Two Temple Place, hidden away in a back street two minutes from Temple Tube station in London, is a beautiful late Victorian building, with its own artistic merit. Each year it hosts a small, unusual exhibition gathered from regional collections. This year’s, Sussex Modernism: Retreat and Rebellion, focuses on the work of the Bloomsbury Group and others who lived in Sussex in the first half of the 20th century.
The show begins with the beautiful, gentle lines of Eric Gill’s well weathered Garden Statue: The Virgin. This was commissioned in 1911 by artist and critic Roger Fry (who coined the term Post-Impressionism) after it was considered that Gill’s earlier design of the Virgin was too overtly erotic and that it might upset visitors – a recurring characteristic of the exhibition. Photos by Vanessa Bell (once Roger Fry’s lover) endearingly show Fry’s daughter Pamela perched on the statue.
