John Bartlett
Now Voyagers
8 August to 5 September 2026
Opening: Saturday 8 August 3 - 8pm
“There is nothing superficial in this work, and often a great deal that is provocative. What is perhaps most surprising is that so much fresh thinking about a world that is frequently far from pleasant can produce images of such harmony and beauty.”
- Andrew Wilton, former keeper of the British Collection - Tate Britain
SCHOOL is pleased to present Now Voyagers, an exhibition of 2 large scale paintings by John Bartlett. The works included in this exhibition are - Now Voyagers 2026, and Flies 2004-9; works spanning over 20 years of Bartlettʼs painting practice. Bartlettʼs has eclectic taste. He creates large scale works highlighting historical happenings; notably the Poll tax riots or a memory of a past dwelling or moment. Other works are more cinematic, depicting masked figures in an apocalyptic environment, often fleeing from something in the distance, normally unseen but recognisably referencing the genre of sci-fi or horror. Now Voyagers isnʼt a compare and contrast of different eras, but more a way of placing 2 works, 20 years apart on facing walls to use the gallery as a time machine (of sorts) by offering a means of walking between them, and thus through time.
On the development of the painting Now Voyagers that has been worked on over the past 2 years, Bartlett says, “My painting over the years has been rather eclectic with various lines of enquiry. Michael Hall, the Director of SCHOOL, took a keen interest in my narrative paintings on a visit to my studio and our discussions prompted me to ʻpick up the threadʼ of ideas Iʼd been developing in these works, notably the aspiration to make contemporary ʻHistory Paintingsʼ.
John Bartlett was born in London in 1960. He lives and works in Folkestone, Kent. He is best known to date for his monumental work History Painting 1993-94 which now forms an integral part of the Museum of Londonʼs permanent collection. This contentious work received a great deal of media coverage in Britain over the years primarily because it depicts the 1990 Poll Tax Riots in Trafalgar Square. In 2010 it was reproduced as 9 x 18ft posters on the London Underground as part of a promotional campaign for the Museum of London. In 2017 it featured in the book London in the Company of Painters published by Laurence King.
Other career highlights include a commission for Heathrow Airport and large-scale acquisitions made by the Guildhall Art Gallery and the V&A Museum of Childhood. He also has a selection of his drawings in the collection of the Royal Academy of Arts, and these were included in their survey of 20th Century Works in the exhibition Driven to Draw.
In 2012-13 the Guildhall Art Gallery held a mid-career retrospective of Bartlett featuring over fifty of his paintings and drawings in an exhibition entitled London Sublime.
This is Bartlettʼs first solo exhibition with SCHOOL.