Getting familiar with Hockney

The exhibition features around 100 works of the artist and spans his career from the mid-1950s to the present. It also demonstrates the range of possibilities in his work, not only within the traditional areas of painting, print-making and drawing, but also in his more recent use of photography and digital technologies.

The works are drawn primarily from the Tate's Collection, including some of Hockney's most iconic paintings-A Bigger Splash (1967); Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970-71); and My Parents (1977).

M Woods also showcases Hockney's relationship with China as his passion for Chinese scroll painting is a less-noticed part of Hockney's works.

Hockney first visited China in 1981 with Stephen Spender, a British poet, and the two collaborated on the book China Diary (1982) chronicling their journey.

Hockney then went on to explore his fascination with traditional Chinese scroll painting in the 1987 film A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China or: Surface Is Illusion But So Is Depth. In the film, Hockney examines the pinnacle of Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) court painting, The Kangxi Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour painted by a group of artists led by the master Wang Hui, guiding viewers through the vastness and subtlety of the scroll and its dynamic lesson in time and space.

The exhibition also shows how Chinese painting has continued to have a profound impact on Hockney's practice in terms of painting theory, technique and perspective.

And it does this with a comparison between The Kangxi Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour (Scroll 6) and Hockney's Moving Focus series of prints and more recent works in paintings and photography, to show Hockney's remarkable journey through the myriad ways he has interrogated the nature of looking and representation.