Literature

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the famous English novel Lord of the Flies, Dutch illustrator Aimée de Jongh has turned this literary classic into a stunning graphic novel. The comic book was commissioned and published by Faber, the same publisher of the original novel. This autumn, De Jongh will be going around the country to talk about her new book and the 70-year-old classic.

• An official press launch will be organised by Faber on 17 September at The Bindery in London.
• On Saturday 28 September De Jongh will be at Lakes International Comic Arts Festival in Windermere.
• On Friday 11 October De Jongh takes the stage at Cheltenham Literature Festival .
• On Saturday 12 October she will be at Manchester Literature Festival .
• De Jongh will also make an appearance at Off the Shelf Literature Festival in Sheffield, but details are still to be confirmed.

More Dutch authors have had work translated into English in recent months. Some of these authors will come to the UK for book promotion events. For instance, Cheltenham Literature Festival has programmed the world-leading hormones doctor Max Nieuwdorp to speak at an event dubbed Harness Your Hormones on Monday 7 October and Marije Tolman will be giving an illustration workshop for children (8+) on Sunday 13 October.

Other recently published English-language books, originally written in Dutch, and very well received in the Netherlands, include The Hairdresser’s Son by Gerbrand Bakker, I Will Live by Lale Gül, and Antiboy by Valentijn Hoogenkamp. We are currently not aware that any of these fantastic authors will be coming to the UK for book promotions, but – as always – we are happy to make connections if there are UK-based literary festivals interested in programming recently translated Dutch authors.

Design

Locally Grown by Sanne Visser is an interactive installation that will feature at the Material Matters fair, part of London Design Festival. It invites visitors to explore their own hair as a potential new material. Visitors will be able to have a free haircut and then see the ‘waste’ hair spun and turned into rope. There will also be an exhibition of products that were created using hair yarn, cord and rope. In other words, the installation offers the chance to experience the full design journey, from sourcing the fibres to the creation of end products.
This Material Matters exhibition is at the Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, London from 18 until 21 September.

Dutch designers have been at the forefront of regenerative design for a long time. London Design Festival also pays a lot of attention to sustainable design practices, so it’s no surprise that various Dutch designers are making appearances at the London Design Festival to show their work or talk about their practice. For instance, Marjan van Aubel joins a panel discussion at the V&A on 14 September with the title Please Design Responsibly: Designing a Regenerative Society . Furthermore, Christien Meindertsma has her own display in the V&A called Re-forming Waste and Claudy Jongstra has started a partnership with the Bankside Hotel in London to supply them with sustainably produced design objects.

 

Visual arts

One artists for whom 2024 has been a particularly good year is Claudia Martínez Garay. This Amsterdam-based artists currently has two major solo exhibitions in the UK, one at Dundee Contemporary Arts (running until 17 November) and one at Nottingham Contemporary (until 8 September). In October, Grimm Gallery in London will add another Martínez Garay exhibition to the arts calendar. Three exhibitions in the UK in one year. Pretty impressive. And that’s not all. The Guardian recently dedicated an in-depth article to the special stories that Martínez Garay tells through her art.

More artists from the Netherlands are getting noticed by UK-based galleries. For almost an entire year, Creativity from the Netherlands can be experienced at Chisenhale Gallery in London. The second artist from the Netherlands to have a solo exhibition at this amazing gallery this year is Simnikiwe Buhlungu . Her work is on show from 6 September until 3 November. Buhlungu’s new commission summons water, in particular puddles, to reveal the ways knowledge, history, and ecology circulate and pool.

After Buhlungu, a third artist from the Netherlands will take over the gallery. Bruno Zhu ’s work questions agency, power structures and mankind’s obsession with consumption. Mechanisms of desire, identity and ideology inform his work. Zhu’s exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery runs from 22 November until 2 February 2025.

Boris Maas will soon start setting up his first UK solo exhibition at The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery in Leeds. The work Maas has created for this exhibition is heavily inspired by paintings he saw at Leeds Art Gallery, by the local painter John Atkinson Grimshaw. Because Maas’ exhibition is very much about the use of artificial lights in cities, and how these lights travel through the streets and reflect off waterways and buildings, the exhibition will be included in the biggest cultural event in the year in Leeds as well: Night Light Leeds. The gallery will be open on the evenings of 24 and 25 October and it will be part of the city’s famous light festival.

By the way, there is also another Dutch installation at Light Night Leeds. The incredibly fun and interactive installation MAPP by Alex Prooper and Simone van Dam will be one of the main attractions of the festival. It will be installed at St John’s Church on New Briggate.

Another exhibition by a Dutch contemporary artist that deserves a mention is Vibeke Mascini’s display at Van Gogh House London , from 12 September to 15 December. Mascini uses fluid media including installation, sound, video and text, to create mysterious sensorial experiences. Much of her work is inspired by her fascination with the many rapidly developing new technologies to produce and store energy. So at the London house where Vincent van Gogh once lived, and where Mascini followed a month-long residency programme earlier this year, Mascini has chosen to create an art installation inside the cupboard where the electricity and gas meters are placed.

A new Vincent van Gogh exhibition opens at the National Gallery in London on 14 September. Poets and Lovers contains a large number of paintings and drawing from the most prolific two years of Van Gogh's life, 1888 and 1889. In this period the eminent Dutch artist lived and worked in Arles and Saint-Rémy in the South of France.
One of the curators working on this Van Gogh exhibition, Sterre Overmars, will speak about it at the Dutch Centre in London on 10 October.

Dutch photo historian Hedy van Erp has uncovered a special slice of Bristol history through a photography collection of a private owner in the Netherlands. It's a stunning collection of Hollywood-style photos of ordinary Bristolians, taken in the 1950s and 1960s by the – until recently completely unknown – photographer Herbert Shergold. The Bristol Photo Festival was immediately fascinated by the photo collection, and the story behind it, when it was approached by Van Erp. At this year's festival, the beautiful images are shown at The Laundrette, in the same street where Herbert Shergold had his photo studio some 70 years ago. Now Keep Quite Still by Herbert Shergold opens on 16 October.

Music

The biennial audio-visual festival Sonica in Glasgow has, once again, programmed various super cool artists from the Netherlands. As part of this festival, there are two shows by Dutch artists at Tramway. Grand River performs on 20 September; No Plexus on 26 September. At a venue a bit further from the city centre, called Offline, audiences can immersive themselves in a virtual reality experience called Songs for a Passerby . This VR exhibition by Dutch creative Celine Daemen won the Venice Immersive Grand Prize 2023. It’s a 30 minute experience and it can be visited throughout the festival.

For a bonkers mix of world-class classical music, raucous humour and physical theatre, go and see the Dutch band Släpstick. In one evening, you will hear masterpieces from Brahms, Schubert, Saint-Saëns, Gershwin and more, and also meet comedy heroes such as Victor Borge, Laurel & Hardy, Danny Kaye and Charlie Chaplin.
Schërzo , as this concert evening is called, was hugely successful in the Netherlands. It also had an incredible run in New Zealand. And now it lands in London. There are eight concerts at Wilton's Music Hall from 7 to 12 October.

Some of the hottest new artists in the urban music scene in the Netherlands are coming to South London this October. They will be matched with music producers from London. Together they will be writing new music. Their aim: to cooperatively create beats that will enthuse listeners both in the UK and in the Netherlands. This music writing camp is organised by On Da Beat Recording Studios in Wandsworth. Not all Dutch artists are confirmed yet, but already selected have been Amy Miyú and Zefanio .

In in yet another musical genre – jazz – there is plenty happening too. Several Dutch musicians will be playing at the EFG London Jazz Festival in November.
The celebrated Dutch Sinti guitarist Mozes Rosenberg is joining forces with American clarinettist Giacomo Smith. They will be paying tribute to the late Django Reinhardt, who was a Sinti guitarist from Belgium. The performance is at Ladbroke Hall on Friday 10 November.
The Teis Semey Quintet from Amsterdam is coming to Vortex Jazz Club in London on 18 November. The music of this ensemble is high-energy and seriously funky. Or, as Vortex describes it, "the Teis Semey Quintet is an otherworldly meteor shower, moving in unison through unspoken cues and raw energy."
On 22 November, there are performances of two jazz ensembles that both include Dutch musicians. Dutch pianist Harmen Fraanje joins forces with Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen. They are playing songs from their impeccable duo album Touch of Time at Kings Place . That same evening, Dutch drummer Jamie Peet does two shows with Jasper Høiby's 3Elements at the Southbank Centre .

Another Dutch jazz musician, tenor saxophonist Gideon Tazelaar, is touring the UK this autumn with the Arnie Somogyi Quartet. There are gigs all around the country, including at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire , at Jazz Upfront in Aylesbury and at Jazz at St Andrews in Hove.

Film

The Low Countries Film Festival is the UK’s only Dutch-language cinema festival. All films are subtitled in English. It takes place at the Dutch Centre in London, from 26 to 28 November.

Halina Reijn’s new film Babygirl , with Nicole Kidman as lead actress, is likely to be released in the UK just before Christmas. That is still far away, but we are already making a note in our diaries. Reijn’s film was very well received in Venice.

Entangled slavery histories

Both the Netherlands and the UK played a significant role in the enslavement of people during colonial times. It’s no coincidence that the use of slave labour was common practice in both Dutch and British colonies. There was a lot of trade between the countries and there was a lot of competition between these nations to expand their wealth and influence. This entwined history also means both countries have a shared experience in how to deal with the legacies of this dark past. Museum professionals from the Netherlands and the UK will gather at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool on 14 and 15 October to discuss which narratives are used in museums today to inform people about this history, and the effects of that past on societies today. A public event, including a talk between the directors of the slavery museums in Liverpool and Amsterdam (which will open in a few years’ time), will be held on 14 October. Keep an eye on the International Slavery Museum’s website for more information.

Supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the UK

The United Kingdom is one of the focus countries in the Netherlands’ International Cultural Policy. The main aim of this policy is to strengthen the position of the Dutch cultural sector in the UK, through visibility, exchange and sustainable cooperation. Secondly, Dutch cultural activities in the UK help to support the bilateral relationship between the Netherlands and the UK. And thirdly, the Dutch cultural sector and creative industries can play a role, at home and internationally, to help achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. That is why the cultural department at the Dutch Embassy in the UK actively supports Anglo-Dutch cultural exchange. 

Best regards,
The Culture Team at the Dutch Embassy in London

 

Cultural Counsellor Astrid de Vries, Policy Officer Koen Guiking and Support Officer Trudy Barnes