Purdy Hicks Gallery

22/08/2026

Susan Derges today in the Financial Times, online and in print, her works illustrating an article on the companionship of rivers that short story writer and minister Henry Van D**e explored so beautifully in Little Rivers (1896).

130 years on, Susan Derges continues his train of thought in a career of work dedicated to water, capturing the continuous movement of water by submerging photographic paper into rivers. Working at night, she uses the light of the moon and a micro-second of flash light to expose images directly onto light sensitive paper.

As Van D**e writes: “A river is the most human and companionable of all inanimate things. It has a life, a character, a voice of its own.”

Financial Times

14/08/2026

The Week features Pierre Bergian’s exhibition, Fragments of Place (Purdy Hicks Gallery to 28 August) Pierre Bergian The Week UK

13/08/2026

05/08/2026

Pierre Bergian’s Fragments of Place, at Purdy Hicks until 28 August, goes from Roman palazzi, Holkham Hall, Petworth House and Castle Howard, as well as artists’ studios and collectors’ houses. The exhibition follows Bergian’s remembered places and relics within. And as Pierre writes: “Fragments are far more compelling to imagine than what has survived time without damage.” Pierre Bergian

24/07/2026

Anaïs Tondeur – Flower Power, Les Recontres de la Photographie, Arles

Contemporary photography offers a renewed interpretation of the floral theme. Far from being purely ornamental, flowers have become a means of exploring life and experimenting with the image. Presented in the Jardin d’été, works by five international artists including Anais Tondeur, show how the floral motif continues to generate new meanings within contemporary photographic practice.

Framed by ecological, political and historical concerns, images of flowers take on a different tone. What may at first appear to be an exploration of form and colour often carries a critical undercurrent. Whether through metaphor or more direct forms of representation, these works engage with their subject while exploring what photographic images can do.

For Anaïs Tondeur, working with living matter goes hand in hand with photographic experimentation, often in environments that seem inhospitable to growth. Yet even in landscapes shaped by pollution and radioactive contamination, unexpected forms of life emerge from what anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing calls a “third nature.”

16/07/2026

We are deeply saddened by the death of Ralph Fleck: the most wonderful artist and dear friend to the Gallery. We had the enormous pleasure and honour of working with him for over 25 years and will miss him more than words can express

Born in 1951 in Freiburg, Germany, Ralph lived and worked in Freiburg and Sóller, Mallorca. He developed a painterly language that was distinctly his own. Working with densely layered oil paint, he transformed familiar subjects into works of great presence and intensity. Whether painting the complexity of a city, the order of stacked books, a field of flowers or the changing surface of the sea, he was less interested in recording a particular place than in capturing its essential character. Every part of the canvas received the same attention, and each brushstroke retained the immediacy and vitality that became a hallmark of his work.

His commitment to painting and its possibilities never wavered. His work has been presented in museum exhibitions internationally and is represented in major public and private collections across the world.

Ralph’s first solo exhibition at Purdy Hicks Gallery took place in 1999, immediately finding collectors who remained committed to the work throughout his career. Our visits to his studio in Freiburg to select paintings for exhibitions and art fairs were among the highlights of every year, invariably accompanied by magical times in some of the finest restaurants in the Black Forest.

The vast richness of the paintings he leaves behind, together with the galleries, museums and collectors who recognised his genius, will ensure that his artistic legacy endures.

We extend our heartfelt sympathy and deepest condolences to his family.

(Ralph Fleck, photographer Georg Lukas)

09/07/2026

Jatinder Singh Durhailay, Portrait Study of Shaheed Baba Deep Singh Ji (2026)

Two new works: one in natural stone pigments and the other in the finest line watercolour on handmade wasli paper. Durhailay’s depiction of Baba Deep Singh Ji tells the story of one of Sikhism’s greatest martyrs. Despite being mortally wounded while defending the Harmandir Sahib, Sikh tradition tells that he carried his severed head in one hand and continued fighting with his sword in the other, fulfilling his vow to reach the sacred shrine before attaining martyrdom.

07/07/2026

Graphite and gouache. Gideon Rubin 2026

29/06/2026

Pierre Bergian: Fragments of Place
1 July – 28 August at Purdy Hicks

From Roman palazzi to the long galleries and stately rooms of Holkham Hall, Petworth House and Castle Howard, from artists’ studios and collectors’ houses to rooms visited in life and others encountered through painting, the works in the exhibition trace a landscape of remembered places: Bergian’s personal atlas where architecture, memory and imagination coexist.

“Do you feel lonely in an empty museum?

I do not. There is a kind of emptiness in such a monumental space, full of objects linking past and present, yet existing beyond everyday life. I quickly feel as though I am stepping into another world—yet one that is familiar, a home away from the noise of the now. It is also a journey through my own life, as my passion for archaeology, old walls, buildings, and all kinds of fragments has been the fil rouge since childhood. Over time, almost as an artistic practice and training, this has only grown stronger; I need only close my eyes to enter a kind of metaphysical collection.”

23/06/2026

We are pleased to be participating in the second edition of .projects in collaboration with Ben Pentreath Studio. The one-day exhibition is held on Friday 26 June at the College Garden and the Cloisters, Westminster Abbey.

We will be presenting paintings by Pierre Bergian, whose interior worlds layer memory and imagination with his deep knowledge of architecture and archaeology.

This presentation comes ahead of Bergian’s forthcoming exhibition with us, opening on 1 July.

(Holkham Hall, 2026, oil on panel, 40 x 47 cm)