Doing Langlands & Bell at Charleston

Immerse yourself in the radical work of Langlands & Bell as Charleston presents a summer season of arts and ideas centred around the Turner Prize-shortlisted artist duo.

Installed across Charleston’s Wolfson Gallery, Ideas of Utopia features 11 works from across their 40-year career that interrogate the role of architecture and built spaces in shaping our lives and communication systems. Expect interactive digital media, sculpture, film and installations, drawn from public and private collections across the UK, as well as the artist’s own archive.

For the summer season, the South Gallery plays host to Absents Artists, an exhibition curated by Langlands & Bell that considers the significance of the artist studio and the relationship between the artist and their studio. There are more than 50 works on display, from paintings and drawings to prints and photographs by the likes of Annie Leibovitz, David Hockney and Jasper Johns. Also included is The Artist’s Studio (2002), an early interactive digital artwork by Langlands & Bell, which links Turner’s studio at Petworth House in West Sussex with the artists’ own studio in Whitechapel, London.

Not to be missed is Near Heaven, a new commission by Langlands & Bell installed in Vanessa Bell’s attic Studio. Named after a quote by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s daughter, Angelica Garnett, on the importance of this space to her mother, Near Heaven considers the studio as a place of contemplation, creation and as a personal haven. Never has there been a better time to visit one of the country’s most cherished artsy homes.