In October 2025, I reviewed, for Church Times, Anthony Lawrence (1951-2022): A Retrospective at Palais des Vaches, Lower Exbury. In an interview for Culturalee, Anthony Lawrence's daughter Sara explains how that review led on to an exhibition of Anthony's work that opens shortly at St John's Waterloo.
Anthony Lawrence: A Practical Guide To Aesthetics is to be staged at St John’s, Waterloo, London, from 15 - 23 October 2026. Coinciding with Frieze week, the exhibition will show some of Lawrence’s major works from his series of grand themes such as Dante, Tannhäuser and the Damned Demoiselles, as well as portraits and a number of his religious and spiritual paintings. Lawrence (1951 – 2022) was a preeminent artist who worked intensively over five decades, creating a vast collection of work that is now being made public.This exhibition also takes place during the 75th anniversary year of the Festival of Britain, for which St John’s Waterloo was rebuilt after the Second World War as one of the Festival’s designated arts and music centres, alongside the Royal Festival Hall. Today, St John’s Waterloo and its secular charity, The Bridge at Waterloo offer a year-round, music, performance and visual arts programme which increasingly focuses on collaboration between artists, arts organisations and local people, co-producing projects that reflect the richness and diversity of the neighbourhood while animating the church’s historic spaces and award-winning garden.
A Practical Guide to Aesthetics follows a critically acclaimed 2025 retrospective at Nick and Caroline de Rothschild’s Palais des Vaches Gallery in the New Forest, which was the first to show the full spectrum of Lawrence’s career. Forbes described the work as blending ‘classical technique, pop-cultural wit, and poetic imagination. Playful portraits, surreal landscapes and painterly still lifes bring overdue recognition to a hidden genius of British art’. Many of the works in that show had not been seen before then; this exhibition at St John’s will bring to light several more of Lawrence’s paintings, including some from the newly restored A Practical Guide to Aesthetics series from the early 1990s.
Lawrence worked throughout his life on portrait commissions; his works included sitters John Wayne, Yehudi Menhuin, Ian McKellen and Rt Rev Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, among others. Included in this show are Lawrence’s paintings of Francis Bacon and Seamus Heaney, with whom he became friends. During the 90s, Lawrence spent time in the Middle East, focusing his practice on the notion of a ‘barren landscape’ for his Desert series – floodlit palm trees, expressionist dunes and bright skies. Throughout his career he returned to Dante’s Inferno as inspiration for a body of over forty paintings. In the 90s Lawrence turned to Wagner and his opera Tannhäuser, employing the medium of etching, last used when he studied at Ruskin School of Art, Oxford.
Fascinated by religion, Lawrence spoke of the ‘constant fight between the sacred and the secular’ and made many works relating to religion and spirituality. His own The Stations of the Cross was inspired by the restoration of the display of religious imagery in the Byzantine Empire; these colourful and dramatic paintings show his commitment to technique, stressing the importance of post-modern framing. Jonathan Evens, in his review of the retrospective for The Church Times said, ‘While constantly evolving through styles and series as a great “knowing” Post-Modernist, Lawrence sought, through his blend of tradition and invention, history and innovation, to hint at how reconciliation might be found in the great contest of social humanity.’
Euchar Gravina, Artistic Director, St John’s Waterloo said, ‘We run a varied programme of arts and cultural events at St John’s Waterloo and The Bridge At Waterloo, and are thrilled to see our renovated Crypt and Forum house new or newly discovered work such as Anthony’s. It also comes as we mark the 75th anniversary of the Festival of Britain – the forward-looking celebration of arts and science for which St John’s was rebuilt – making this a particularly meaningful moment in our creative heritage. I look forward to seeing how the work interacts with our spaces and how our regular and new visitors respond to this exciting show.’
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