Van Gogh House presents The Living House, celebrating 150 years since Van Gogh lived in London with a dynamic group exhibition and events programme in his old boarding house.

The Living House celebrates 150 years since Van Gogh lived in South London with a dynamic group exhibition and events programme exploring the idea that his boarding house is still alive and inhabited.

Artists Do Ho Suh, Olivia Plender, Eva Gold and Godai Sahara situate their work amongst the objects and rooms within Van Gogh House’s collection, from newspapers and children’s toys to the bathroom, garden, or beds. Seeing the house as an active collaborator, the works will be in conversation with the building to draw out questions around how art and ways of living are entwined.

September 2023 marks 150 years since the first letter that Van Gogh wrote from 87 Hackford Road, and 200 years that the house has stood.

Visitors who would like a more in-depth introduction will be able to take a guided tour of the house, which situates Van Gogh’s time in London, examining the city’s politics, material culture and fabric through the House.

The exhibition sits alongside an events series from major Van Gogh academics and experts, including Griselda Pollock, Martin Bailey, Iain Sinclair, Kate Bryan, and workshops from The London Drawing Group and Tool/Toy Project.

The Living House is generously supported by The Wang Family.

Read more ⟶

• Full Price – £7.50
• 16-25, Students, OAP, Unemployed, Disabled, Friends of Van Gogh House, National Art Pass Holders – £4
• Free for under 16s, Museums Association and ICOM members
• As part of Lambeth Heritage Festival, for the month of September Lambeth residents (with proof of address) pay £4 concession tickets

Tickets ⟶

Talks

• Kate Bryan – Jo van Gogh Bonger, Sacrifice and Glory – 20 September, 7pm
  (Event ended / pay what you can to watch lecture recording ⟶)
• Martin Bailey – Starry Night, Van Gogh at the Asylum – 1 November, 7pm
  (£18 in person / pay what you can online ⟶)
• Iain Sinclair and Renchi Bicknell – Retracing Vincent’s Walks – 22 November 2023, 7pm
  (£18 in person / pay what you can online ⟶)
• Griselda Pollock – Was Van Gogh a Victorian Artist? – 6 December 2023, 7pm
  (£18 in person / pay what you can online ⟶)

Tours

• Open House Festival – Weekend 16th & 17th September, 11am – 6pm
  (Free entry) ⟶
• Guided House Tours – Last weekend of each month
  £12 & concessions ⟶
• To Celebrate Black History – Saturday 28th October, 10am & 12pm
  £12 & concessions ⟶

Workshops

• London Drawing Group – Drawing Domesticity -4 October, 7pm
  Pay what you can ⟶
• Tool/Toy Project – Noctambulation – 25 November 2023, 8pm
  Pay what you can ⟶

Our talks programme is kindly sponsored by Brixton Brewery. Each in-person talk ticket comes with a free can of limited edition The Living House Pale Ale. Online talk tickets will include access to watch the event live, and a link to the recording will be available for two weeks afterwards.

Born in 1962 in South Korea, Do Ho Suh currently lives and works in London. Suh’s work is included in numerous museum collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles and Tate, London, among many others. Suh represented Korea at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. In 2018, a film by the artist was commissioned by the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, as part of its presentation Robin Hood Gardens: A Ruin in Reverse at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, in collaboration with La Biennale di Venezia. Suh was awarded the 2017 Ho-Am Prize, Korea’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize.

Godai Sahara lives and works in Tokyo as an artist and a medical doctor specialised in prevention. Sahara questions how one’s well-being can relate to others’ and surroundings, and vice versa, through proposing ways of passing time often within everyday-life time and spaces. Exhibitions include Good Samaritan, GAO, London, A gift from someone who wishes to cry but hardly ever does, Yard Gallery, Shanghai, Cairn gallery, Pittenweem, Ascending Delight, Glasgow International, Glasgow, Snow/River-wine tasting, Narva Art Residency, Narva, 2018, Ich Mache eine Wunderkammer, Eisenbahnstraße 14, Berlin, 2019, Re-Enchanted Matter, APT Gallery, London, 2020, Heart/Herz by Spirite, Bonenburg, 2022.

Eva Gold (b. 1994, Manchester, UK) lives and works in London. After completing her BA at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2016, Gold graduated from Royal Academy Schools, London in 2019. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include City of Rooms Part 1 + Part 2, Rose Easton, London (2023); Slow Dance, Eigen+Art Lab, Berlin (2022); The Last Cowboys, Ginny on Frederick, London (2022); Lock Up International, Brussels (2022); and Perv City, Parrhesiades + Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London (2020). Selected group exhibitions include Not before it has forgotten you, Nicoletti Contemporary, London / The Pole Gallery, Paris (2022); Lock Up International, Brussels (2022); SEX, Rose Easton, London (2022); Corps, MAMOTH, London (2021); Sets & Scenarios, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham (2020); and Barely Furtive Pleasures, Nir Altman, Munich (2020). Current group exhibitions include Ideal Shapes of Disappearing, Silke Lindner, New York and Stilled Images, Tube Gallery, Palma de Mallorca. She is currently artist-in-residence at Rupert, Vilnius.

Olivia Plender is an artist based in Stockholm and London. Her work is often based on social history, and frequently explores the relationships between gender, power and authority. Plender’s artwork is currently on display at Tate Britain as part of the new rehang of the collection. She has exhibited internationally in exhibitions that include recent solo shows at Maureen Paley, London (2022), Amant Foundation, New York (2022); and group shows including ‘The School of Creators: The Art of Learning from the 1960s to the present’, Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (2022); the 34th Bienal de São Paulo (2021); ‘Life Support’, Glasgow Women’s Library, UK (2021); ‘Not Without My Ghosts’, Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition, UK, (2021-2022); Göteborg International Biennial (2017); BAHAR, Off-Site Project for Sharjah Biennial 13, Istanbul (2017); Taipei Biennial (2010); Manifesta 8, Murcea (2010); Altermodern: Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2009); The Greenroom, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, New York (2008); Romantic Detachment, MoMA PS1, New York (2004).

Read more ⟶