Theatrical Weekend at Ropery Hall

THERE WAS & THERE WAS NOT

Claire Newman-Williams is an British photographic artist who uses photography and collage to explore the world where imagination and reality collide.

Claire grew up in North Lincolnshire and after studying at Birmingham University she moved to the United States in 1988. She worked as a portrait photographer in Washington, DC and New York and her work appeared in numerous national and international publications including Time Magazine, The New York Times and The Advocate. Returning to the UK in 2005 she had become disenchanted by the hours she spent sitting in front of a computer tweaking digital files and making people look pretty. She wanted her work to reflect more of her life so she stopped looking for things to photograph that could be “fine art” images and started looking instead for emotions and memories, feelings and thoughts that she wanted to express.

By blending her unique photographs (often portraits that she creates with old cameras and alternative processes) with text, diagrams, and inscriptions that other generations have left behind, Claire builds visual stories of recalled experience and nostalgia. In her Story Boxes she creates collages layered and arranged in antique wooden boxes. These boxes are intended to be like inner landscapes, addressing the recurrent themes of the smothering of identity and our fear of being seen – truly seen – by those around us. The boxes themselves are sourced from auctions and house clearances and the contents of the box are the ephemera of everyday life, the junk that others throw away: old book covers, flakes of old textured paint, strips of leather, old nails, snippets of newspaper from years past.

Twists and Turns, a themed exhibition responding to the gallery, its history and environs.

Inkers is a group of fifteen independent artists who come together as printmakers to produce new and challenging work.

INKERS is a group of independent contemporary printmakers based in West Yorkshire, who have been working together since 2000. Members pursue successful independent practices as exhibiting artists, educators & writers, and come together to collaborate, exhibit and share practice.
During the past 20 years, the group has welcomed exciting contemporary printmakers from around Yorkshire working with a wide range of print techniques, including etching, drypoint, collagraph, screenprint, relief and photogravure. Several members have been recipients of awards and national/international project funding.

Featuring:

Neil Anderson, Cath Brooke, Shelley Burgoyne, Julia Clegg, Janine Denby, Ruth Fettis, Annie Fforde, Janine Denby, Tony Carlton, Lucy Hainsworth, Emily Harvey, Paul Hudson, June Russell, Ian Wrench & Susan Wright

Hilary Coole is a contemporary ceramic artist producing vessels and functional ware using the process of hand built, slip decorated stoneware slabs. She studied for a degree at Carmarthen School of Art and was awarded a 1st and the accolade of student of the year in 2015. A lifelong career as a graphic designer, coupled with an interest in surface pattern design have influenced her current body of work.

The thematic focus of Hilary’s work is specifically inspired by her mother’s clothing that featured vibrant 1950s patterns which are captured in her work from both her memories of her mother and old family photographs.

Hilary’s starting point was investigating ideas about belonging, home and a sense of place. This reflective thinking flowed into investigating the form and pattern of her mother’s garments translated into clay. She uses slips, paper resist and sgraffito onto the clay then constructs vessels from these highly decorated slabs.

She works from her home studio in the heart of rural Carmarthenshire and exhibits her work in galleries throughout Wales and England, at Art Fairs and is involved in her local Open Studios event.

Hilary’s intention is to evoke the fun, emotion and utopian aims of the 1950s in contrast to post war austerity. The work she produces is a colourful, sculptural and contemporary interpretation of an influential era in her life.

In the Box Gallery during February we have ceramics by Georgina Fowler. Georgina makes handmade slip cast earthenware vessels, bowl and jugs. These are from moulds which she has made from paper models. She experiments with different twisted shapes and aims to create a simple shape but with a subtle twist. She is inspired by fairy tales, imagination, dreams and the surreal. She scans drawings on to her computer and manipulates them on Photoshop which she then puts on to her vessels, bowls and jugs.

The Landscapes of South Riding
The Bare Level Plain is an exhibition of original artworks with the 1936 novel South Riding by Winifred Holtby, and in particular those areas of the East Riding described in the novel, as the exhibition’s focus and theme. This is an exploration through art of the places about which this extremely popular novelist wrote. 

. . . The wide Dutch landscape, haunted by larks and seabirds, roofed by immense pavilions of windy cloud; the miles of brownish-purple shining mud, pocked and hummocked by water and fringed by heath-like herbs; the indented banks where the high tides sucked and gurgled; the great ships gliding up to Kingsport, seen from low lying windows as though they moved across the fields; the brave infrequent flowers, the reluctant springs, the loneliness, the silence, the slow inevitable rhythm of the tides . . .

Winifred Holtby South Riding

Happy New Year!

Don’t let those January Blues get you down.  This month in the Box Gallery we are celebrating all things blue with a display designed to brighten up your day. With a mixture of ceramics and textiles this exhibition will have you re-evaluate your mood and add splashes of blue to your home and winter wardrobe.

Artist that can be found within this exhibition are:  Simon Shaw, Vivienne Ross, Rebecca Harvey, Sharon Walker, Janie Withers and Diane Jones and Joanne Eddon.