Forthcoming Exhibitions
VISUAL ARTS STUDENTS’ END OF YEAR SHOW
Saturday 4 July to Friday 10 July 2009
Opening Hours: 11am – 6pm
Admission Free
For more information +44 (0)1243 818 316 / 811 301
Sixteen artists from West Dean College’s Visual Arts programme will be exhibiting their work at the West Dean Gallery from Saturday 4 July to Friday 10 July 2009. Opening times: 11am – 6pm.
The end of year show, West Dean 09, is a celebration of their work and is an opportunity for astute art-lovers to discover and invest in new artists, as all works are for sale.
The sixteen students are at various stages in their careers, studying across the range of Graduate, Postgraduate and Professional Development Diplomas the College offers in the areas of Painting & Drawing, Sculpture and Tapestry & Textile Art. A number of students are continuing their study at West Dean on the MFA and MA Visual Arts pathways.
The students (in alphabetical order) featured in the exhibition are:
Sophie Adams - Postgraduate Diploma, Painting & Drawing:
"In my paintings I address aspects of the darkness of life; of the uncanny and the erotic through colour and humour. I draw and paint fluid linear figures and shapes that suggest the corporeal and the bestial on throw-away material like cardboard, as well as on canvas."
Clare Calvert - Professional Development Diploma, Painting & Drawing:
"My work investigates movement, space and time; finding a point in movement that is still, or in stillness that is dynamic or the space between, that is empty and silent. Layers of repetition invoke transformation, making an initial simple structure complex; therefore the perception shifts and habitual patterns are challenged."
Emma Dexter - Postgraduate Diploma, Sculpture:
"Being concerned with the attribution of human traits to sculptural installations, the human condition, memory shakers and déjà vu all feature strongly within my work. My interest in how moments in time are experienced, later to be remembered as dreams or reassembled, functions in my examination of what is familiar. Within a sculptural and painterly framework this work appears timeless yet surreal, exhibiting latitude between the ‘unheimlich’ and humour."
Carole Foster - Graduate Diploma, Tapestry & Textile Art:
"Using my life-long interest in textile crafts and traditional sewing skills I have explored the use of fabric and wire together with printing processes to reflect a transformation from craft to art."
Pamela Glanville - West Dean College Associate, Visual Arts:
"I am using my year at the College to develop my personal practice, through life painting and drawing, and printmaking. A recurring theme in my work derives in part from earlier mountaineering trips, notably to East Greenland."
Keith Hope-Lang - Postgraduate Diploma, Painting & Drawing:
"My pictures have a story… a focal point… but they portray this with the least detail using economical brush strokes. The content is enigmatic. The viewer should look, think and look again. For this I work in oils with large brushes on large canvases and use a compact tonal range. For contrast I also use acid etching but with small copper plates, a sharp scriber and a dark ink. I also explore the same ideas by modelling in clay, wax and bronze. Here the surface texture becomes just sufficient to imply the form without giving the detail."
Helena Hoskova - Postgraduate Diploma, Tapestry & Textile Art:
"I have studied design and textiles at the University Hradec Kralove and the University Jana Evangelisty Purkyne in the Czech Republic. My work includes textile objects, fashion, paintings, prints and photographs, and I have exhibited in the Czech Republic, Italy, Germany and Indonesia."
Hinchee Hung: Postgraduate Diploma, Sculpture:
"I was drawn to West Dean by its 6,400 acre estate where a sculptor has scope to leave her mark! Encouraged to be fearless in exploring new materials I have sown the seeds for a sculpture trail. Come to the show to help my site-specific public art survive the summer."
Des Kilfeather - Graduate Diploma, Visual Arts:
"A recurrent theme in my work is the Human Condition. I want to explore and visually challenge an audience’s perception of greed, power, ambition, jealousy, envy, apathy and love. I spent much of my formative years in Catholic Belfast and traveling extensively, experiencing life from many perspectives, which now informs my work."
Jane Meikle - Postgraduate Diploma, Tapestry & Textile Art:
"I long to transform our inhumanity through my work. I am working experimentally with the fragility and strength of felt with lime putty and glue; all renewable resources. A language of expression, and experience, will metamorphose fractured relationships and encompass difference and friendship."
Robert Olliver-Jones - Postgraduate Diploma, Painting & Drawing:
"As a figure painter I am inspired by the arrangement of bodies in space, their relations to it and one another, exploring a diverse range of experiences and emotions including hope, loss, vulnerability and compassion. I aim to make tender, sensuous, provocative paintings, rich in metaphor, symbolism and layered meanings."
Christine Paine - Professional Development Diploma, Tapestry & Textile Art:
"My Postgraduate Diploma in Tapestry Weaving took me from a grey cube to marks, symbols and connections in the landscape. Current work builds on the fragility and strength of our journey over the landscape and through life. Loss accompanies us as we move forward changed, but intact. Gestural marks are interpreted in woven and felted works."
Ana Marie Torres - Postgraduate Diploma, Tapestry & Textile Art:
"People‘s responses to poverty and rejection transform the aesthetics of a city’s architecture. I reflect on the meaning behind disruptive elements of social fragmentation such as dust, old buildings, windows and doors, crowded streets and the gentleness and tenderness of improvisation expressed in day-to-day activities like hanging clothes and playgrounds. I translate these meanings into my textile work, stressing how the scars of rejection are reflected in architecture and absorbed in the human body."
Nina Troitzky – Professional Development Diploma, Sculpture:
"My work is installation based, focusing on the concept of experimentation; investigations of ‘what happens if?’ are combined with processes of repetition creating evocative visual experiences that transcend the viewers’ initial expectation/impression."
Tamara Violaris - Postgraduate Diploma, Tapestry & Textile Art:
"I work with the energetic resonance and infused history of materials, spaces and ultimately the sensatory experience of the spectator. The quintessence of nature fuels the ephemeral and diaphanous installations I create, which stem from an exploration of what nourishes the human spirit. "
Kathryn Young - Postgraduate Diploma, Painting & Drawing:
"My first degree in architecture is both reflective and informative in my current work, which is concerned with the nature and significance of our relationship with architectural space. Shallow 3D constructions, drawings and prints address ambiguities in scale – the micro and the macro. "
Entrance to West Dean Gallery is Free
The exhibition is open from Saturday 4 July to Friday 10 July 2009
Opening Hours: 11am – 6pm
Telephone: 01243 818 316/811301
Please use the West Dean Gardens’ entrance.
MADE TO THINK
Glass, Enamel, Textiles, Paintings and Prints
West Dean Gallery 30 July – 6 September 2009 Wednesday to Sunday 11.30 to 4pm Private Views Wednesday 29 July Saturday 8 August
Sunday 16 August 6.30 – 8.30pm
This exuberant and colourful show displays the high standard of work produced by over 20 artists who teach at West Dean and regularly share their knowledge, experience and enthusiasm as part of our Short Course programme.
Exploring the fascinating alchemy of glass and enamels: fused, beads, stained, engraved, prints, bowls, collage and jewellery.
Showing a wide range of textile art: devoré velvet, printed and painted silk, embroidery and hats.
Presenting a wide range of prints by Dale Devereux-Barker who you can also see working as Artist in Residence from July 30 – August 12 on the Gallery’s mezzanine floor.
Introducing the work of Christopher Corr – illustrator and artist of international renown – known for his colourful book covers, including those for No1 Ladies Detective Agency.
An exhibition not to be missed – for inspiration and an opportunity to buy unique work to brighten both yourselves and your homes!
Profiles of the twenty internationally-renowned artists
GLASS
Kate Baden Fuller trained at the Royal College of Art, London and has worked as a glass artist for 25 years. Commissions include churches, offices, schools, hospitals and private houses both in the UK and abroad. Kate uses sandblasted and acid etched float glass as well as the traditional hand blown glass and lead. Her practice also includes tables, ceiling sculpture and flooring.
Katrina Beattie graduated from the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Farnham in 1995. Her exclusive hand-blown glass incorporates copper wire inclusions that trap air, creating bubbles and casting refractive light. Her kiln formed glass displays matrixes of accurately placed holes or bubbles with extreme precision and regularity.
Brett Man works in series, and is currently developing ranges of recycled and outdoor pieces. His inspiration is often material led, but also comes from nature, gut emotions and a need to create. Brett enjoys experimenting and the unexpected quirks that making kiln formed glass presents, using the magical nature of glass to take the 2 dimensional into 3 dimensions.
Barbara Mason is one of the country’s premier glass beadmakers and teachers. She has been making lampworked glass beads since 1997 and is a co-founder of GBUK. She spent 4 years in the USA perfecting her art, working alongside some of the top glass beadmakers in the world. Since returning in 2003, Barbara has established her busy studio in Swindon where, over the years, many eager students have started their exciting journey into the world of glass beadmaking.
Alex Robinson attended Camberwell College of Art in 1992 and obtained degree in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. Later she completed a postgraduate certificate in glass at Central Saint Martins. She exhibits in various galleries around the UK, including the West Dean Gallery, Cambridge Contemporary Art and the Steps Gallery in Bristol. She also stocks small boutique stores and galleries both in the UK and abroad with smaller production pieces. She says “My work is opulent and often incorporates irridescent and reflective surfaces which means the glass is effective under many different lighting conditions.”
Tracey Sheppard began engraving glass as an experiment whilst studying for a BA Hons in Fine Art and English Literature, and the brief flirtation quickly developed into a passion. The Guild of Glass Engravers accepted her as a craft member and she began to work freelance. She was elected a fellow of the guild in 1987 and a Brother of the Art Workers Guild in 1996. Tracey says “On glass I can indulge my love of drawing fromt the natural world, closely observing and capturing the fine detail and structure of botanical or architectural subjects”.
Dora Schubert is inspired by colors in nature and textiles, Moorish designs and architecture as well as the microscopic world of cells and bacterium. “The little details are what catch your eye; it’s not the big objects. Working on the details also gives you a chance to discover something else in your work” says Dora.
ENAMEL
Penny Davis is influenced by the idea of frames, where you are allowed to see through to a secret space inside. The area has an unexpected beauty, compared to the plainer exterior, like a geode when it is broken open. Influences behind the frame outlines include Neolithic rock art, stylised and abstracted into contemporary shapes, and the circle that is a holistic and eternal form. She attended Sheffield Polytechnic where she obtained a BA in Jewellery and Silversmithing, and is Vice Chairman of the British Society of Enamellers; Association of Contemporary Jewellers.
Pat Johnson has spent the last 30 years exploring the potential of enamelling on copper. Born in the United States, Pat came to England when she was 26 and discovered enamelling on copper when she was given a small kiln. Starting with the production of pendants, she went on to make large collages from enamelling on copper and also public art murals working with enamel on steel. Currently she is concentrating on enamelling vessels and studying the interactions of the enamels with each other.
Joan Mackarell first trained as a printed and woven textile designer. Although enamel has an inbuilt fragility, it is, for Joan, the perfect medium for creating a lasting image. Living now in central London, her work is about trying to make sense of past experiences and it deals with fragments of memory and the patina of time. Public collections include: The Gilbert Collection, Somerset House, London, The Worshipful Company of Dyers, London and the Musee de l’horlogerie et Email, Geneva.
Elizabeth Turrell is inspired by memorials and markers, which celebrate the lives of ordinary citizens caught up in the extraordinary circumstances of conflicts and war. Examples of her work can be found at Studio Fusion Gallery, OXO Tower Wharf, London; International Contemporary Vitreous Enamel Archive; Crafts Council. Elizabeth gained her training at the Central School of Art and Design and her work is included in public and private collections. She belongs to the Royal West of England Bristol (Academician) Society of North American Goldsmiths.
Deborah Lozier was trained as a metalsmith and began experiments with fusing enamel onto copper in 1986. Born 1961, in Des Moines, Iowa. Deborah lives in Oakland, CA where she is a studio artist and Adjunct Professor at the California College of the Arts. She attended Arizona State University, Tempe (B.F.A. crafts, 1984), exhibits and teaches internationally and is best known for her techniques of enameling onto fabricated copper forms. Her jewelry and metalwork have been printed in Ornament, Metalsmith and American Craft Magazines and many recent Lark Publications including 1000 Rings and The Art of Enameling by Linda Darty. Currently she is serving on the Public Art Advisory Committee for the City of Oakland Cultural Arts & Marketing Department.
PAINTINGS
Christopher Corr was born in London and studied at The Royal College of Art. His round the world travels provide much inspiration for his work. His first trip to India in 1986 resulted in a one person show entitled "Wel-come To India" which was followed by a book and a short BBC TV film of the same name. Commissions range from book jackets, posters, the World Aids Day 1996 campaign, artist for Qantas, artist for Windstar Cruises. The Royal Mail sent him to Bosnia to paint the Peace-Keeping troops for a commemorative stamp in the Millennium Stamps Project. He has recently been working on some children's books. Further information can be found on www.christophercorr.com
Dale Devereux Barker lives and works in Suffolk. A printmaker specialising in reduction linocuts and screen-prints, his work combines a celebration of colour and form with warmly engaging subject matter. The events of everyday life are transformed into colourful images loaded with humour and feeling. Dale studied at Loughborough, Leicester, and at the Slade School of Art from 1980-1986. Since 1986 he has lectured widely in printmaking and continues to teach regularly at University College Suffolk. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter- Printmakers in 1996. He has also exhibited widely throughout Britain, in London, and abroad. In 1995 a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Fermoy Gallery, King's Lynn. He has works in many private and public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum.
RESIN
Kathie Murphy was born in Morocco. She works with resin and rubber and features in the collection of the National Museums of Scotland & Aberdeen Art Gallery. She recently completed her first book, Cast Resin Jewellery published by A & C Black. Kathie was shortlisted for the Arts Foundation Po Shing Woo Jewellery Prize, 2001.
TEXTILES
Sarah Cant is a milliner and textile artist based in the Cotswolds. She completed a PhD in French Literature at Oxford, before training in millinery at Kensington and Chelsea College. Since then she has been steadily building a reputation with her striking and unusual style.
Bailey Tomlin was founded and has been run by Bridget Bailey since 1989, designing and producing millinery collections for The V&A, Saks 5th Ave & Liberty etc. Previously she designed and produced millinery for Jean Muir for 8 years. Bridget achieved a BA Hons in Textiles at Farnham and an MA Textiles at Birmingham University.
Carole Waller is a painter whose canvas is yards of cloth. Her painting is concerned with the human body and architectural space. These paintings are frequently in the form of unstretched large cloths hanging in space. They explore the energy of our presence and our absence using a combination of mark, transparency, colour and material. The work is intimately connected to its own context - using its physical involvement with its location as a route to examine our sense of self and of place.
Maxine Sutton explores the interplay between screen-printed and embroidered textures, colour, mark, drawn and stitched lines. Her ideas spring from our relationship with familiar domestic objects, everyday pastimes, the meaning of ‘home’ and home-making activities using Irish machine, and hand embroidery. Her work employs a combination of traditional techniques, such as applique, patchwork, needle-punch and screen print. forms, are hand drawn, paper cut, found or photographic; layered and collaged with abstract and semi figurative appliquéd, needlepunched and printed imagery. Sustainability is a priority, materials used are a mixture of natural organics such as cotton, hemp, linen and wool combined with found/recycled/vintage materials.
Dionne Swift is a Textile Artist working in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Inspired by the local landscape she paints, dyes and devores on velvet, exploring the potential of the cloth. Studying at Goldsmiths [BA Hons] and the University of Central England [MA] created a strong direction towards site-specific textile pieces. Presently Dionne works to commission dying and painting wall pieces and hangings. She produces work which is exhibited nationally.