Adrian Henri
Born 1932 in Birkenhead, Adrian Henri grew up in Rhyl and studied Fine Art at King's College, Newcastle, from 1951-54. He moved to Liverpool in 1957 and subsequently taught at Manchester and Liverpool Colleges of Art while finding fame as one of the Mersey Poets, together with Roger McGough and Brian Patten, in the mid-1960s. He also pioneered performance art in the UK, developed a music career with The Liverpool Scene and from 1972-81 was President of the Liverpool Academy.
There were exhibitions of his work in London, Edinburgh and Wolverhampton from 1968 onwards, and he also exhibited in group shows throughout this country and in Europe. In 1972 he was a prizewinner in the John Moores Exhibition 9, and a career retrospective was held at Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery in 1999. He was made a freeman of the city shortly before his death in 2000.
'This sequence of prints is an attempt to re-create the landscape and atmosphere of a holiday in Le Thil, Normandy, at Easter 1981, with the poet Carol Ann Duffy.
"Apart from the studies done around the house and garden, I've used sketchbook pages, fragments of torn election posters we found by the bus-shelter, pressed flowers gathered in the hedges, a picture-postcard, the lid of a cheese-box we brought back, the paper-bag I used to wipe my brushes on, and a tin of chocolate sardines bought in Dieppe, to try and evoke a short but happy period of time."
Souvenir Of Normandy
