How seeing a Francis Bacon exhibition at Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery of modern art changed this fashion designer’s life
- During a school trip to Ireland for her English A-level studies, Celine Kwan was taken to Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery to see its Francis Bacon exhibition
- Seeing a replica of his painting studio, which was a complete mess, made a big impression on Kwan, and taught her lessons about freedom
The Hugh Lane Gallery, one of Dublin’s leading museums of modern art, hosts a permanent Francis Bacon exhibition that includes a reconstruction of the Anglo-Irish artist’s studio, which was moved there piece by piece from London after his death in 1992, and showcases the chaotic nature of his working environment as he created his unsettling abstracted portraiture.
Hong Kong-born, London-based fashion designer Celine Kwan Yu-hei tells Richard Lord how it changed her life.
My parents shipped me off to boarding school aged 12, to Queen Anne’s School in Reading (near London). We went on a trip to Dublin when I was 16.
The trip was for English A-level; we were studying James Joyce and W.B. Yeats at that point, and the school thought it would be useful for us to go and see the sights of Dublin.
It was a very memorable trip, but the visit to the Hugh Lane Gallery was unexpected. The teachers decided to take us there because we had some spare time.
I didn’t know much about the gallery, but I was studying art, so I knew Francis Bacon and was pleased to see his work there. What made it special was the exact replica of his studio in the exhibition.