Summer Inspiration

From Chatsworth House to a Lace exhibition at Birmingham Art Gallery & Museum, here are some of the things that have inspired my work this summer.

     

This was a wonderful trip to Chatsworth house to see Anthony Caro’s sculptures in the grounds. The combination of huge metal sculptures with the elegance of the house in the background and the beautiful meadow planting was just stunning.

The wonderfully fecund forms of this lace making cushion at Birmingham Museum & art gallery, the bagpipe from this sculpture at V&A Museum and this incredible willow sculpture at Chatsworth triggered all sorts of ideas for new work.

      

I had the time to really explore the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery on this trip and I was really struck by the wrappings on this mummy, just like the traditional ‘log cabin‘ pattern in american patchwork quilting.

Zephyr

So this is my Zephyr my latest piece of work, finally completed after having my daughter last year.

  

This piece is very much a continuation of my original artist’s statement:

A sense of ‘the uncanny’ is at the core of my work;

in particular the direct translation from Freud’s essay

‘das unheimliche’- ‘the unhomely’.

By using, such culturally loaded, materials and techniques

as ceramics and sewing, my aim is to subtly disturb our notions

of home,family, femininity, craft and English tradition.

  

Zephyr is however more than a little influenced by the incredible mass and tangle of feelings that come from pregnancy, birth and new motherhood.

As always my work is deeply personal whilst trying to deal with some wider issues and I also relish the intriging and personal interpretations people bring to the work when it’s been exhibited, so let me know what you think!

Grayson Perry – The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman

Grayson Perry - Kenilworth AM1, 2010. Photo by Adam Scourfield, copyright 2011 The Trustees of the British Museum.

Wow what a brilliant exhibition, the man’s a genius and how lucky to be able to choose from The British Museum’s collection, that must have been a dream come true.

What was so great about the exhibition was how perfectly his work mixed with the artefacts and sometimes you had to look again to work out which ones he’d actually made. The thing about Grayson Perry’s work that I love, and always strive for in my own work, is how beautifully made it all is, he may offend some people with the content but you could never just dismiss it because it’s so apparent that it’s created with such love and skill.

Grayson Perry – The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, 2011. Photos by Stephen White. 2011 The Trustees of the British Museum.

Grayson Perry - The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, 2011. Photo by Stephen White

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I must admit that what made this Christmas trip so wonderful for me however was that this was my 9 month old daughter first ever exhibition and being of discerning taste already of course, she loved it. Not a bad way to start her education!

 

‘Homegrown’ Exhibition in detail

I visited the ‘Homegrown’ exhibition of my work last week, at The Nuneaton & Bedworth Museum & Gallery.

The exhibition features my latest piece ‘Eager to Please’ which is a homage to the late, great Louise Bourgeois, together with previous works, most recently shown in the ‘Housemade’ installation The Samuel Johnson Birthplace  Museum in Lichfield.

     

The exhibition is on until 17th July and many thanks once again to Matt Johnson the Museum Outreach Officer.

‘Homegrown’!

‘Homegrown’ indeed; after taking some time out for my latest creation, the amazing Maud, I have now just set-up my latest exhibition at Nuneaton & Bedworth Museum and Gallery, with the much appreciated help of Matt Johnson the Museum Outreach Officer.

‘Homegrown’ is a selection of my work dealing with themes of  home, femininity, English tradition and our notions of Craft and it sits particularly well within the eclectic Museum & Gallery collection.

The show is on from 21st May – 17th July and watch this space for more photos as I will be visiting the space next week to document the exhibition fully.

A Christmas visit to The Victoria & Albert Museum

The Ceramic Galleries at the V&A are just my most favourite place. The refurbishment is so inventive, with cases and cases of beautifully exhibited ceramic pieces. The international collection spans from 3500 BC to the present and it is such an inspiration to me everytime I go there.

There is also a very well layed out gallery exploring the techniques and processes involved, which contains the Ceramic artist-in-residence space. I went to the Royal College with Phobe Cummings who is the current residence and she has been producing some wonderfully intricate and atmospheric, clay experiments, which were on display in her space.

“What has emerged appears as though the landscapes from the museum objects I have been studying were swept under water where they became muddled and settled as sediments”.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/things-to-do/blogs/phoebe-cummings-ceramics-artist-residence

 

The last rooms to be refurbished house “the rest of the collection – around 26,000 pieces – as a study resource”. This is such a brilliant way of archiving the work whilst still allowing it to be on display. It’s an incredible sweep of colour, decoration and shapes displayed entirely in and on glass to show every aspect of the pieces, a real feast for the eyes.They’ve managed to achieve a very modern museum display whilst still retaining an essence of the eccentric collector that was always so much a part of my love of the place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plans for upcoming exhibition at Nuneaton & Bedworth Art Gallery & Museum next year

Last week I went to meet Jhinuk Sarkar, the Exhibitions Officer at Nuneaton & Bedworth Art Gallery & Museum and to see the ‘Landing Gallery’ space where I will be exhibiting a series of sculptural pieces in May next year.

The ‘Landing Space’ is a wonderfully light area in the beautiful Victorian Gallery building set in Riversley Park. Author George Elliot grew up in the area and the Gallery also houses a reconstruction of her London drawing room of 1870 and many of her personal items, which I found very interesting.

So I’m currently working on a piece of work to be included in the show and I will also be exhibiting ‘Eager To Please’ for the first time too. I’m also hoping to work with the Museum & Gallery to incorporate pieces from their collection of local historical objects within the exhibition.