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Clifford Chance marks Gay Pride with fourth annual transatlantic LGBT Art Exhibition

13 June 2011

Clifford Chance marks Gay Pride with fourth annual transatlantic LGBT Art Exhibition

Clifford Chance is celebrating Gay Pride with a joint art exhibition of gay and lesbian artists in its London and New York offices. The exhibition will be formally launched with receptions in both cities on Wednesday 15 June 2011.

Organised by Arcus, the Firm's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employee network, the London exhibition will showcase the works of seven gay and lesbian artists: Guy Burch, Maya Chowdhry, Åsa Johannesson, Garry Parsons, Caroline Smith, Robert Taylor and Konrad Wyrebek – each with a unique approach and practice.

The New York exhibition will feature large-scale banners from the high school students of Gotham Professional Arts Academy, which address issues related to identity, visibility and acceptance. These resulted from a partnership between Clifford Chance and artist Lisa Ross and oral historian Svetlana Kitto, through which they developed a program for high school students from the Gotham Professional Arts Academy’s GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

Clifford Chance senior partner Malcolm Sweeting commented, "Clifford Chance's annual LGBT art exhibition goes from strength to strength, and demonstrates our ongoing commitment to our LGBT employees and the LGBT community in general."

Michael Petry, curator of the Exhibition and Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), London, added "This year's London show focus on the positive aspects of diversity at a time when the LGBT community is still striving for full legal equality across the EU and America. These are human rights, not special ones. I have selected artists with their own individual vision, many of whom use portraiture as  a means of artistic exploration, while others are more openly political but no less poetic. Their commitment to their work is self-evident, as are their skills, and artistry, yet the images and objects they produce are wonderfully varied.   For the first time we have included performance art as well as sculpture, painting and video, and I am sure it will be exciting and also very beautiful."

Clifford Chance's commitment to Art for over two decades has ensured that the Firm now has a remarkable collection of over 1,000 limited edition prints, including works by Whistler, David Hockney, Bridget Riley and Antony Gormley. The Firm has also developed an Art programme, which includes an Arts Club, in-house exhibitions and Corporate Art Patronage.

Images of the works that will be on show in the exhibition are available on request.