27/04/26
Troublemakers and Prophets: Elizabeth Allen and Other Visionary Artists
Compton Verney, Warwickshire
28 March – 31 August 2026
On many levels, this is yet again a story of a female artist who, despite having achieved the giddy heights of success during her lifetime, fell out of the limelight and became another unknown name to today’s audience. At the same time, however, thanks to the insightful curation, this exhibition is far more than that, offering both an introduction to the life and work of Elizabeth “Queen” Allen, but also a superb display, in its own right, of thematically and materially related works right up to the current time.
Allen (originally Koch – the family changed their name to Allen in the early years of the 20th century, when it was not advisable to advertise one’s German origins), or Queen, as she was generally known, is introduced to visitors by a crash course timeline outside the galleries. From her birth in 1883 – to a German immigrant tailor and his Irish tailoress wife, above a baker’s shop in Tottenham, London, as one of 17 children – to her death in 1967, her life is condensed into key moments, predominantly in her final two years. Her story itself is remarkable – born with a congenital condition that caused one leg to be shorter than the other, living with chronic pain, thrown out of home for being an atheist, and spending the rest of her life living alone (until joined by an art student, Bridget Poole, in 1963), in poverty, in a cabin in the forest in Kent. An atheist she certainly wasn’t, however: she merely rejected more traditional interpretations of the Bible, and of a God who would inflict suffering such as her own, preferring a personal understanding of the scriptures, in particular the 15 apocryphal books that stand apart from the normal canon, and of an alternative Christ, who came to live instead of to die. And it is primarily these beliefs that appear in her carefully crafted artworks, patchworked into being using leftover scraps of material, buttons and sequins. She didn’t own any art books or publications, so the pictures she created were from her imagination, a visual expression of her deeply held beliefs and thoughts on what was happening in the world outside her cabin. Inherent in them is also a strong “folk art” element.
Read my full review here