Gillian Ayres Exhibition Opens at RAMM

Last Friday I was lucky enough to meet leading British abstract artist Gillian Ayres at the opening of her new exhibition at Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum on Saturday 15 June. The exhibition, featuring a beautiful collection of some of her vibrant, heavily-worked canvasses, and bold block prints runs until Sunday 15 September.

Her works resound with a passion that is clearly inspired by her deep love for her craft. Speaking with the RSA from her west country studio in 2009 she explained, ‘It’s all I ever wanted to do, all my life. I can’t live long enough to paint all I want to do. Thirty years ago, I gave up my teaching job at Winchester College of Art to paint. And that’s what I do.’ The vivid colour palette, she explains is not drawn from life, but rather from herself.  ‘People think I came here for the views...but, as you can see, I have no views: I don’t paint from nature so I don’t need them. My paintings are about painting, about shape and colour, not telling stories. From my studio I can’t see beyond the trees.’

Born in 1930, Gillian studied at Camberwell College of Art between 1945 and 1950. She worked initially in London and then went on to teach at the Bath Academy in Corsham, Saint Martins School of Art and finally became Head of Painting at Winchester School of Art. She left teaching in 1981 and moved to Wales and then Cornwall, where she currently lives.

Artist Gillian Ayres at the RAMM Exeter

Over the course of her career, Gillian has made a significant and varied body of original prints. Most of the works in this exhibition have been proofed by Gillian Ayres and Jack Shirreff and were printed at 107 Workshop. Ayres and Shirreff first met at Corsham and it was his reinvigoration of the use of carborundum combined with etching that offered her a whole range of possibilities in the medium of print.

Gillian Ayres’ work is in the collections of the British Museum, Tate, the Victoria & Albert Museum; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gillian was made a Royal Academician in 1991 and awarded a CBE in 2011.

Gillian Ayres: Paintings and Prints 1986 to 2011 runs from Saturday 15 June to Sunday 15 September.

Museum volunteers at opening night

Museum volunteers at opening night

Sun Shines on Articulture Opening at Gallery 36

Gallery 36's Articulture revellers

I was lucky enough to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon at the opening of Articulture, the latest exhibition at Veronica Gosling's Gallery 36. From now until July 29th, 10 artists will take over the St Leonard's art space with pieces full of whimsy, colour and beauty.

View from Polly's Cafe

Visiting Gallery 36 is always a treat, but Sunday was particularly delightful because the whole place was a buzz with artists on hand, picnicking in the garden, music in the lounge and the sun in the sky.   The Articulture exhibition features ten artists with ceramics, woodwork, paintings and sculpture plus 3 large colourful market stalls in Exeter's most inspired sculpture garden.

Ardyn Griffin's papier mache looking glass

In the house visitors enjoy papier mache phantasies by Ardyn Griffin, stained glass panels by master glass painter Deborah Lowe, small sculptures by Belgian artist Norah Claeys, paintings by ex international football referee, Gordon Hill, assemblages, drawings etc. etc. and many ‘During the Night’ prints by resident artist Veronica Gosling continue the diversity and interest of this show.

Paul McCullough haunting surrealism

In the garden, woodworker Julian Duckham’s toys, tables music stands and easels, Isabel Merrick’s, decorative and useful ceramics, Paul McCullough’s surreal paintings, Victoria Hooper’s cards and paintings and Polly Dolby’s, luminous, decorative paintings.

The  gallery is such an important space of creativity and community in Exeter.  Veronica has opened her home to artists and the appreciative for many years, serving as a kind of rare beacon of inspiration and artistic generosity. Like the Watts Towers in California, Gallery 36 is a private space with wide reaching public legacy. And is easily one of the best places in Exeter.

If you've weren't able to visit for the opening of the exhibition, you can visit on any day except Mondays until 29 July and you can catch the next open day on 22 July with Chill Acoustic.

Art garden at Gallery 36

Sculpture in the garden in Gallery 36

Reflection sculpture in the garden at Gallery 36

It's Official: RAMM is Voted Britain's Museum of the Year!

Source: Guardian.co.uk

What do the Watts Gallery, The Hepworth in Wakefield and The Scottish National Gallery have in common? None of the are Museum of the Year; that title belongs to Exeter's own RAMM who also scooped a £100,000 Art Fund Prize!

Chair of Judges, Lord Smith of Finsbury, said of the Museum,  

“The new Royal Albert Memorial Museum is quite simply a magical place. The Victorian aspirations to bring the world to Exeter are stunningly realised through some of the most intelligently considered displays on view in any museum in the UK. Every exhibit delights with a new surprise, and provokes with a new question, and at a time when local authority museums in particular are in such danger, this brilliant achievement proves how daring, adventurous and important such institutions can be."

I couldn't be prouder of the Gerald and the gang! Everyone in town has known how great the museum is since it reopened.  More than 200,000 people have been through it's big Victorian doors since December and I can't say enough about the Cafe scran from Dartmoor Kitchen. But it's amazing to awesome hearing everyone else say it so eloquently.

My favourite quote is from Guardian reporter and competition judge Charlotte Higgins who said:

"Again and again, I felt that the museum had been put together not only by people of real intellectual rigour, but by those who understand that, at heart, the museum is a place of wonder, and of emotion. It is a curator's museum.

The real miracle in all this is that RAMM is run by the [Exeter City Council]. Many local-authority museums, and in larger, richer cities than Exeter, are neglected by careless, incompetent or plain cash-strapped councils. RAMM, however, stands as a shining example of a museum that is cared for by the public realm, and cherished as a civic good at the heart of municipal life"

I love it when a plan comes together.

Good on ya Gerald!

Arts: The Red Ball Project comes to Exeter

Source: The RedBall Project Toronto by Rob Burke on Flickr

Exeter will be one of five UK cities visited by the internationally mysterious RedBall Project from artist Kurt Perschke this summer. I am extremely excited about this and hope to see it in town at one of it's installation spaces during the 3 day visit from Friday 15 June to Sunday 17 June. From what I can gather, it is just what is says on the tin, a big red ball, a really big red ball, placed in various locations around the city. It's been all over the world - Chicago, Toronto, Barcelona, Perth, Dubai and more - and everyone seems to agree that it's awesome.

Source: The RedBall Project in Norwich by Leo Reynolds on Flickr

Source: RedBallProject.co.uk

According to Perschke, The RedBall Project is about creating a 'catalyst for new encounters within the everyday. Through the magnetic, playful, and charismatic nature of the RedBall the work is able to access the imagination embedded in all of us.' And I can see exactly where he's going with that. There is something so universal about a ball - the fact that you just want to touch it or kick it or poke it or something - which brings an immediate sense of childhood and whimsy. The fact that it's SO big totally reinforces that.

The project is remeinscent of Carsten Holler's Test Site giant slide installation that was part of the Tate Modern's Unilever Series back in 2007. For that thoroughly successful installation, the artist built three giant slides in the turbine hall in order to capture 'the visual spectacle of watching people sliding and the ‘inner spectacle’ experienced by the sliders themselves, the state of simultaneous delight and anxiety that you enter as you descend'. The title of the project, 'Test Site', was an invitation for towns and businesses to integrate slides into everyday life. Though London did not permanently take him up on this offer, thousands of grown up visitors became part of the 'inner spectacle' of his artsy indoor play area.

Souce Duvet Dayz

And I guess that's what it comes down to. While I fully respect the statements of both artist here, with regards to 'imagination' and 'visual spectacle', this sort of art - installations based on exaggeration and recontextualisation of childhood experiences - is good because it's really about creating an opportunity for grown ups to do things that they should have grown out of years ago, in an intellectually acceptable space. Don't get me wrong, I think there should be more of it and I am extremely pleased that Torbay Council and Dartington Trust worked to get this project here in the South West. That said, I'm sure that intellectuals looking for something to deconsturct would get the same stimulus from putting a fun fair in the Tate or an adult only ball pool on the Cathedral Green, whether they called it art or not. And every music festival in the UK will have a similar 'installation' in place, not for the sake of art, but for the sake of fun. 

I love a good laugh and the colour red, so I'm planning to go along on Friday to the Guildhall for this very reason.

Debating Devon: Did James Ravilious capture real reality in rural Devon?

Ivor Brock carrying holly for Christmas Decorations by James Ravilious from Beaford-arts.org.uk

Tonight, Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) will host a debate on photographer James Ravilious' depiction of rural life in North Devon.  The subjects will be the pictures in the photographic exhibition of achive images from of one of the UK's most renowned documentary photographers, James Ravilious: Reflecting the Rural (at RAMM's Gallery until 29 July). 

A panel chaired by Sir Harry Studholme, Chair of the South West RDA and Forestry Commissioner for England, will discuss how Ravilious depicted rural Devon during the 1970 and 80s. Fellow panellists, Prof Michael Winter, Director, Centre for Rural Policy Research, Exeter University; Dr Mike Moser, Chair of North Devon’s UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Partnership; Dr Robert Fish, Exeter University, author of Cinematic Countrysides; and Mary Quicke, farmer and cheesemaker, will no doubt create a lively and frank discussion on the continuing cultural relevance of his images.

Street Scene by James Ravilious from Beaford-arts.org.uk

The Reflecting the Rural exhibition will feature a selection of images from the 70,000 Ravilious images in the Beaford Archive as curated by by photographer Liz Nicol and agriculturalist Martyn Warren (University of Plymouth).  And James Ravilious's black and white photographs of North Devon are described as showing 'a largely unspoilt, but vulnerable, country area'.

For what it's worth, I think the thing that makes these images so striking is that they are not just landscapes - they are portraits and vignettes of the people who existed in these spaces. So often, depictions of rural life don't show much life at all. We've all seen those beautiful landscape photos or windswept trees in Dartmoor and solitary ponies standing beneath Hay Tor, but Ravilious has a way of capturing the people of these spaces in a way that is much more akin to an urban photographer like Garry Winogrand. Here the people are the focus and setting is the frame. 

Dick French Family watching the Cup Final

American Legion Convention, Dallas, Texas, 1964. © Estate of Garry Winogrand

The debate is on Tuesday 12 June at 7pm. £4.50 tickets can be purchased from the museum reception or by calling 01392 265858, concessions £3.00.