Show image caption Lizzy Rose, Untitled (Unfinished, too sweet), 2019 Watercolour and pencil on paper
Exhibition

Lizzy Rose: Things I Have Learned The Hard Way

Foyle Gallery

'Things I Have Learned The Hard Way' is the first retrospective of the Margate-based artist and disability activist Lizzy Rose (1988-2022).

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Friday 31 March

Friday 31 March - Sunday 23 April 2023, 10am - 5pm

Turner Contemporary Rendezvous, Margate, Kent CT9 1HG

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Things I Have Learned The Hard Way is the first retrospective of the Margate-based artist and disability activist Lizzy Rose (1988-2022).

Lizzy died in January 2022 following a long struggle with chronic illness, cutting short an exciting, innovative and wide-ranging career. She lived with a severe form of Crohn’s disease, a chronic autoimmune condition affecting the gut which, in Lizzy’s case, led to intestinal failure, alongside other health conditions. Her worldview was shaped by her experience and awareness of the precarity of life.

Lizzy’s later work directly addressed chronic illness and how society deals with it. Even her earliest work turned a sharp eye on ‘hidden’ culture, asking the viewer to take notice and showing how, by doing so, we can affect the systems we are part of.

Exhibited across four venues in Lizzy’s hometown of Margate, Things I Have Learned The Hard Way presents a comprehensive review of artworks made from 2008 to 2022, spanning moving-image, works on paper, sculpture and digital work. The participating venues are Turner Contemporary, LIMBO, Crate & Well Projects.

Alongside the exhibition, on 12 April, One Day I Will Feel My Power, a one-off event curated by Lizzy’s friend and collaborator Leah Clements will take place at the ICA in London. One Day I Will Feel My Power will show two of Lizzy’s video works alongside readings and responses from invited artists, writers and speakers: Leah Clements, R A Walden, Abi Palmer, Benedict Drew, Alice Hattrick, and Carolyn Lazard: artists who have made chronic illness, neurodivergence or disability central to their work. The event will also be streamed live and hosted online by Wysing Arts Centre (event duration 110 mins),

An online participatory project, coordinated by artist Katie Hogben, showcases the everyday creativity of housebound artists.

The exhibition at Turner Contemporary brings together, for the first time, some of Lizzy’s most impactful work in pen and watercolour on paper.