One Self: The Creative Life of Colin Self

One Self: The Creative Life of Colin Self is the first major retrospective of this remarkable artist in 17 years. Containing over 120 works of art, it celebrates the boundless creative spirit of an artist whose dedication to the act of making spans over six decades.  

Born in 1941 in Norfolk, Colin Self first came to international prominence as a Pop artist in the 1960s. Since then, he has created an extensive body of work which includes painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, sculpture and ceramics. With loans from Tate, Pallant House Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery and private collections, the exhibition represents this wide range of work, dating from Self's time as a student at the Slade School of Fine Art in the early 1960s to the present day.  

The exhibition explores the artist's significant contribution to twentieth-century art, complex relationship with the London art scene and deliberate positioning on the margins of the art world, including periods of self-imposed exile and solitude. In an age in which ideas of the local, over and above the global, are increasingly centre stage in the context of the environmental crisis, Self's work has a new resonance, which demands critical reappraisal.

Created in close collaboration with the artist and his wife, and only on show at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, One Self: The Creative Life of Colin Self is a rare opportunity to explore the full career of one of the UK's most unpredictable and brilliant artists.

Image credit: Colin Self, Hot-Dog, 2009, Pencil, paint and collage on paper. Private collection © Colin Self. All rights reserved DACS 2025. 

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This exhibition is included in general admission.

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