The artist, Eileen Agar, is donning a hat made up of crustaceans, cork, coral, seashells, fishbone and sea-urchins. The year is 1937, and in the Pathé black-and-white newsreel, she takes to the streets to parade her hat, prompting greyscale faces to gawp in confusion. Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse is one of Agar’s most well-recognised works which you can see in person at a major retrospective of her works at the Whitechapel Gallery in East London.
The exhibition Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy hosts over a hundred of her other wide-ranging works – from early line drawings and collages to photography. As London continues to swelter in the heat, the gallery makes for a cooling refuge away from the sunburnt hordes.
