Collection: William Tillyer - Against Nature - 14 March - 4 April 2026
In 1974, William Tillyer first read 'A Rebours', the experimental novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans, which inspired him to create an image based on the text. Since then, he has continually returned to Huysmans' text and over the ensuing 43 years has created a suite of 52 original prints. This exhibition is only the second occasion on which the entire suite has been exhibited in its entirety.
Huysmans' central character, Jean des Esseintes is an eccentric reclusive aesthete who turns his back on society to retreat into his own artistic world. The book is almost entirely a catalogue of his musings on literature, painting, religion and aesthetic tastes, particularly artifice over nature.
William Tillyer was born in North Yorkshire and studied at Middlesbrough College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art. His work has been exhibited internationally and notable Collections include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum, UK's Art Council Collection, the V&A and Tate Museums.
Image: 'Like those Japanese boxes that fit one inside another', Intaglio print from two zinc plates on Arches paper, Paper Size 66 x 50.8 cm
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The Ancestors - Those high hung dark faceless portraits
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'They would be ushered in and seat themselves side by side, in church stalls; then he would ascend an imposing pulpit from which he would preach a sermon on dandyism'
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'to the accompaniment of funeral marches'
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'the guests were served by naked negresses wearing only slippers and stockings'
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'Like those Japanese boxes that fit one inside the other'
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'he would study the ingenious mechanical fish, wound up like clockwork'
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'for there in the window was an enormous tortoise in a tank' - Chevet's Tortoise
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'From a Japanese collection he chose a design'
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'Des Esseintes now watched the tortoise crouching in a corner of his dining room, as it glittered in the halflight'
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Night Rain
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The circular house - The Rotaflex Lamp
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The circular house - The Eileen Gray Chair
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The circular house - The Bel Geddes Rotunda
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The Hanging Tree III
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The Hanging Tree I
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The Hanging Tree II
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'he saw the wild Nidularium blossoming between her wide-open thighs, its swordblades gaping to reveal the bloody interior.'
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This box was full of violet bonbons 'Pearls of the Pyrenees'
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The Acrobat - Miss Urania
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The Crimson Cubicles - 'a series of crimson cubicles furnished with circular mirrors' II
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The Crimson Cubicles - 'a series of crimson cubicles decorated with circular mirrors' III
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The Crimson Cubicles - 'a series of crimson cubicles furnished with circular mirrors' I
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Syntax of marks shapes and textures
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'real flowers that mimicked artificial ones' - Floral follies
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