Dantzig Gallery, in the heart of Woodstock, presents a brand-new picture of Britain with a new exhibition for 2019, Cool Britannia. The show celebrates post-war British art with old fashioned knees-up swagger. The works on display, both nostalgic and forward-thinking, present the very best in British creativity. The exhibition begins with hand-signed works from Dame Barbara Hepworth and proceeds, via Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, to a fresh brace of East-London based painters including Tommy Fiendish. Highlights include Patrick Caulfield’s Black and White Café and David Hockney’s Henry Reading the Newspaper.

Shown together in the gallery the works ask why Cool Britannia and why now? David Davies CEO of Dantzig Gallery, answers: “This show came about when I was looking through the news. What a miserable doommongering picture they paint. As a way of fighting back I remembered this brief flash in our past, back in the Tony-Blair years, when people were going on about Cool Britannia. And that painted a very different picture. “My basic reaction was to gather together the very best in British art. To stick it up on our walls. And this is how I see Modern Britain. Through its art. Not through its newspapers. “It’s no accident that my concept of a Cool Britannia coincides with the 40th anniversary of Quadrophenia or with the 40th anniversary of the Clash putting out London Calling. Or, more precisely, the Jam releasing Eton Rifles. 2019 is a year in which British-made work acquires serious vintage for collectors. It’s all here.”