The Ropewalk’s Guitar Festival

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.

‘Avenue of Dreams’ is a collection of paintings and prints by Sheffield based/Irish born artist Alex McArthur. Inspired by the natural world her practice is influenced by long established landscape traditions.

As a starting point for her work Alex uses photographs taken on her travels to stir memories and emotions that inform the processes she uses. Paint is often poured on canvas In layers to represent a passing sky and the monotype printing technique used throws up surprises in colour, form and texture. The use of photography results in a spontaneous and intuitive process.

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