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March 6, 2025March 6, 2025

Harland Miller donates York, So Good They Named It Once and two more Yorkshire Bad Weather Paintings to York Art Gallery

York, So Good They Named It Once, by Harland Miller, oil on canvas, 2024, ©
Harland Miller. Picture: David Westwood, © White Cube

AHEAD of the March 14 opening of his XXX exhibition, York-raised artist Harland Miller has donated a trio of oil paintings from his Bad Weather Paintings series to York Art Gallery.

This Pop Art suite pays homage to three Yorkshire destinations close to the Yorkshireman’s heart: Whitby, Scarborough and York.

Painted exclusively for the Exhibition Square gallery, the works comprise two large-scale canvasses, a 2024 painting of the centrepiece of his Covid-curtailed 2020 exhibition, York, So Good They Named It Once, and Whitby, The Self Catering Years, and one work on paper, Scarborough, Have Faith In Cod.

Inspired by his upbringing in 1970s’ Yorkshire, Miller creates colourful and graphically vernacular works that convey his love of popular language and attest to his enduring engagement with its narrative, aural and typographical possibilities.

The donated works are a celebration of his home city and childhood memories and the gallery is delighted to receive this thoughtful gift.

Whitby, The Self Catering Years, by Harland Miller, oil on canvas, 2024, © Harland
Miller. Picture: David Westwood, © White Cube

“I wrote a short story once titled ‘It was after I was born that all this started to happen’, and for me ‘all of this’ started to happen in York,” says Miller, who will turn 61 on March 11. “Naturally these were things that were happening for the very first time: first job, a paper round, first kiss on Oggy’s pond.

“Fast forwarding to what was probably my most influential initiation as an artist, which was undoubtedly the first time I saw great art in the flesh so to speak, and that for sure was at the York Art Gallery.

“With its very civic facade, it wasn’t a place as a kid then that you would just wander into, but once I had…and hadn’t been thrown out, I became a regular visitor. I saw some great individual shows there but always loved to wander around the permanent collection and particularly the seascapes.”

Miller continues: “Fast forwarding again, this time some 40 odd years, and after showing my own work in York Art Gallery, and again, not being thrown out! I was so moved by the reaction, that after the gallery closed, a week after the exhibition had opened, due to Covid, I felt very keenly that I wanted people to experience my work for longer than that.

“I wasn’t sure how much longer, but you can’t get much longer than forever and that seemed to just about cover it. I really hope that other young artists will get as much pleasure as I have from wandering around the gallery and I hope that my paintings will be a part of that.”

Scarborough, Have Faith in Cod, by Harland Miller, oil on paper, 2024, © Harland
Miller. Picture: Theo Christelis, © White Cube

Dr Beatrice Bertram, senior curator at York Art Gallery, says: “We have harboured a long-term ambition to acquire Harland’s work and are thrilled to finally be able to represent this internationally significant artist in our collection.

“These fantastic works were created exclusively for us in 2024 and are quintessentially Miller in character: immediately recognisable, beautifully painted and subtly witty. All three will make fantastic additions to our permanent collection, and we’re particularly pleased to be able to share his new painterly, expressive version of York, So Good They Named It Once with audiences here in Miller’s home city – the original York!

“During the forthcoming Harland Miller: XXX exhibition, these wonderful works will be displayed in our first-floor galleries for visitors to see. We are incredibly grateful to Harland for his generous gift and continued support of the gallery.”

To commemorate the donation, in tandem with curated art marketplace Avant Arte, Miller is releasing a limited-edition print of York, So Good They Named It Once, based on his original painting of the same name. This edition aims to raise funds for York Art Gallery.

The 27-colour silkscreen print with spot colours on 600gsm Somerset Tub Sized Radiant White paper will measure 100 by 66 cm and will be available in an edition of 50 exclusively on avantarte.com this April.

York-raised artist Harland Miller with his title work for the XXX exhibition at York Art Gallery. Picture: Ollie Hammick, copyright of White Cube, 2019

Miller’s much-anticipated XXX, billed as a nationally important exhibition for York, Yorkshire and Great Britain, will run from March 14 to August 31, open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm.

Represented as ever by White Cube, Miller will showcase paintings and works on paper from his Letter Paintings series, stirred by his upbringing in 1970s’ Yorkshire and an itinerant lifestyle in New York, New Orleans, Berlin and Paris during the 1980s and 1990s.

Coinciding with the release of a book of the same title by Phaidon, XXX features several new Miller works, including one that celebrates his home city, in a hard-edged series that melds the sacred seamlessly with the everyday, drawing inspiration from medieval manuscripts, where monks often laboured to produce intricate illuminated letters to mark
the beginning of chapters.

In these works, the Yorkshire Pop artist uses bold colours and typefaces to accentuate the expressive versatility of monosyllabic words and acronyms such as ESP, IF and Star.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a Q&A with the artist plus community activities to “inspire, inform and involve all”. Tickets: yorkartgallery.org.uk/tickets.

Back to front: Harland Miller walks towards his Pelican Books spoof dust jacket York, So Good They Named It Once at York Art Gallery in February 2020. Picture: Charlotte Graham

June 12, 2020June 12, 2020

No re-opening for Harland Miller’s Pelican dust covers at York Art Gallery. End of story

Not coming back: Harland Miller’s York, So Good They Named It Once exhibition, featuring his mock Penguin dust jackets, is now a closed book. The end.

ALAS, here is not-so-good news on Harland Miller’s Coronavirus-stymied exhibition, York, So Good They Named It Once, at York Art Gallery.

Government pandemic strictures meant the show ground to a halt little over a month into its run from February 14 to May 31, and now confirmation has come that there will be no second life in Miller’s home city for the tragi-comic Pop artist’s biggest-ever solo exhibition, once the gallery re-opens.

Tentative exploratory discussions had been held with exhibition partners White Cube, his London agents. However, today York Art Gallery announced: “Unfortunately, because of the complexities of arranging an exhibition of this kind, it has not been possible to extend the run of the show.

“The team at York Art Gallery are working hard behind the scenes to bring you fantastic, thought-provoking and inspiring art when we reopen in the coming months. More details of these exhibitions and events will be published on our website and social media very soon.”

Today should have marked the opening of Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years in the Exhibition Square gallery’s Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA): a show of the earliest works and “lost pots” by the Turner Prize-winning, transvestite Essex artist, potter, writer and broadcaster, latterly the host of Channel 4’s “boredom-busting” lockdown art-making series, Grayson’s Art Club.

*Cocktail Party 1989, copyright Grayson Perry/Victoria Miro, from the Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years exhibition, whose opening at CoCA, York Art Gallery, was in the diary for June 12 2020*

Talks are “on-going” with York Museums Trust’s exhibition partners over what may happen to Perry’s show, not least because The Pre-Therapy Years is scheduled to move on to other venues.

Whenever it hopefully does still run in York, Perry’s show assembles lost creations for gallery display for the first time, not least 70 ceramics crowd-sourced after a national public appeal: a cause for celebration for the Royal Academician Perry.

“This show has been such a joy to put together, I am really looking forward to seeing these early works again, many of which I have not seen since the Eighties,” he says. “It is as near as I will ever get to meeting myself as a young man; an angrier, priapic me with huge energy but a much smaller wardrobe.”

Watch this space for news of the fate of Perry’s pots and indeed the delayed progress of the Richard III portrait from the National Portrait Gallery to the Yorkshire Museum, Museum Gardens.

Harland Miller’s York, So Good They Named It Once was four years in the talking and curating, bringing together his best-known series, the Penguin Book Covers and the Pelican Bad Weather Paintings, complemented by his Letter Paintings and new works.

Harland Miller’s Who Cares Wins (2020): Raised £1.25 million for Covid-19 frontline carers from sales of 250 prints. Copyright: Hatrland Miller/White Cube

At the heart of a show full of deadpan humour and one-liners were works referring directly to the 56-year-old artist’s relationship with York, the city where he was born and grew up before moving to London, as well as making wider reference to the culture and geography of Yorkshire as a whole.

“If you’re wondering why I’m wearing dark glasses inside in February,” he said at the launch, “It’s because these works are so bright!”

Alas, York Art Gallery went dark, shut down as Coronavirus took hold. In April, Miller revealed he was “nursing mercifully mild symptoms of Covid-19”, coinciding with White Cube selling all 250 editions of his print, Who Cares Wins (2020), created in the familiar style of his mock Penguin dust covers, for £5,000 each, raising £1.25 million in under 24 hours for carers working on the pandemic frontline.

Sale proceeds have been donated to the National Emergencies Trust in Britain, the New York Community Trust and HandsOn Hong Kong. Part of the UK funds have gone to the York Teaching Hospital Charity to support NHS staff in hospitals across Yorkshire – a positive ending to this particular Miller’s tale.

February 22, 2020May 25, 2020

Only one question for York tragicomic Pop artist Harland Miller…

York artist Harland Miller stands by his York, So Good They Named It Once mock book cover at York Art Gallery on Friday morning. Picture: Charlotte Graham

AS his biggest-ever solo show, Harland Miller: York, So Good They Named It Once, opens in his home city at York Art Gallery, what is Harland saying about York in that picture title on a retro book cover, now replicated on posters, mugs, key rings, fridge magnets and tote bags?

“People have thought ‘York, So Good They Named It Once’ must be satirical, comparing York to New York, whereas I thought I was riffing on York being first; being very important way before New York – and a Roman capital.

“It was also a place of so many firsts for me; where I did my first paper round, and through these streets I can go and remember things that happened to me. Like my first kiss on some old wasteland on Taddy Road [Tadcaster Road], that’s now a Tesco.

Back to front: Harland Miller walks towards his Pelican Books spoof cover York, So Good They Named It Once. Picture: Charlotte Graham

“And just round the corner from here, behind the library, I smoked my first joint. That’s why I got hooked on books…because I was by the library!

“This gallery is where I first saw paintings. Is it a dream to be back here? The answer is ‘No’, because, as a boy, it would have been foolish to dream of such a thing.

“But unless I’m about to wake up back behind the library, I sense this is the moment to thank so many people. I certainly wouldn’t be here without my mum [now 95], who’s travelled all the way from Dringhouses to be here tonight, but I want to thank everyone not once, but twice.”

Harland Miller: York, So Good They Named It Once, featuring his Penguin Book Covers, Pelican Bad Weather Paintings and Letter Paintings and Recent Work, runs at York Art Gallery until May 31.