Please do come. All welcome.
To see my work in the MA Fine Art Degree Show at Bath School of Art & Design, Sion Hill, Bath. BA1 5SF.
Private View Friday 18 September 2015 6-9pm.
Public View 19-23 September 10am-5pm.
MA Courses – MA Curatorial Practice, MA Design Ceramics, MA Design: Fashion and Textiles & MA Fine Art.
Myself, Zander Buchan Jones, Thomas Mence, Pia Pack and Victoria Walters will be exhibiting recent work in our MA Fine Art Interim Exhibition at Dartmouth Avenue, Bath School of Art & Design. Private view 6 June 2015 from 3pm-5pm. The show runs until 10 June 2015. Please do come, all welcome.
I went with a group of students from Bath Spa University and The Royal Academy London to The Simon Lee Gallery in London to meet artist Dexter Dalwood, to talk about the meaning behind his London Paintings Exhibition. He said it is about finding a language for what you are interested in.
From this visit I learnt his work; is imagery about a place, a little like but not really. It is an alternative vision-not sights of London, a shift from the obvious to something else. London Paintings are a series of work over 2 years. He talked about his theme of London as a subject and his time spent in it and about other painters who have painted London before.
I always struggle with putting a title to my work, Dexter made an interesting comment that his titles do not have a direct connection.
Jeremy Gardiner Jurassic Coast exhibition at Victoria Art Gallery Bath is a really interesting exhibition where the artist shares his process, methods and influences. Well worth a visit and is on until 1st March.
Gardiner portrays the Jurassic coastline in a series of paintings and mono prints. He walks through the landscape making studies and sketches. He remembers the time or place, without physically being there enabling him to capture its essence.
The exhibition starts with a series of framed mono prints, Gardiner refers to these as a downward slice through the landscape, representing layers of geological time.
Jeremy Gardiner. Framed mono prints. Victoria Art Gallery Bath.
Gardiner’s influences are John Piper, Graham Sutherland and Paul Nash, 1940 British Neo Romantic painters.
Ideas from the exhibition: painting on birch and popular panels, flat area of colour alongside textured areas, an uneven edge is interesting and to layer up wood to paint on.
Gardiner’s process is to collect fossils, which occur in the work. He maps patterns of information into his paintings by using collaged shapes as a relief overlapping to give a sense of a multiple view.
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I recommend a visit to the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2014 The Wilson Gallery at Cheltenham Museum & Art Gallery. This is the first time The Wilson Gallery has shown the Jerwood Drawing Prize, it travelled from Jerwood Visual Arts Centre in London. I found it interesting seeing the exhibition shown in a different venue. I think the venue changes how the exhibition is viewed, the space, building, layout and location give a different feel and meaning to the work.
I think the exhibition raises questions about drawing. What is drawing? This is the first time a sound piece has been a winner. I was interested to see a paper cut was selected for the show representing another form of drawing. I noticed there is an element of the unfinished and space in many of the works, part drawing, part painting in oils or watercolour, minimal and the composition often going off the page. The works are ambiguous, alternative even the representational drawings offer something different. The perspective of a pencil drawing looking up a tree and the pencil drawing of an interior turned upside down.
I recommend a visit to Victoria Art Gallery Bath to see Edwina Bridgeman Ship of Fools Exhibition.
This is an exhibition in a respected art gallery that appeals to children as well as adults, crossing the boundary of art and craft. It has me asking questions. What is art? Do you need to bring a certain knowledge to understand it? I think anything can be art in the right context.
The installation is interactive, naive, which brings a connection with play, childlike and children.
The more time I spend looking I appreciate each figure as an individual character with its own personality. The exhibition has informed me of another way to use found materials and objects to create other forms.
I went to two very interesting exhibitions at Victoria Art Gallery Bath. Modern Masters in Print
This show conveys the work of four great artists from the 20th Century Henri Matisse, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso through a Print Collection from the Victoria and Albert Museum. These artists saw the birth of the modern age. Line and more detailed drawings featured as well as prints showing the preparation before making a painting and introducing colour. Interesting to see the contrast between each artists work.
Dali. Grasshopper Child composition 1933.
I have chosen this drawing by Dali for its composition it resonates what I am trying to convey in my own work. Rocks, space with structures or objects in the landscape. This has inspired me to draw out a composition of structures for my paintings.
John Eaves Small Beginnings Works on paper. Watercolour and collage. Crayon. Charcoal and wash. These processes of working stood out for me. His subject matter geological strata and concerns with landscape sources is derivative of the work I have been creating and was a good source of reference for my work now.
Anslem Kiefer is a painter that infuses the landscape genre achieving the most powerful effects of meaning and interest. Kiefer’s work has different strands of meaning, themes taken from myth, legend, religion and political history. He takes complex ideas and puts them into a single coherent image, using a pictorial language the viewer can understand.
In my research I am interested that other German artists have recently exhibited in the UK, Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz and currently a retrospective Alibis: Sigmar Polke at Tate Modern.
Anslem Kiefer Royal Academy of art London 27Sep-14Dec 2014.
The exhibition explores the themes that run through Anslem Kiefer’s oeuvre. A retrospective and a number of new works made for the exhibition. Kiefer has achieved work that responds to poetry, myth, religion and the history of Germany post war years. He works across disciplines. As a viewer I see a portrayal of dereliction, construction and reconstruction with the use of meaning and depth. As a painter I see an artist working on a grand scale not afraid of using many unexpected materials together on a variety of surfaces.
The curator, Kathleen Soriano, working with Kiefer, begins and ends the show with artist books, from sketch and scrap books to bound watercolour paintings. Showing the importance of making the books has to his work. In his books he seeks to recreate a memory. The exhibition has left me asking questions about my work. Why do I keep returning to the Avon Gorge and the Marina at Portishead? Is it local history? Is it the past alongside the new? For example the history of the Gorge alongside modern structures. The lock and historical wooden structures at Portishead Marina with modern apartment buildings. I am seeking deep meaning and emotion within my work. The exhibition is incredibly powerful and has left me in awe of him and his work. I highly recommend a visit.
On now until 26th July. I am pleased to have two artworks selected for the Clifton Arts Club Annual Open ExhibitionClifton Arts Club Annual Exhibition
Clare Thatcher 