One of the highlights of the exhibition year at Barton upon Humber’s Contemporary Art & Craft, Gaolyard, St Ives – A Special Place, opens on Saturday, September 11.
The Maltkiln Road gallery’s Exhibition Officer, Richard Hatfield, is delighted that potters based in the former gaolyard at this Cornish seaside town are to display their work in this month long selling exhibition.
“Two years ago we had a small exhibition last year which featured the work of Sarah Dunstan, one of the potters who works from Gaolyard Pottery,” he recalled.
“We offered to return her unsold pieces and the location and set up at Gaolyard seemed idyllic.”
“It was my first visit to the area and I was very impressed with the high quality of the work created there and it seemed a logical step to offer a group exhibition,” he continued.
Richard explained that St Ives has long been a Mecca for visual artists through its association with the likes of Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Christopher Wood, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon.
“The area has been strongly linked to contemporary British art and this link was firmly cemented with the opening of Tate St.Ives in 1993,” he continued. “Today St Ives has perhaps the highest concentration of artists and galleries in the country.
Gaolyard, St Ives – A Special Place is a present day representation of a legacy in the history of British Ceramics that stretches back almost a hundred years with the establishment by Bernard Leach of the Leach Pottery there in 1920.
John Bedding, a former Leach employee, established the Gaolyard Studios in 1999.
“Other artists and practitioners give you a buzz and enthusiasm for coming to work. There is also the practical side with people around to help with technical problems. At the Leach everyone used to go around and look at each other’s work. When I left that was one thing I really missed,” he said.
There is no house style at Gaolyard and the studio is now home to a range of potters who differ in method, age, individuality and experience – seven of whom are exhibiting at The Ropewalk.
Gaolyard, St.Ives – A special place features the work of John Bedding, Trevor Corser, Sarah Dunstan, Rebecca Harvey, Rick Henman, Amanda Ray and Louise Thompson and runs until October 10.
The annual exhibition by The Ropewalk Studio artists. Featuring work by:
David Alcock
Sally Beaumont
Emily Connor
Debbie Grice
Richard Hatfield
Gill Hobson
Judith Land
Darren Langton
Tim Needham
Julie Oxenforth
Michael Scrimshaw
Shirley Trumble
Keith Woodcock
The Ropewalk’s popular Christmas Art Market will showcase the work of more than 40 makers and artists.
Taking place over the weekend of Saturday December 7 and Sunday December 8 those makers and artists selected to take part will be selling original handmade gifts, cards and artwork (more…)
Helen Martino would describe her work as being ‘sometimes serious and sometimes playful’. For many years Helen worked as a functional potter, making batches of domestic pots on a wheel. Now she sees herself as more of a maker in clay, hand building each piece individually by using soft and flexible sheets of clay. These sheets of clay are freely cut, curved and sometimes twisted, this is how Helen is able to create different perspectives and distortion within her work. The surface is painted with slip, underglaze pigment and resists. Depending on the piece silver and gold lustre may also be incorporated.
Helen is fascinated by body language and how this can be communicated. She observes Mogul and Persian miniatures and admires how they are able to tell a story within one image. These artworks often show a significant event within the life span of a person or family. Helen’s sculptures are also intimate like the miniature and show a single event that can be applied to the past, future and present, allowing the viewer to determine the story of each artwork.
Working in Cambridge, Helen exhibits widely across the UK and is the founder member of Cambridge Open Studios. She will be exhibiting in the Box Gallery in November.
Yorkshire born and bred, Eleanor Tomlinson is a traditional artist and illustrator based in East Yorkshire. Inspired by the beautiful Yorkshire countryside she has grown up amongst, Eleanor predominantly works in ink and watercolour to specialise in capturing and celebrating UK wildlife and the local countryside. Eleanor’s distinctive style using ink and watercolour, combines traditional, well-loved subjects with a contemporary, illustrative twist. Her use and composition of contrasting white space brings a narrative and sense of movement and energy to her pieces. Eleanor’s artworks have also been developed into a wide range of cards, stationery, limited edition prints and homeware collections alongside her original pieces which are being sold in an array of independent shops and galleries across the UK.
LAND, SEA AND SKY
The theme for this exhibition ‘Land, Sea, and Sky’ was chosen because its wide-ranging associations might be interpreted in many different ways, and in part because the theme was seen to have some relevance to the location of The Ropewalk Gallery. No size limit was imposed and artists were invited to respond to the theme in as wide a way as possible, to be as traditional or as innovative as they wished both in process and format. The final selection includes three dimensional and large format pieces as well as more conventional prints.
Printmakers Council was founded in 1965 by a group of prominent printmakers to raise the profile of printmaking as an art form and to provide an exhibition society for members. For over fifty years PmC has continued to pursue these aims through a rolling programme of exhibitions, lectures and practical workshops.
Two new exhibitions with links to northern Lincolnshire are opening this Saturday (Sept 14) at The Ropewalk arts centre in Barton upon Humber.
In the Artspace is Re-Tellings, a solo exhibition by Grimsby based artist Sue Stone whose work is inspired by people, place and time. (more…)
