Exhibiting Now
MAIN GALLERY
Pink Clouds and Beech Trees:
Jan Crombie
27th October - 4th November and 2nd - 5th December
Jan created this series of paintings and sculptures as a response to the Global Pandemic that had just started as her new ceramic studio space was up and running.
Jan describes how a daily walk in the Earlham Cemetery (her nearest green space) became a profound experience for the first three months of lockdown. The mass of towering beech trees and the unfurling of cow parsley among the Victorian headstones took on a new significance. The grief of local people expressed in their wreaths of flowers added to the intensity of the experience. Returning to her studio after these walks she created a daily mix of sketches and small ceramic sculptures.
The paintings that emerged mixed a stock of characters and landscapes from her imagination with people and places she had seen on her walks.
FRONT ROOM
The Spaces Between Things
Verity Newman
27th October - 4th November and 2nd - 5th December
Verity is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Norwich, with a focus on painting, mixed media work on paper and sculpture. Her practice reflects three broad themes: the function/non-function of objects, fading memories of journeys through places and spaces, and the transience of our personal habitats/environments.
She originally trained as a sculptor, and loves the physicality, context and provenance of materials. Employing materials to achieve balance, whilst conveying tension and energy – a dialogue between fragility and strength - is something she strives for. She leans towards historic and contemporary architectural forms, shapes, structures and silhouettes, often dismantling these to create evocative negative spaces.
The body of work she has created and collated for Anteros sits alongside a series of deconstructed and reconstructed architectural compositions she made during lockdown. Here, an investigation into the concept of ‘home’, fractured families and communities is represented through re-imagining both exquisite and unremarkable domestic, religious and utilitarian buildings in the streets of her surrounding neighbourhood, viewed from the outside and through the windows of her house. The abstract pieces in this exhibition reflect the domestic objects, emotions and stories of the people inhabiting these buildings, both imagined and experienced, by herself and those around her.
Forthcoming Exhibitions
MAIN GALLERY
There are no Rules: Ruth Butler & Michael J. Williams
8th - 19th December
Late opening: 10th December 6-8pm
The concept for this exhibition is simple, Ruth likes Michael’s work and Michael likes Ruth’s work. The principal reasons for this mutual, professional respect are the often-similar ways in which each artist sets out the stall of their visual ideas. Both have a strong interest in Colour, Line, Composition and the description of 3D space, and combine Modernist styles of painting with Postmodernist, sequential approaches to the construction of their work. ‘There are no Rules’ represents a selection of recent paintings and mixed media works and is their first show together.
FRONT ROOM
Pulled: Ken Hurst
8th - 19th December
Late opening: 10th December 6-8pm
Having “long and willingly traipsed along” in the shadow of David Hockney’s pioneering and boisterous pushing at the boundaries of drawing and painting on the mighty iPad, Ken has found a tipping point where tricksy computing meets and makes way for traditional craft.
Large scale, individually made serigraphs are the result. They sit at the centre of this exhibition, each displayed as a framed piece alongside a small edition of affordable matching one-off screen prints.
Distillation, bold shapes and big colours remain a discernible trademark and there’s still room for some smaller scale fun with hand-made prints like ‘Hockney wearing a green waistcoat’ and some intricate little oil-on-paper studies.