternative community within Kingsley Hall and allowed Mary Barnes to explore her diagnosed schizophrenia through writing and painting, and without medication. She wrote a book with Joseph Berke called “Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness” which inspired the play Mary Barnes by David Edgar (Royal Court, 1978).

Book your tickets here
https://marybarnesboobah.eventbrite.co.uk

Suitable for

• Any age

Admission

Tickets via Eventbrite
https://marybarnesboobah.eventbrite.co.uk/

Website

https://marybarnesboobah.eventbrite.co.uk/