Arts Council: Close Encounters exhibition|Christie’s

Event date 3 - 23 June
Event location London

Christie’s is proud to present Close Encounters: Figuration, Painting and Landscape in the Arts Council Collection, organised in partnership with the Arts Council Collection and celebrating this landmark institution in its 80th anniversary year. Open to the public at Christie’s London from 3 to 23 June 2026, this curated display brings together works by David Hockney, Vanessa Raw and Christina Kimeze to explore shifting representations of gender, sexuality, and the body through intimacy, entanglement, and the agency of the gaze.

Further works on display by Michael Armitage, Peter Doig and Suleman Aqeel Khilji consider landscape as a site of memory, displacement, and imaginative reconstruction, where place is felt, remembered, and reconfigured rather than fixed. In parallel, works by Claudette Johnson and Sonia Boyce foreground the practices of Black British women artists who have reshaped the languages of representation, offering new spaces for interiority, resistance, and play. Together, these works reflect the Collection’s enduring role as both a record and a catalyst; one that continues to evolve in dialogue with artists and audiences alike.

Highlights

A contemporary art gallery with blue walls displaying paintings and a mixed-media sculpture.

About Arts Council Collection

The Arts Council Collection is a national collection of British art from 1946 to the present day and holds over 8,000 works which are available for loan to spaces across the UK. With more than 1,000 loans made to over 100 venues a year, it is seen by millions of people annually in public spaces from galleries and museums to hospitals, libraries and universities. Representing one of the most important collections of British modern and contemporary art in the world, it includes work from Francis Bacon, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore to Lucian Freud, Antony Gormley and Grayson Perry. The Collection supports and promotes British art and British artists by buying art when they are in the early stages of their career, and continues to acquire new work and support emerging artists. The Arts Council Collection is managed by Southbank Centre.

Learn more

We are thrilled to celebrate the Arts Council Collection’s 80th anniversary by reaffirming our founding mission: to support living artists and ensure world-class British art is accessible to everyone. We’re equally delighted to renew our partnership with Christie’s to present Close Encounters, a thoughtfully curated display that traces the history of the Collection, drawing connections between historic works and contemporary practice.

—Alona Pardo, Director, Arts Council Collection

Exhibition

London

Location
Christie’s London
8 King St., St. James’s
London, SW1Y 6QT

Viewing
3 - 23 June
Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm
Saturday and Sunday, 12pm - 5pm

Contact
+44 (0) 20 7839 9060
info@christies.com

Contacts

Tessa Lord

International Specialist, Head of Department

Post-war & Contemporary Art

Tessa is Head of Post War and Contemporary Art London, overseeing the management of the London auction platforms with a focus on the bi annual Evening auctions. Previously Head of the Evening Sale, Tessa has been key in delivering a number of record prices for artists including Daniel Richter and Banksy. Her passion for figurative painting, from Francis Bacon to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has continued the evolution of the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale platform, bringing the very best artists to the fore in the London market. A career highlight was working on the Jeremy Lancaster Collection, which achieved top prices for Philip Guston and Bridget Riley as well as setting the benchmark for Howard Hodgkin with a selection of works sold that spanned his career. Tessa joined Christie’s in 2013, having graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in History, gaining a Master’s degree in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2012. Tessa is fluent in Spanish and lives in London.

Marie-Louise Chaldecott

Director, Senior Client Advisor

Client Advisory

Marie-Louise joined Christie’s in 2009 and throughout her career has worked across many of the Fine Art departments and sale sites. With a strong background in Client Strategy and Business Development, she worked closely with the European Chairman’s Office for three years contributing to the growth of the business in key regions including India and France. She joined the Client Advisory team in 2014 where she advises established private collectors on their collections, nurtures new buyers and develops private partnerships. Marie-Louise is British and Lebanese and studied French and History of Art at The University of Bristol. She speaks French and English fluently.

Alona Pardo

Director, The Arts Council Collection

alona.pardo@southbankcentre.co.uk

Alona Pardo is Director of the Arts Council Collection, UK, and was until recently a curator at Barbican Art Gallery in London for over a decade. Part of the Turner Prize 2026 jury, recent exhibitions include RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology (Barbican); The Infinite Woman (Fondation Carmignac); Noémie Goudal: Phoenix (2022); and Masculinities: Liberation through Photography (Gropius Bau, Berlin). She has worked with artists including Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Ayse Erkmen, Yto Barrada, Richard Mosse, Trevor Paglen, Damian Ortega, and Roman Signer on large-scale commissions. She regularly contributes to publications and artists catalogues, including most recently Vitamin V and Vitamin C+ (Phaidon), and Cut Out: A Feminist History of Photo Collage, Montage and Assemblage (Thames and Hudson/V&A).

Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © Sonia Boyce. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2026
Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © Suleman Aqeel Khilji
Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © Christina Kimeze
Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London, Purchased through the ACC Frieze Fund 2025 © Vanessa Raw