Photo: Paul Farmer / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

A free exhibition of work by the late British artist Anthony Lawrence has opened at St John’s Waterloo, and it runs until Friday 23 October.

Called A Practical Guide to Aesthetics, the show is in the church’s renovated Old Crypt on Waterloo Road. It brings together major works from Lawrence’s grand themes, including Dante, Tannhäuser and the Damned Demoiselles, alongside portraits and religious and spiritual paintings. Several works come from private collections and have rarely been seen in public before, including newly restored canvases from his early 1990s series that gives the exhibition its name.

Lawrence (1951–2022) worked intensively over five decades. His portrait sitters included John Wayne, Yehudi Menuhin and Ian McKellen, and this show includes his paintings of Francis Bacon and Seamus Heaney, with whom he became friends. The exhibition is curated by his daughter, Sara Lawrence, and Liz Barrett.

The timing is special for Waterloo. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, for which St John’s was rebuilt after the Second World War as one of the festival’s arts and music centres, alongside the Royal Festival Hall. Today St John’s and its charity, The Bridge at Waterloo, run a year-round programme of music, performance and visual arts with artists and local people.

It is a lovely chance to see something new on our doorstep, so do drop in before it closes on 23 October. St John’s Waterloo is at 73 Waterloo Road, SE1 8TY.

Read more from St John’s Waterloo: Anthony Lawrence at St John’s Waterloo