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Nik Pollard at the Rabley Drawing Centre
Nik Pollard is currently exhibiting new work in “Drawn to Nature” an exhibition of contemporary drawings and sculpture by nine artists at the Rabley Drawing Centre in Wiltshire. 5th May – 7th July
For further information please visit www.rableydrawingcentre.com
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Posted in member's exhibitions
Associate Member’s Exhibition
Associate Member Federico Gemma and multi Bursary award winner Chris Wallbank have an Exhibition at Slimbridge.
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Posted in member's exhibitions
Kendra Haste at the Tower of London
Kendra’s commission for Historic Royal Palaces (thirteen sculptures) which forms part of an exhibition ‘Royal Beasts’ celebrating the history of the Royal Menagerie, can be seen at the Tower of London.
Life-size lions, baboons, a polar bear and an elephant, all constructed with her trademark material, galvanised wire, help tell the story of the exotic animals that were kept at the Tower from the 1100s, providing entertainment and spectacle for visitors. Included in the commission is one of the most famous Tower ‘inmates’, a polar bear (a gift from the King of Norway to Henry III in 1251) whose collar and chain allowed it to fish for food in the Thames without escaping. In 1832 the remaining animals from the Menagerie were moved to Regents Park to help establish London Zoo.
The Exhibition is the first of its kind devoted to the Royal Menagerie. All of Kendra’s sculptures will remain installed in their present locations at the Tower, a World Heritage site, for the next ten years.
For further information, including images of the installation, please visit: www.kendrahaste.co.uk
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Trailing the albatross – Bruce Pearson
The Troubled Waters project I’ve been working on for the past three or four years is progressing fast towards handing in the text for the book at the end of June, and preparing for the exhibition in November. All very exciting – but frantic!
At the last SWLA exhibition I showed some of the fieldwork from a trip I’d very recently returned from. It was on a longline fishing vessel operating out of Richards Bay, an industrial and fishing port in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was an extraordinarily exciting experience that has provided a dramatic central focus to the project.
All I have to do now is make sure the studio work I’m developing as a consequence conveys something of the conflict between pelagic seabirds and oceanic fisheries. But it is not a war; it seemed to me that there is no intention among pelagic fishermen (legal or pirate vessels) to catch albatrosses. A seabird on the line has no commercial value and wastes time in untangling and dealing with. And fishermen, who might not necessarily consider themselves as conservationists, also see the deaths as sad and pointlessly destructive.
This is one of the themes I’m currently working on in my wonderful new studio space at St. Barnabas Press in Cambridge.
Relief print, 36ins x 24ins (edition of 16)
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Printmaking in Nepal – Esther Tyson
In March I arrived in Nepal to volunteer with the registered children’s charity Esther Benjamins Trust (EBT). The plan, to support its art projects in printmaking and book binding.
Art has been central to the Trust’s work as it has offered self-expression and healing to some of Nepal’s most stigmatised and traumatised children and young people. In Nepal deaf people are cruelly nicknamed “lato” (“stupid”) and condemned to remain at the margins of society through the ignorance and archaic attitudes of many able-bodied people. They have little hope of finding gainful employment. However the Trust has given deaf school leavers the opportunity to prove what they are capable of by involving them in eye-catching community art projects and through teaching them skills in printmaking, jewellery and mosaic art that are allowing them to make products for sale in Nepal and abroad.
Art has also been used to provide healing to trafficking survivors who have been through the almost unimaginable hell of the sex trade. Returnees face the same kind of contempt as deaf people and the toughest of challenges as they attempt to reintegrate with society and avoid being trafficked a second time. The Trust has empowered trafficking survivors, taking them beyond the highly therapeutic benefits of art and into employment within the crafts sector. Now deaf school leavers and trafficking survivors work side by side in Trust workshops with the supervision and support of Western art volunteers.
I am now at the end of my seventh week in the studio in Kathmandu and I am thoroughly enjoying working with the girls.
Dandelion note book April 2012
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Dafila Scott Exhibition
The Edge of Beyond: Paintings from the Antarctic
by Dafila Scott
Tuesday 15 May-Saturday 30 June 2012
Exhibition open Tuesday-Saturday 10:00-16:00
Scott Polar Research Institute, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1ER
Tel 01223 336540 Email events@spri.cam.ac.uk
The exhibition can be seen online at www.spri.cam.ac.uk
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‘THE NATURAL EYE’ – Review of the 48th Annual SWLA Exhibition
‘THE NATURAL EYE’ – The 48th Annual SWLA Exhibition opened with the Preview at the Mall Galleries in London on Wednesday 26 October, when Mark Cawardine, conservationist, broadcaster, writer and photographer opened the show and presented the various prizes and awards. Mark co-presented two BBC2 television series ‘Last Chance to See’, with Stephen Fry and a ‘The Great American Oil Spill’, aslo with Stephen Fry. He has written over 50 books and his latest publication, Mark Cawardine’s Ultimate Wildlife Experiences, featuring his own stunning photography has just arrived in the bookshops.
southern-ground-hornbill1
The exhibition was as exciting and diverse in both style and subject matter as in previous years. The new ‘Out of the Frame’ display in the North Gallery, featuring field work of, amongst others, Bruce Pearson, Harriet Mead and Chris Rose, proved to be hugely popular. As in previous years, member artists were on hand in the gallery during most of the show to talk to visitors, give demonstrations or present guided tours of the show.
It is a great sadness that this year we lost the inspirational and charismatic artist David Measures. Always working from life, in the field, his work remained fresh, vibrant and exciting right to the end. He was a mentor to many and an inspiration to all. There was a display dedicated to him in the North Gallery that attracted many admirers. He will be sorely missed.
This year’s Underwater Bursary artist was Esther Tyson who battled a fear of water to become a qualified diver. Diving off the Dorset coast near Poole, Esther attempted to draw the elusive and endangered sea horses that inhabit the eel grass beds in these shallow waters. The display of her free and lively drawings and paintings were a great attraction in the Main Gallery. The 2010 SWLA Bursary winner David Lowther showed a lovely selection of sensitive coloured drawings of cranes from a visit to the International Crane Foundation in Wisconsin.
The winners of prizes and awards at the show were: Tim Wootton (Birdwatch Artist of the Year Award in association with Swarovski Optic); Bruce Pearson (Langford Press Award); Harriet Mead (The Wildlife Trusts’ Underwater Award); Dan Cole (Hawk and Owl Trust’s Roger Clarke Award); Alison Ingram (RSPB award); Robert Gillmor ( a special award marking the 25th PJC Award); two prizes from the BIRDscapes Gallery were won by Fiona Clucas and Greg Poole and an SWLA bursary was given to Meg Buick who has won a place on the John Busby Seabird Drawing course at North Berwick.
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