Media event for Hockney fans after painting’s display success

On Friday, September 9, the painting will form the backdrop to a unique event featuring words and music inspired by it.

A group of poets assembled by the Hockney Research Volunteer Group will read their responses to the painting in an event called Bigger Verse at the Ferens, and this will be followed by the playing of five pieces of music written in tribute to it by Roger O’Donnell, keyboard player with one of the world’s biggest rock bands, The Cure.

It will be the first time O’Donnell’s piano and cello compositions – called Quieter Trees – have been played in front of the actual painting.

A volunteer with the research group, Christina Hamilton, said: “It’s about bringing a different audience to the Ferens, engaging with the public and bringing the painting and the gallery closer to new audiences using a variety of different forms of art.

“It’s the first time the music has been played in front of the picture.

“The poems are really great. Some are about the impression of being David Hockney and painting the painting, some are inspired by the trees themselves and some by the location where the trees are.”

Ms Hamilton added: “Hockney himself was inspired by poetry and I think the two things are closely connected.”

Staff at the gallery are both relieved and delighted by the success of the exhibition.

The mammoth painting – which combines 50 separate canvasses and measures 40ft high by 13ft wide – is so big it is being shown for the first time with its sides turned in as the gallery could not accommodate it any other way.

Kirsten Simister, the gallery’s curator of art, saw Hockney give it his personal seal of approval when he attended the preview night.

She said: “As he walked through he smiled broadly, said ‘Oh yes’ and nodded his head.

“It was lovely, I was really thrilled that he liked it, so that was a massive relief.

“From a practical and logistical perspective it presented us with a lot of challenges.”

By yesterday, 43,057 people had been in to see the painting since it went on display at the end of June. Ms Simister added: “It sets a bar of quality and ambition which we hope we can meet and increase in the future.”