Macmillan Cancer Support Weekend, 26th/27th November

The Macmillan Support Weekend is a charitable iniative we have been running for over 30 years.The weekend is a fund raising art exhibition which runs for two days only (this coming weekend 26/27 November). Of every sale 10% of the artwork's price is donated to Macmillan Cancer Support.The show is open from 11am-9pm on the Saturday and 11am-6pm on Sunday.

               Hannah Battershell, Crocodilian, £375

 

Originally started in 1977 at her own home by the gallery director, Jill Hutchings, the exhibition

has been running every year since.Jills particular connection with Macmillan Cancer Support
comes from her backround in nursing in the oncology wing at the Middlesex Hospital, where she nursed cancer patients specifically.

Every year the exhibition raises money, as well as awareness, for the charity.It is also a great opportunity to see a more eclectic mix of artwork than is usually shown by the gallery.Some of our staple artists are represented in the show. Henry Walsh  a much loved and long serving Curwen Gallery artist will be showing Insouciant (below), one of our favourite of his paintings.          
                 

                  Henry Walsh, Insouciant, £700

Another of our current favourites; Lee Sellers, whose charming paintings have been most recently shown on our stall at the Affordable Art Fair (Battersea) in October.Going for a Walk (below) is without doubt the most delightful of all his work.
                Lee Sellers, Going for a Walk,£750

Two very new artists, both showing at Curwen Gallery for the first time during the Macmillan Support Weekend, are Robin Spalding and Hannah Battershell.Both have an unexplained fascination with Crocodiles! Hannah Battershell's dreamlike and uncanny paintings are both unsettling and at the same time rather adorable.Robin Spalding's Golden Crocodile could be said to occupy similar conceptual ground, its toothless smile making it as cute as it is threatening.
                     Robin Spalding, Golden Crocodile, £450

Alison Neville- Cathedrals,Mosques, Madrasas and Little Houses 3rd-23rd November

Alison Neville is probably the most well travelled artist we have ever met.Her career spanning show at Curwen Gallery is a document of the many exotic places which she has travelled to and been inspired by.

       Alison Neville, Royal Albert Hall, etching, £450 fr

Alison Neville is an adept printmaker with a distinctive, characterful style.This show
builds upon a solid grounding of work from her early career (Westminster Abbey, Poets Corner was shown in Curwen Gallery's first show 30 years ago) and charts both a lifetime of work and of travel.

For me, the most significant factor in this body of work is that Alison is exceptionally accurate when capturing a sense of place.There is a feeling that Alison has absorbed so much from each place and then managed to transcibe this experience into a single image. Each etching is like a distillation of the essence of the subject location.For the places I know, I get a genuine feeling of nostalgia, for the many places I have never been I feel that I must go at once!From conversations with the other visitors to the show, I think these sensations are a surprisingly common reaction to this work. 

                             Alison Neville Mosque-Pesharwar, etching,£375 fr

Her most recent works document a trip down the Congo River.Last Tuesday evening (15th Nov.) Alison delivered a fascinating talk on this rare experience.From this trip she has created a series of delicately produced  etchings of the "Little Houses" she encountered while travelling down the Congo.The remarkable character of these makeshift buildings are what Alison has most faithfully reproduced. One gets the feeling that there are a wealth of different stories which live in the fabric of these little houses.Also, when the whole series hang together, there is a real sense of the narrative of Alisons own journey and the many stories which she could tell of this much mythologised river.

                                         
        Alison Neville,Congo River Series:The Widow's House, etching,£150 fr 
Alison Neville- Cathedrals,Mosques, Madrasas and Little Houses runs from 3rd-23rd November

The London Suite

The London Suite are a set of 10 lithographs published by Advanced Graphics London in 1982. 10 well known artists were invited to each make one print to illustrate to the world that printmaking didn't have to be flat.They are a very vibrant set of screenprints, all with a unique character and the hallmarks of their artist.The suite is a rare and very collectible set of prints with some of this centuries best loved artists contributing.

Albert Irvin RA Battlebridge

 Advanced Graphics kindly let us borrow their complete framed set which is currently on show in the gallery.We have one available copy of the suite of prints (unframed) which is priced at £7000.

Northen Graduates Artist Wins Northern Lights Art Prize

One our Northern Graduates Artists, Nat Quinn, has just won a £10 000 prize and professional mentoring from established artist Emerson Mayes.

Here is what the judges had to say about his work:


"Nat Quinn's delicate and ambiguous abstract paintings take as much from other media - like drawing and ceramics - as they do from the history of painting. A very worthy recipient in a talented selection. Paul Hobson, Director of the Contemporary Art Society."


Paul Hobson



"Nat Quinn is showing a way to confront painting with a relevance to our inner lives; which in the political and economic climate of today, remains vital."


William Tillyer:


We wish Nat the best of luck in his future career and remind his fans of two things:
1.You saw him here first.
2.We still have some of his work available for sale in the gallery (below)

Untitled 2oil on paper, 59 x 76 cm
£525 fr

Contact us for more information http://www.curwengallery.co.uk/contact.htm

Rebecca Hind: Causeway

Rebecca Hind's new show; Causeway opened last thursday.It is a very serene exhibition of large watercolour paintings exploring different elements.

These paintings form a metaphorical step across a causeway into a realm of the basic manifestations of the elemental forces: Air, Fire and Water. Walking through the gallery becomes a journey though metaphysical energies, leading us to align with the rise, fall and shift of the elements.

                                                Rebecca Hind, Earthshine, £2250 
One thing that immediately strikes the viewer is the amount of movement in these images. These are not passive elements; they are living, dynamic forces. They are animated images, living states of ethereal flux, celebrating the power of the elements. In her  paintings of water; waves pulse and flex like muscles, in her vivid depictions of fire, sparks of definition crackle over the soft flames whooshing beneath.

Rebecca Hind, Crest ,£4500

One of the newest and most impressive of the paintings on show is her depiction of air: Glitterbirds. Here the sky is represented as a fluid space by the movements of flocks of birds within it. These birds swarm and drift, moving as one body, framed by soft clouds in a sky composed of diffuse beams of light. Similarly, in her representations of water; white spume on the crest of waves ripple and undulate over the calmer washes of colour beneath. This gives visible contours to the movement of the transparent body.

Rebecca Hind, Glitter Birds, £4950

Her use of watercolour is ideally suited to the ethereal nature of this subject matter. With the transparency and flow of the medium comes the suggestion of the transparency and flow of the element represented. Despite, in some cases, being figurative, these images are also enormously expressive. They manage to take on an abstract quality which is as important as their, more obvious, figurative nature.

Rebecca Hind,Sparks on the Summer Triangle, £2250

In this exhibition, Curwen and New Academy Gallery gives a chance to see a new and original practitioner within the tradition of watercolour painting. Her work is attractive and uplifting as well as being academically interesting. The work illustrates the potential of watercolour painting to explore ambitious themes while also being appropriate for domestic spaces. These works fit well in both the gallery and the home, giving equal delight to the casual browser and the determined collector.

Rebecca Hind Causeway will be showing at Curwen and New Academy Gallery until 30th September 2011



Victoria Langdon: Home To Roost

Victoria Langdon, Yellow Golden Pheasant, £350 fr
Last week Victoria Langdon's new exhibition "Home to Roost" opened to a packed upstairs gallery.This new show of bold and colourful screenprints are some of the most good humored work we have shown in a long while.

The subject of the work is the 'country gent' of the bird world; the pheasant.In contrast to the urban pigeons, the subject of her last show, pheasants have associations with rural gentry. Her prints capture the comical quirkiness of the bird, many of them playfully adopting human expressions
.

Victoria Langdon, Regal Ridiculous, £350 fr

As can be seen above; Regal Ridiculous bears an uncanny resemblance to Hugh Laurie's Prince Regent from Blackadder the Third.

Home to Roost is showing at Curwen Gallery until 30th September 2011

Some Curious New Sculpture...

Curwen Gallery welcomes artist Pierre Julien


Yesterday morning we were joined in the gallery by a very interesting new artist, Pierre Julien.
He very kindly showed us a selection of his new work (pictured above and below) which we will be showing, as a group, in our Christmas Show .As you may be able to see from the image above the animals are made from many hundreds of rolled up slices of newspaper (Metro!) , glued together to make a solid form.   

These works, as well as many others, will be shown in the gallery from 1-23rd December for the Christmas Show.Private view on 30th November .