26 Random Words Arranged Alphabetically with 26 Unrelated Images
This lecture is part of the Summer Term Creative Conversations series; dialogues between artists, curators and writers. Curated by Dr Claudia Tobin, lectures are held Wednesday evenings either at the School or online.
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Ansel Krut, 'Toady', 2025. Ink on prepared paper, 38 × 56cm. Courtesy of the artist.
A conversation between Ansel Krut and Liza Dimbleby on the publication of Ansel's book 26 Random Words Arranged Alphabetically with 26 Unrelated Images. Putting a word together with an image assumes a corresponding meaning but it turns out to be trickier than that. We will be talking about words and pictures and what they do to each other.
"The mix of word-drawings and drawing-stories encompasses the funny/absurd and dark/tragic, scatalogical and metaphorical, yet skims over it all quite calmly and lands elegantly on its feet…. [yet] as I look again and again, I feel the Orwellian, Trumpian undermining, or manipulation creeping up, an underlying layer of something not to be trusted” (Anne Sassoon 2025)
Ansel Krut was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He has a BA in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand and an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art in London. He was awarded a scholarship to the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris in 1982/3. He was the Abbey Major Scholar in Painting at the British School at Rome in 1986/87. He lives and works in London.
Krut was a visiting lecturer in painting at the Royal College of Art from 2006 to 2014 and he has taught at many other art colleges throughout the UK. He was the Drawing Fellow at Wimbledon College of Art (2005-7) and an artist-lecturer at the National Gallery in London from 2004 to 2012.
In his working life as an artist of nearly 40 years he has exhibited extensively, and he is represented in many public collections in the UK and abroad. Most recently he showed a body of 20 drawings in the exhibition Drawing the Unspeakable curated by David and Liza Dimbleby at the Towner Eastbourne.
Liza Dimbleby is an artist and writer who has taught at the Royal Drawing School for 20 years. She has given talks on Drawing across the UK, and in Paris, Moscow and Siberia. Her latest book is a series of thirty-four texts for paintings by Andrew Cranston (5b, 2024). She co-curated the exhibition, Drawing the Unspeakable, at Towner Eastbourne, October 2024–April 2025. She lives and works in Glasgow.
Cover image: Ansel Krut, 'Toady', 2025. Ink on prepared paper, 38 × 56cm. Courtesy of the artist.