JW Anderson and The Hepworth Wakefield are pleased to announce second work acquired by the JW Anderson Collections Fund

Conceived by Jonathan Anderson, Creative Director of JW Anderson to support the acquisition of works by museums across the UK. JW Anderson awards a fund of £50,000 annually to a collecting institution to acquire works by artists who are under-represented in UK collections, In February 2023, The Hepworth Wakefield was announced as the inaugural recipient.

The painting is the second work to be acquired through the fund for Wakefield’s collection. The painting features what Cranston says is ‘an intrusion of something alien into the familiar, an unlikely presence and threat into the domestic’. Andrew Cranston was born in Hawick in the Scottish Borders in 1969, and now lives and works in Glasgow. He studied at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen and then completed his postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art.

The work will go on display at The Hepworth Wakefield from November 2023, as part of Andrew Cranston: What made you stop here, the artist’s first UK institutional solo show. The exhibition will feature 38 new and recent paintings that range from large-scale canvases to intimate works painted on old linen-bound book covers, comprising subjects that include still life, landscape, seascape, portraits, and interior scenes.

The award of the JW Anderson Collections fund to The Hepworth Wakefield builds on the museum’s longstanding relationship with JW Anderson, which began with the 2017 exhibition Disobedient Bodies: JW Anderson Curates The Hepworth Wakefield, curated by Jonathan Anderson.

Jonathan Anderson, Creative Director of JW Anderson said: ‘I’ve always loved visiting collections in the UK and draw a huge amount of inspiration from them. They are the heart of any institution and make each museum unique. As funding to build these collections in the UK becomes increasingly limited, I wanted to find a way to make sure museums can continue to grow, in particular by looking at the work of emerging artists or those who aren’t well represented in collections across the country.

Simon Wallis, Director at The Hepworth Wakefield said: ‘ As a public art gallery we rely entirely on philanthropy to be able to continue to strategically develop our collection. Vital initiatives such as the JW Anderson Collections Fund are very rare and it’s a testament to Jonathan Anderson’s longstanding desire to support and nurture creativity in the UK. We are enormously grateful to him for supporting our work and enabling us to add outstanding new works of art to Wakefield’s collection, one that he became very familiar with in 2016 when he worked with us to curate his critically-acclaimed Disobedient Bodies exhibition.’