Breakfast with a private view and tour of the exhibition by Jeff Koons
Friday 3rd July 12:00am, Hyde Park

Breakfast and a private viewing of Jeff Koons ExhibitionVenue - The Serpentine Gallery, Hyde ParkPrivate Tour by Julia Peyton-Jones

Julia Peyton-Jones, Director of the Serpentine Gallery, will give a private tour of the Serpentine Gallery’s Jeff Koons: Popeye Series, his first major exhibition in a public gallery in the UK.

This exhibition will present works from Koons’s Popeye Series, which he began in 2002. The series incorporates some of his signature ideas and motifs, including surreal combinations of everyday objects, cartoon imagery, art-historical references and children’s toys.   The immediately recognisable figures of Popeye and Olive Oyl are central in the Popeye series and will appear in several prominent positions within the exhibition. One of the most iconic American comic-strip characters, Popeye was conceived in 1929 when the Great Depression was taking hold. In Popeye’s early years, the cartoon addressed the hardships and injustices of the time and, in this current period of economic recession, he is a fitting character to rediscover and explore.

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1955. His work has been widely exhibited internationally and his most recent solo exhibitions include presentations at the Château de Versailles, France; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, all in 2008. Koons lives and works in New York.

Julia Peyton-Jones studied painting at the Royal College of Art, London, and worked as a practising artist in London and a lecturer in fine art at Edinburgh College of Art. She moved to the Hayward Gallery in 1988 as Curator of Exhibitions. In 1991 she became Director of the Serpentine Gallery, where she has been responsible for both commissioning and showcasing the groundbreaking Exhibition, Education and Public Programmes as well as the annual architecture commission, the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, which she conceived in 2000. In 2003 she was made both an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and appointed an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE). In 2008 Julia was made Professor, University of the Arts, London, and Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art (RCA) in the same year. She is invited to attend the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, annually.

www.serpentinegallery.org

RSVP to Kate Lewis  if you are interested in attending.

kl@picapital.co.uk

( 020 7529 5664