Reflecting on a key aspect of modern London in the 1920s and 1930s, Cyril Power made a series of linocut prints based on London Underground stations including Charing Cross, Tottenham Court Road, Russell Square and Bank Station. He revelled in the claustrophobic interiors of the stations, often picturing the escalators, spiral staircases, platforms and cramped tube carriages themselves as rush-hour commuters make their way across the city.

(One O'Clock Jump: British Linocuts from the Jazz Age, 7 December 2024 - 11 May 2025)

This staircase is at Russell Square underground station, London.

The advent of the weekend by the 1930s meant that English workers had more leisure time, fairgrounds became incredibly popular – so much so that they were described as “human beehives”. The thrill and movement of fairground rides, theme parks and playgrounds proved perfect subjects for linocut artists seeking to capture an element of modern life.

(One O'Clock Jump: British Linocuts from the Jazz Age, 7 December 2024 - 11 May 2025)

Two prints from early in Eileen Mayo’s career show the strength of her natural ability. Eileen was nineteen and studying at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, when she made the wood engraving Skaters. She made Turkish Bath a few years later in response to an invitation to put work in the Second Exhibition of British Lino-Cuts at the Redfern Gallery, London. Her invitation came from Claude Flight, the linocut’s principal champion, who reportedly instructed her on the technique over the telephone. She had met Flight, a teacher at the Grosvenor School of Art, while working there in 1929 as a life-class model.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Nature was the predominant theme in Eileen Mayo’s work throughout her distinguished career as a printmaker, painter and designer. She wrote and illustrated numerous books on subjects as varied as seashells, birdsand cats, including her monumental book The Story of Living Things and Their Evolution (1948). She was fascinated with the variety of forms and shapes of plants, and her subject in this work reflects the year of the seasons, as opposed to the calendar year, that begins with the emergence of spring flowers such as these crocuses.

The Golden Age 18 December 2015 – 1 May 2016

Eileen Mayo has a special place in Christchurch’s art history, not only because of her extraordinary prints and illustrious career but also her tangible connections with this city. Mayo settled here in Christchurch in 1967, having established a career as a printmaker and designer in Britain and Australia. Her British contemporaries included Mabel Annesley and Clare Leighton, both of whom are included in this exhibition, and several works by these artists came into the Gallery's collection as part of a gift of British modernist prints by Redfern Gallery director Rex Nan Kivell.

Mayo adored cats. They were a constant source of companionship throughout her life and were regularly used as subjects in her art.

The Golden Age 18 December 2015 – 1 May 2016

Eileen Mayo had the idea for making this work in 1966 during a visit to Cuningham House, the largest and oldest of the display houses in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens. It was not until 1980, however, that she completed A Garden Enclosed. Opened in 1924, Cuningham House was funded through a bequest by Mr C.A.C. Cuningham, a Christchurch law clerk. Such conservatories, or ‘winter gardens’, were used to house botanic specimens from warmer climates. The distinctive high dome-shaped glass roof is capped with a glazed lantern, and the building was heated with a boiler and a network of pipes throughout the space to provide a suitable climate for tropical plants like the cyclamen, poinsettia and Kentia palms Mayo has depicted. Her view simplifies the architecture of the building, which was designed to echo a classic English orangery in a Neo Classical style. It incorporates a double height space to accommodate taller plants and an elevated viewing gallery. A leading architectural Christchurch firm, Collins and Harman, modelled the design for Cuningham House on the Reid Winter Gardens at Springburn Park, Glasgow.

(Turn, Turn, Turn: A Year in Art, 27 July 2019 – 8 March 2020)

English-born Eileen Mayo excelled across a remarkable range of media, including drawing, linocuts, wood engraving, lithography, tapestry and silk screening. She also became a sought-after commercial designer, known for exquisitely detailed and balanced images that appeared on stamps and coins in Australia and New Zealand. Mayo had lived in New Zealand for twenty years when she made this screenprint of young fern fronds in the lush native bush. One of her last prints, it combines an enduring appreciation of the natural world with extraordinary technical ability, conveying not only the beauty of the plants she depicts, but a sense of their place within a complex and interconnected ecosystem.

(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)

Born and trained in England, and with an established artistic practice there, Eileen Mayo moved to Australia in 1952, departing for New Zealand ten years later. She settled in Christchurch in 1965 and lived there almost exclusively, aside from a brief period in Dunedin, until her death in 1994. This latter part of Mayo’s career was characterised by her experimentation with a variety of printmaking techniques, including relief printing and screenprints. 'Victorian Jug' is a significant work from this time and reflects Mayo’s accomplished manipulation of shapes, textures and colours. She contrasts the sturdy geometry of the green tartan tablecloth with the ornate decoration of the jug, and an exuberant arrangement of flowers, including daisies, cornflowers, fuchsias and dianthus.

(Turn, Turn, Turn: A Year in Art, 27 July 2019 – 8 March 2020)

Eileen Mayo was a superb printmaker and worked with wood-engraving, lithography, screenprint and linocut. Her highly tuned sense of design and technical skills, are evident in Doric Dairy where the cutting of the lino and the registration of the blocks is impeccable. She was drawn to more traditional subjects, animals in particular, in this case a horse-drawn milk float rather than speeding automobiles. “In the mid-twenties Claude was simply a very helpful friend to me, whom I met more often in the street in which we both lived than in his studio. He always stopped to ask me what work I was doing, and gave me much good advice for which I am still grateful. One day he telephoned me to say that the Redfern Gallery was about to hold an exhibition of Linocuts. I asked ‘What is a linocut?’ and over the phone he told me how to produce one.” —Eileen Mayo 1985

(One O'Clock Jump: British Linocuts from the Jazz Age, 7 December 2024 - 11 May 2025)

Two prints from early in Eileen Mayo’s career show the strength of her natural ability. Eileen was nineteen and studying at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, when she made the wood engraving Skaters. She made Turkish Bath a few years later in response to an invitation to put work in the Second Exhibition of British Lino-Cuts at the Redfern Gallery, London. Her invitation came from Claude Flight, the linocut’s principal champion, who reportedly instructed her on the technique over the telephone. She had met Flight, a teacher at the Grosvenor School of Art, while working there in 1929 as a life-class model.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Sybil Andrews was one of the most successful and productive artists of the linocut movement. Her work in the medium was visually engaging and technically proficient, and she completed seventy-six linocuts over her long career.

(One O'Clock Jump: British Linocuts from the Jazz Age, 7 December 2024 - 11 May 2025)

Eileen Mayo obviously had a love for cats as seen in this personal feline study. There’s a harmonised balance in the print and the cats look as ifthey are inseparable. Mayo specialised in depicting animals and the domestic cat was one of her favourite subjects. Cats in the Tree was a favourite linocut of Claude Flight’s and he used as a frontispiece for his instruction manual The Art and Craft of Lino Cutting and Printing (1934). He described it as a linocut of good form and colour composition. Clark’s Siamese Cats is much more simplified. They lounge round, curled up with each other, against a plain backdrop. A far cry from the images of mechanisation that Flight encouraged they remain excellent examples of the way that imagery could be simplified in linocuts.

(One O'Clock Jump: British Linocuts from the Jazz Age, 7 December 2024 - 11 May 2025)

Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power were good friends who worked very closely together as linocut artists and even collaborated on several poster designs. These two companion works, although completed several years apart, relate to the Boat Race – an annual rowing competition between teams from Oxford and Cambridge universities. Power’s The Eight shows racers on the Thames by London’s Hammersmith Bridge, a quick walk from Cyril and Sybil’s studio at Brook Green. Arms stretched out and bodies coiled, the tension and power exerted by the rowers are conveyed in the bend of the oars and the unfurling yellow lines of the boat’s wake as it ploughs through the water. Andrews captures the end of the race when the rowboat is lifted out of the water, the cubist styled angular bodies of the rowers all lined up and rhythmically repeated down the length of the boat.

(One O'Clock Jump: British Linocuts from the Jazz Age, 7 December 2024 - 11 May 2025)