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Coming soon
The Fragility of All Things -
Sylvie Maney, Denise Franklin
& Keeley Chapman
September 10th - 29th
Main Gallery
For the world to thrive it needs to exist in harmonious balance, beautiful and often brutal.
Sylvie, Denise and Keeley - three women in art - work intuitively within their given mediums, offering different perspectives on the world in which they live, capturing a snapshot in time which could be now, the past or any point in the future.
There’s a sense of timelessness to it all. It could have happened before, but only experienced in this moment by these individuals. Their work ecologically and intrinsically entwines, like linked organisms and their reliance upon one another.
Their art shows harmony, discord, portent, space and more.
OPEN VIEW: 12 SEPTEMBER, 6-8PM
MEET THE ARTISTS: 29 SEPTEMBER, 1-3PM
SYLVIE MANEY
Sylvie is a mixed media artist who enjoys painting the wonders of the natural world, inclusive of the sky, landscape, and the animals that inhabit it.
She particularly enjoys using a free and expressive approach to her art, often intuitive but sometimes referring, initially, to images she has taken or sketched, then producing works that are a mixture of imagination and reality.
Her aim, initially, is to build energy, using expressive mark making with various mediums, building up layers and responding to suggestions in the marks the painting offers up on its journey. This generally culminates in abstracted landscapes or seascapes. Often the resulting artwork is left open to interpretation for the viewer, where landscape might be seascape or vice versa. Sometimes, the finished work isn’t what she envisaged at the outset. But she has learnt to go along with the journey, rather than try to over-manipulate.
DENISE FRANKLIN
Working with oil, cold wax and mixed mediums creating texture and depth within multilayered surfaces. Denise has developed an intuitive method of working, allowing the work to develop naturally finding a way to balance all of the elements.
Searching for an inner perception creating abstract and semi-abstract landscapes and seascapes. Using an instinctive objective approach, reforming and refining allowing the work to reveal its development naturally.
Denise observes the intricate structure of our environment, focusing on the surface of her paintings and invites the viewer to discover its complexities within the layers of the different elements and small traces of the visible and transparent. The many layers and textures represent a visual aspect of our journey through life and its changing attributes like nature with all its beauty, unpredictability, cruelty and its fragility. Her objective is to convey the essence of nature and to explore its complexities.
KEELEY CHAPMAN
Keeley describes herself as an interpretive sculptor. As ideas and internal images are given creative freedom, they flow through her hands changing organically as each item develops.
Although the clay is fashioned keeping the rawness of the material, elements of her and her personality are there, a fingerprint here, direction of pushed clay there, sometimes enhanced with simple and ancient firing processes.
Her designs are raw, elemental, and at times confrontational but intuitive and at others purely playful but always made from the heart with deeper meanings behind each piece.
There’s anonymity running through her work, a sense of the human condition although she draws on personal experiences, feelings and opinions, displaying injustices, suppression, repression, feminism and the patriarchy.
Main Gallery
For the world to thrive it needs to exist in harmonious balance, beautiful and often brutal.
Sylvie, Denise and Keeley - three women in art - work intuitively within their given mediums, offering different perspectives on the world in which they live, capturing a snapshot in time which could be now, the past or any point in the future.
There’s a sense of timelessness to it all. It could have happened before, but only experienced in this moment by these individuals. Their work ecologically and intrinsically entwines, like linked organisms and their reliance upon one another.
Their art shows harmony, discord, portent, space and more.
OPEN VIEW: 12 SEPTEMBER, 6-8PM
MEET THE ARTISTS: 29 SEPTEMBER, 1-3PM
SYLVIE MANEY
Sylvie is a mixed media artist who enjoys painting the wonders of the natural world, inclusive of the sky, landscape, and the animals that inhabit it.
She particularly enjoys using a free and expressive approach to her art, often intuitive but sometimes referring, initially, to images she has taken or sketched, then producing works that are a mixture of imagination and reality.
Her aim, initially, is to build energy, using expressive mark making with various mediums, building up layers and responding to suggestions in the marks the painting offers up on its journey. This generally culminates in abstracted landscapes or seascapes. Often the resulting artwork is left open to interpretation for the viewer, where landscape might be seascape or vice versa. Sometimes, the finished work isn’t what she envisaged at the outset. But she has learnt to go along with the journey, rather than try to over-manipulate.
DENISE FRANKLIN
Working with oil, cold wax and mixed mediums creating texture and depth within multilayered surfaces. Denise has developed an intuitive method of working, allowing the work to develop naturally finding a way to balance all of the elements.
Searching for an inner perception creating abstract and semi-abstract landscapes and seascapes. Using an instinctive objective approach, reforming and refining allowing the work to reveal its development naturally.
Denise observes the intricate structure of our environment, focusing on the surface of her paintings and invites the viewer to discover its complexities within the layers of the different elements and small traces of the visible and transparent. The many layers and textures represent a visual aspect of our journey through life and its changing attributes like nature with all its beauty, unpredictability, cruelty and its fragility. Her objective is to convey the essence of nature and to explore its complexities.
KEELEY CHAPMAN
Keeley describes herself as an interpretive sculptor. As ideas and internal images are given creative freedom, they flow through her hands changing organically as each item develops.
Although the clay is fashioned keeping the rawness of the material, elements of her and her personality are there, a fingerprint here, direction of pushed clay there, sometimes enhanced with simple and ancient firing processes.
Her designs are raw, elemental, and at times confrontational but intuitive and at others purely playful but always made from the heart with deeper meanings behind each piece.
There’s anonymity running through her work, a sense of the human condition although she draws on personal experiences, feelings and opinions, displaying injustices, suppression, repression, feminism and the patriarchy.
Truth and Beauty by Ken Newlan
September 10th - 29th
Front Room
'In the winter of the first Covid 19 lockdown the emerging, then opened, flower transfixed me. Almost immediately I realised the ephemeral nature of its existence. It was a simultaneous realisation of the flower as a fact, a truth; I was there. Then there was beauty of decay, energy and exhaustion.
It would fade, wither and I feared, disappear. It did fade but its beauty did not. Instead, it acquired another beauty, the translucent petals evolved a gentle haphazard structure. The flowered head seemed to have an evolved purpose a structured certainty, a truth. Its decay was equally beautiful although randomly arranged.
Eventually the flowers produced seeds. I tracked the stages of its changing shapes and structures. In the following winters I grew more, first five then ten Amaryllis as subjects for still life, as momenta mori and photographs as ‘things ‘and objects, reflecting the tension between the encounter with the Amaryllis and its
photograph, and presentation as a form of tangible object.
Ken Newland studied sculpture at St Martins School of Art, taught 3D and sculpture in colleges of H/FE; curated and
commissioned for private sculpture collection; consultant and manager in college improvement; EdD research with Sheffield University on the FE art curriculum.
Front Room
'In the winter of the first Covid 19 lockdown the emerging, then opened, flower transfixed me. Almost immediately I realised the ephemeral nature of its existence. It was a simultaneous realisation of the flower as a fact, a truth; I was there. Then there was beauty of decay, energy and exhaustion.
It would fade, wither and I feared, disappear. It did fade but its beauty did not. Instead, it acquired another beauty, the translucent petals evolved a gentle haphazard structure. The flowered head seemed to have an evolved purpose a structured certainty, a truth. Its decay was equally beautiful although randomly arranged.
Eventually the flowers produced seeds. I tracked the stages of its changing shapes and structures. In the following winters I grew more, first five then ten Amaryllis as subjects for still life, as momenta mori and photographs as ‘things ‘and objects, reflecting the tension between the encounter with the Amaryllis and its
photograph, and presentation as a form of tangible object.
Ken Newland studied sculpture at St Martins School of Art, taught 3D and sculpture in colleges of H/FE; curated and
commissioned for private sculpture collection; consultant and manager in college improvement; EdD research with Sheffield University on the FE art curriculum.
Four Ways of Seeing - A Group Exhibition featuring Sue Law, Judy Logan, Jill Ogilvy, and Deanna Tyson
September 30th - October 13th
Front Room and Main Gallery
Four Ways of Seeing is a new exhibiting group formed by four professional Cambridge based artists, united in their belief in celebrating difference. These artists – Sue Law, Judy Logan, Jill Ogilvy, and Deanna Tyson – believe that the greatest attribute an artist brings to their vision is the ability to express it uniquely. They celebrate this individuality rather than follow the latest art trends.
Formed from a desire to both showcase their work and collaborate on themes that unite them, these artists have a long history of exhibiting together in London, Norwich, and Cambridge. Their launch exhibition earlier this year at Cambridge Artspace Gallery explored the theme of Connection and Disconnection. In a time of extreme disconnection, the artists asked “how can we reconnect?” Through painting, sculpture, textiles, and print, each artist created a piece reflecting their interpretation of Disconnect – Reconnect.
Four Ways of Seeing’s previews offer a unique experience where the artists discuss their inspirations and the group's aims. These events are great opportunities to meet the artists, view their work, and engage in informal conversations about the art – they genuinely want to hear your thoughts.
The group, diverse in artistic media, has years of curatorial and exhibition experience. They enjoy working together, often described as a feisty bunch, united by their dissatisfaction with limited exhibiting opportunities. Rather than just talk, they decided to take action, challenging conventional notions of what is ‘in’ and what is ‘out’ in the art world.
Front Room and Main Gallery
Four Ways of Seeing is a new exhibiting group formed by four professional Cambridge based artists, united in their belief in celebrating difference. These artists – Sue Law, Judy Logan, Jill Ogilvy, and Deanna Tyson – believe that the greatest attribute an artist brings to their vision is the ability to express it uniquely. They celebrate this individuality rather than follow the latest art trends.
Formed from a desire to both showcase their work and collaborate on themes that unite them, these artists have a long history of exhibiting together in London, Norwich, and Cambridge. Their launch exhibition earlier this year at Cambridge Artspace Gallery explored the theme of Connection and Disconnection. In a time of extreme disconnection, the artists asked “how can we reconnect?” Through painting, sculpture, textiles, and print, each artist created a piece reflecting their interpretation of Disconnect – Reconnect.
Four Ways of Seeing’s previews offer a unique experience where the artists discuss their inspirations and the group's aims. These events are great opportunities to meet the artists, view their work, and engage in informal conversations about the art – they genuinely want to hear your thoughts.
The group, diverse in artistic media, has years of curatorial and exhibition experience. They enjoy working together, often described as a feisty bunch, united by their dissatisfaction with limited exhibiting opportunities. Rather than just talk, they decided to take action, challenging conventional notions of what is ‘in’ and what is ‘out’ in the art world.
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