RAG
We are run by our artists.
l-r top row: G. Calvert, Mouse Katz, Lynne Beel, Françesca Hunt, Catherine Drake, Graham High, Steve Rushton.
l-r middle row: Terry Miles, Jane Bond, Liz Taunt, Brian Deighton, Dennis Spicer.
l-r bottom row: Mark LeMaistre, Mary McGowan, Richard Day, Lisa Gough Daniels, Ting Fay Ho .
on ground: Stephen Williams.
Riverside Artists Group (RAG) was established at Riverside Studios, London W6, in 1986. RAG is an independent group run by artists for artists. It’s aim is to encourage and promote constructive dialogue/interaction between a diverse group of up to 40 practising visual artists.
Members have exhibited nationally and internationally. New members are welcomed annually, to create an exciting and progressive community. Our artists work mainly within 2D: painting, drawing, photography, printmaking and collage, with the range extending to sculpture, installation, performance, video, digital and public art.
RAG is currently, and has been historically, at the forefront of innovative and ground-breaking presentations.
In 1989, pre-perestroika,we were one of the first groups of British artists to be shown in the Soviet Union with work that toured Russia and was previewed at the Artists’ Union in Moscow. This led to an exhibition by Russian Artists at Riverside Studios in 1989, and residencies for RAG artists at Cheluskinskaya, with reciprocal residencies for Russian artists in the UK.
In 1996 RAG presented New Labour, an exhibition curated by Peter Kennard at Riverside Studios. This exhibition, a multi-disciplined and multi-media art event, coming at the beginning of Tony Blair’s premiership, identified desires and questioned the politics of this new era. It received much press attention, breaking ground with ways of showing as well as ways of using political discourse within visual art.
Jose Suarez (d. 2015) as well as being generously involved in all of RAG’s exhibitions since 1986, personally organised and co-ordinated six major museum shows and a residency programme in Galicia, Spain, between 1996 and 2014.
In 2010, Yinjie Sun organised Voices from London at the Sunshine International Art Museum, 6th Songzhang Culture & Art Festival, Beijing, China, to which participating artists were invited. RAG was the only group of artists to represent the UK.
RAG members have always had an annual show, originally at Riverside Studios and more recently at the Central Space Gallery, ACAVA Studios, Faroe Road.
In 2019 RAG was the inaugural exhibition at the newly opened Riverside Studios. Following this, the 2022 RAG Annual was shown there as part of the Totally Thames Festival 2022. During the 2021 festival, RAG exhibited and delivered innovative workshops reflecting the need for community interaction that is currently at the forefront of modern art practice.
Amongst other public engagements, in 2019, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Periodic Table, RAG artists together with scientists from Imperial College London organised workshops for local families creating banners displayed outside White City Underground Station.
RAG continues to present thought-provoking contemporary art. During lockdown 2020 RAG members devised five online exhibitions accessible through Instagram and the website.
For details of exhibitions, please see our Exhibitions page and, for individual artists, our Artists’ page.