Image: Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh
Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh will present 'Songs of Innocence and Experience, part II' from 20 June to 12 September 2026, a group exhibition that celebrates the centenary of Caribbean artist and polymath Frank Walter (1926-2009). The show is part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2026 and continues the gallery’s long engagement with Walter’s work, which first appeared there posthumously in 2013.
The gallery describes Walter as a prodigiously talented artist and writer who was born on Horsford Hill, Antigua, on 11 September 1926. It says he produced several thousand paintings and drawings, alongside some 50,000 typed pages of manuscript spanning poetry, philosophy and nuclear science. Much of that work remained unseen during his lifetime, and the exhibition text notes that his contribution to Caribbean culture has only come to be widely understood in recent years.
Ingleby’s framing for the exhibition is explicitly dialogic. The gallery says the first response to Walter’s newly discovered paintings came from other artists, especially painters, who recognised the urgency and clarity of his vision. 'Songs of Innocence and Experience, part II' extends that conversation by bringing together artists who Walter never knew and who did not know him, but whose work has either responded directly to his paintings or can be read in conversation with them.
The exhibition title returns to William Blake’s 'Songs of Innocence & Experience', the title borrowed for Ingleby’s 2013 Walter exhibition. In the gallery’s account, that earlier show helped introduce Walter to a wider audience in Edinburgh, and the years since have seen his reputation expand considerably. The text cites curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, who called Walter 'a pioneer' and 'the Leonardo da Vinci of Antigua', and notes that Walter represented Antigua and Barbuda at the Venice Biennale in 2017.
Since then, the gallery says, major solo exhibitions have followed at MMK Frankfurt, the Drawing Centre in New York and the Garden Museum in London, as well as gallery presentations in Paris, Brussels, São Paulo, London, Hong Kong and New York. In that context, Ingleby positions the 2026 exhibition not as a retrospective survey but as a focused centenary project that places Walter in exchange with later artists whose practices intersect with his imagery, materials and concerns.
The roster for the show includes Frank Walter alongside Beatrice Arraes, David Austen, Hayley Barker, Alvaro Barrington, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Robert Coutelas, Andrew Cranston, Peter Doig, Sky Glabush, Nick Goss, Mia Kokkoni, Aubrey Levinthal, John Maclean, Elizabeth Magill, John Joseph Mitchell, Christopher Colm Morrin, Craig Murray-Orr, Cassi Namoda, Andrew Pierre Hart, Ellen Siebers, Hiroshi Sugito, Tal R and Rose Wylie. The selection shown in the viewing room ranges across paintings, drawings, watercolours, screenprints and works on paper, with recurring motifs including birds, trees, flowers, fences, landscapes and self-portraiture.
Among the works listed are Walter’s 'White Bird', 'Branch with Leaves and Pink Sky', 'Tree with Green Grass and Violet Sky', 'Lady Love and Antiguan Gentleman', 'Rainbow Cruise Ship', 'Self Portrait: Bow Tie' and several of his small-scale landscapes and botanical studies. These are shown alongside works by the invited artists, including Rose Wylie’s '3 Young Tulips', Peter Doig’s 'Sailor Bar', Elizabeth Magill’s 'Lamentation (of Swans) 2' and 'Swans 3', and Andrew Cranston’s 'Look out', 'Cover of night' and 'A boy falling out the sky'. Ingleby says the exhibition has been prepared with the support of Walter’s family and consulting curator Dr Barbara Paca OBE, and it is on view at 33 Barony Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6NX.
