On Friday 30 July 2021 our Girl Friday Breakfast Club speaker will be artist, curator, and Director of The Drawing Gallery, Yvonne Crossley. Join us online on Friday 30 July at 8.30am (GMT) by booking here.

After graduating from Goldsmith’s College School of Art, Yvonne Crossley was awarded various travel/research scholarships - including a DAAD Post-Graduate Research Grant, Brazilian Government Scholarship, Italian Government Bursary. She then worked as art educator in Higher Education as a Lecturer, Course Leader, Head of Department, and eventually as a Vice Principal. She then set up The Drawing Gallery in central London and has worked since then as a gallery director and curator. Throughout this time she continued with her own practice as what could broadly be described as a painter/maker.

Solo exhibitions include: two exhibitions at The Ikon Gallery (Birmingham), the Laing Gallery (Newcastle-upon-Tyne), Battersea Arts Centre (London) and Stanley Picker Gallery (London), and she has exhibited widely in group and open exhibitions throughout the UK. In 1995 she undertook a PhD by fine-art practice, Proposals for Funereal Artefacts for a Group of Women In Their Later Middle Years, that started in 1995 and was completed in 2001. This re-energised her practice, was a successful and rewarding endeavour and resulted in a body of work that still provides some of the context and content for her work today.

In 2004, she left her post as Vice Principal at Wimbledon School of Art to set up The Drawing Gallery in Duke Street St. James – the first gallery in the UK to focus entirely upon exhibiting and selling contemporary drawing - where the philosophy of this new venture was entirely self-determined. It achieved notable success in both its incarnations, firstly in Central London and later in the West Midlands, making a contribution to the improved profile of drawing in the UK whilst importantly filling a gap in the way that artists were and are exposed to an interested public. The artists represented by and exhibited in the gallery include a number of international figures, many artists of national importance as well as a number of young artists of growing reputation. The gallery numbers amongst its clients some of the major museums and corporate collections in the UK. Website: www.thedrawinggallery.co.uk

Yvonne has also been a selector for the Jerwood Drawing Prize, Hugh Casson Drawing Prize (RA Summer Exhibition), RE: Drawing – Oriel Davies Gallery, Drawn RWA Bristol and The Derwent Art Prize.

The Girl Friday Breakfast Club was established by Kate Reynolds and Anita Taylor in 2018 to provide a friendly and informal space for women to meet and to hear from an interesting woman speaker, eat breakfast and drink great coffee or tea together at Drawing Projects UK on the last Friday of each month. We held our first online Girl Friday in October 2020 after realising we had longer to go before we could gather again for breakfast due to lockdown. We aim to retain the informal format, and events are not recorded, so do book to join in - and bring your own breakfast - or lunch or supper depending on where you are in the world!

All women, and those who identify as women, are very welcome to join the Girl Friday Breakfast Club.

Please note: we send the Zoom link to registered participants by email in advance of the event, and a reminder with the Zoom link is also automatically sent by email 50 minutes before the event starts. Please check your email inboxes.

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