New exhibitions at The Ropewalk this autumn

Christmas Spectacular with Alison Read

Brought up on a farm, Alison studied art at Newcastle University before running the Printmaking Workshop at Lincoln University for nine years, where she also completed her MA Degree before becoming a full-time artist

“Although I love all forms of printmaking, my current favourite is the woodcut, and I attack my plates quite brutally at times,” says Alison. “I am always surprised at how simple they are; just a few lines to denote the essentials. I like the hands-on nature of producing a plate and its immediacy. I don’t keep highly detailed sketchbooks etc as I use the plate rather than paper to work out ideas. I think this is why my images are quirky, if I plan too much I find this is often lost”

Penny divides her time between teaching and creating her own work from her studio in St Peter’s School, York.  Using a mixture of different clay to capture the form, Penny allows the material itself to express as much as possible of the intrinsic nature of an animal. This is done in as loose a way as possible, so the clay is not overworked. She then uses layers of slips and oxides to add more depth to textural the surface. Penny’s work has traditionally dealt with English animals, both domestic and wild. Over the last two years she has begun a series of larger works concentrating on primates. Created on a bigger scale the “portraits” explore the individual spirit of her subjects.   All Penny’s pieces are sculpted with thoughtfulness and understanding, inviting her audience to contemplate and reflect on the intrinsic beauty and energy of wild things

Echoes in the Water: Traces in the Land

New artwork by Mary Sleigh and Jan Miller resonates with the local area, the landscape, history, and industry. While exploring, they have come upon traces of past activity, uncovered the unknown and unexpected, gathered natural and man-made materials and responded to the elements at different times of the year.

Mary Sleigh’s connection to the land comes from her fascination in foraging, gathering, and sorting, often giving her starting points for new work. Finding connections with places and people as a theme, continues in her exploration of the area around Barton on Humber.

Mary’s new work for Echoes in the Water: Traces in the Land celebrates the lives of those who worked in Barton, often many generations of the same family, who had family ties with local industries. 

Jan Miller collected shards of tiles bricks, sticks and stones, wood slivers, which along with her notes, photographs form the basis of her work. The single most striking image of the Humber Estuary for Jan is the glorious chocolate-brown silky mud exposed by tidal ebb and flow. Mud, silt, puddle-water, clay, earth, rock pigments have since become her new favourite mark-makers.

Verity Adriana, will showcase two bodies of her photographic work at The Ropewalk in September 2020. These photographic works are a fusion of ephemeral in-scene installation and photography that use light and optical devices to convey ideas of universal connections. Selections from Adriana’s work have previously been exhibited with British Journal of Photography in Arles, France, Life Framer in Rome, Italy and the Center For Fine Art Photography in Denver, Colorado.

Adriana grew up in Hull and regularly visited her father in Barton who would narrate the history of the (then) disused rope and tile factory buildings during walks up to the river, sparking a fascination with the area.  This exhibition is the first time Lumen will be shown as a full body of work, and the artist chose The Ropewalk for this because of her connections to the place as well as it being the location of where much of these works were made.

Lumen, (2015 ongoing), made along the river Humber, investigates how light and photography have the power to transform ordinary and familiar subject matter and materials into moments of sublime experience by challenging our perceptions.  Light has the power to transform and transfix; photography is a medium that captures light; plastic is a material that holds light, and light itself is our connection to the beginnings of existence. This body of work reflects the existential human nature to look to the universal, a theme particularly relevant in the contemporary world.

Legacy, (2018), is a body of work created by Adriana in response to the legacy of the impact of the year of Hull City of Culture 2017 within the city’s spaces and places and is a synthesis of careful research done within the various communities and organisations involved and affected. The images show Adriana’s characteristic use of light, along with symbolic devices such as smoke and reflective surfaces, that challenge the viewer to consider the implications for the city and to reflect on their own experiences.

Adriana currently lives in Leeds, Yorkshire where she is Course Director of the BA Photography program at Leeds Trinity University. See www.verityadriana.com for more information.

Studio Artist, Lee Sass is our artist featured in the Box Gallery throughout September. Lee is a freelance artist, printmaker, creative director and social engagement artist. Her prints are inspired by her late husband, who worked alongside Lee in performances. These prints and textiles embody strong women and tough men, they are made from detailed card cut outs. These card cut outs are often transformed into screen prints and used on textiles. All of Lee’s work is connect by stories and linked to her past.

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.