Something to look forward to this Summer: Hannah Battershell, June 2013

Hannah Battershell, Cage
acrylic and ink on paper, 14 x 14cm

Seeing Hannah Battershell’s work is like stepping into an alternative reality; surreal, fantastical, darkly humorous and often with an unnerving sense of loneliness. All the works are miniature in scale, creating a feeling of peering into a fantasy world being played out inside the painted imagery, often collaged with papers and other items.

Nostalgic feelings are heightened further due to Battershell’s use of found objects, such as antique cigarette tins, matchboxes, Victorian mourning pins, and old buttons. She finds herself “inspired by the alluring ‘lostness’ of found objects.”

Hannah Battershell, Reliquary
Victorian Photograph frame, white ink on black Somerset paper, 13 x 8 cm

Growing up, Hannah Battershell spent some time in Malawi and the creatures she encountered during this experience may explain her interest for all things entomological. She recalls cases of pinned butterflies and taxidermy lining the walls of ‘Country Clubs’ and hotels. Her work, particularly those set within antique tins, echo these Victorian display cases of specimens.

Battershell works predominantly from her imagination, and draws inspiration from books she has read. Things such as half-remembered quotations, anecdotes, or an unfamiliar word will spark ideas which ultimately result in the work. 

Hannah Battershell, Island II
mixed media on paper collage, 21 x 21 cm

 Battershell studied English Literature and this is evident in her imagery, with each piece structured around a strong sense of narrative. This illustrative quality to her work, combined with a sense of macabre and surrealism, has caused her work to have previously been compared to that of Edward Gorey or Leonora Carrington.

Hannah Battershell, The Regret-Me-Evers
 acrylic and ink on paper, 10 x 13cm oval

This summer Curwen Gallery will be showing Hannah Battershell’s first ever solo exhibition. We first took an interest in Hannah in 2011, exhibiting her work in group exhibitions, including the especially appropriate Miniature Show at The Rectory Gallery last November. Her work has been displayed in various exhibitions elsewhere including the 2011 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Her painting 'Crocodilian' appeared in 'Images 36', the 2012 Association of Illustrators' Best of New British Illustration publication. Hannah lives and works in London.

To see more of Hannah Battershell's work on the Curwen Gallery website Click Here

Hot Off the Press 2013

Curated by Natalie Suggitt, Associate Director of Curwen Gallery and

Nicole Langstaff, Co-Director of Curwen Studio

link to the Hot Off The Press website

Menna Jenkins, The Peckham Alphabet,
linocut, £65 per letter, 30 x 30cm each

 Hot Off The Press is an annual exhibition, now in its twelfth year, which highlights the best in new printmaking talent, while supporting the artists as they embark on their professional careers in the art world. Each artist in this exhibition has been chosen on the high quality of their work and to reflect the diversity in printmaking and its versatility as a medium.
Hot Off The Press 2013 gathers together work by emerging printmakers from recent post-graduate courses in London. This year the show features artists from the Royal College of Art and Camberwell School of Art. 

Edward Adlington, Cicadoidea,
etching, £300


This year, for the first time each of the artists exhibiting has been shortlisted for The Curwen Studio Graduate Prize. The prize went to Menna Jenkins for "The Peckam Alphabet". As the winner of this prize she will be given the opportunity of an internship at the renowned Curwen Studio. The award was presented at the Private View by studio co-founder and Master Printmaker Stanley Jones MBE.
Curwen Studio Co Director Nicole Langstaff says “We have a long association with the Curwen & New Academy Gallery and have followed their Hot Off the Press exhibitions with great interest. We are delighted to now be able to support this wonderful initiative by offering a graduate prize of our own.”

Curwen Gallery has a long history with printmaking, having been established as part of The Curwen Studio over 50 years ago. Hot Off The Press remains an important aspect of the gallery’s annual exhibition programme, showcasing emerging artists working in the medium of printmaking.


Kirsten Baskett, Postscript III,89 x 117cm
etching on paper £700 and embedded in resin £1450

The Curwen Studio prides itself in working with established contemporary artists and new young talent in printmaking, and continues to develop new techniques. It remains one of the most highly respected print studios in the UK. The Curwen Studio Graduate Prize is a new initiative of The Curwen Studio, to support graduates working in printmaking.

January Mailing Apology

The gallery apologises for a mistake made during the postage of our January mailing. Unfortunately a number of our envelopes were sent by us without the docket on the envelope, meaning that the postage was not paid on them. We apologise to anyone affected by this mistake.

Late Greats: 9th January- 2nd February

http://www.curwengallery.co.uk/gallery/lategreats/title.htm
This exhibition at Curwen & New Academy Gallery brings together prints by four artists whose work we greatly admire, but who have now died, leaving us a legacy in so many ways. Each of the artists were Royal Academicians and  began working with us when New Academy Gallery was still based in the Royal Academy. This exhibition celebrates their printmaking; lithographs by Josef Herman and Paul Hogarth, both of whom died a few years ago, and screenprints, etchings and lithographs by Donald Hamilton Fraser and John Hoyland, who both died more recently. Some of these prints are now very rare.

Donald Hamilton Fraser, Loose Spinnaker
screenprint, 63 x 75cm
£1575 framed

The lithographs by Josef Herman show his studying of the miners and their families in the Welsh mining village of Ystradgynlais where he lived for a time after fleeing from Warsaw. His work explored his interests in working people; their sense of purpose in their labour and the dignity and strength of human spirit they showed as they carried it out. He combined this interest in people with his passion for landscape and townscape.


Josef Herman, On The Way Home, 1975
lithograph, 72 x 84cm,
£450 framed
Paul Hogarth had a great passion for travel, this combined perfectly with his unique talent for creating energetic illustrations, with the ability to capture the essence of any location across the world. He collaborated with many well known authors, illustrating works by Brendan Behan, Robert Graves, Lawrence Durrell, and William Golding and John Betjeman. Hogarth was best known for his series of cover drawings produced in the 1980s for the Penguin edition of Graham Greene's books. His lithographs in this exhibition show some of his works based on locations in Greece, France and London.

Paul Hogarth,Mykonos
lithograph, 62 x 79cm
£470 framed

Donald Hamilton Fraser’s screenprints are energetic and colourful abstracted landscape scenes, and many of them based around the shoreline or at sea, such as in ‘Sutherland' (pictured below.) Other prints show his interest in still lifes, a vase of flowers or a small group of toys.


Donald Hamilton Fraser, Sutherland
screenprint, 51 x 58cm
£700 framed

John Hoyland’s work characteristically used simple forms and bold colours, combined with a powerful energy evoked through his use of paint or inks. He produced the striking orange ‘Anniversary Print’ for Curwen Gallery’s 50th anniversary in 2008 (below). John Hoyland RA


John Hoyland RA,Curwen Anniversary Print (2008)
lithograph, 78 x 65cm
£975 framed
This collection of works is a wonderful tribute to these artists, each with a close connection to Curwen & New Academy Gallery and shows some of the fantastic prints each of them produced during their lives.

LEE SELLERS, 06-21 December 2012

Private View Wednesday 05 December 6-8pm
http://www.curwengallery.co.uk/gallery/sellers12/title.htm

Lee Sellers’ playful paintings illustrate moments in time between people in different scenarios. He often depicts groups of people, each going about their own business, which upon closer inspection show various narratives all playing out at once.

A scene is set on a sandy beach, a busy harbour or the location may be a TV filming studio. Sellers then adds in the characters that bring the painting to life. These are sometimes purely imagined scenarios, but others are real situations he has been in. Maybe it is Sellers’ experience of working in TV as an actor himself that leads him to construct these scenes as a director would organise his cast, giving each tiny painted figure a role. In a street scene, a man enters a shop, whilst two friends stand chatting outside, and at a window high up above, a small child’s face is pressed up against the glass looking out. It’s the more hidden figures that are such a joy to discover, and they can often be found hiding around the edge of the canvas. Looking here, for example in a painting of a party scene, the viewer may see a couple that have moved away from the crowd for a secret kiss.

A scene is set on a sandy beach, a busy harbour or the location may be a TV filming studio. Sellers then adds in the characters that bring the painting to life. These are sometimes purely imagined scenarios, but others are real situations he has been in. Maybe it is Sellers’ experience of working in TV as an actor himself that leads him to construct these scenes as a director would organise his cast, giving each tiny painted figure a role. In a street scene, a man enters a shop, whilst two friends stand chatting outside, and at a window high up above, a small child’s face is pressed up against the glass looking out. It’s the more hidden figures that are such a joy to discover, and they can often be found hiding around the edge of the canvas. Looking here, for example in a painting of a party scene, the viewer may see a couple that have moved away from the crowd for a secret kiss.

Some figures even escape from the canvas altogether and are shown leaping out of the picture onto the surrounding wall. In works like these, Sellers plays with the idea of the boundaries of a painting, and in the most refreshing and unselfconscious way, disregards many of the traditional rules.

He uses the canvas as an object not just for these figures to be painted on to, but for them to interact with. Sometimes they are even armed with a paintbrush and can be seen painting a part of the scene themselves.

Lee Sellers lives and works in London, and has shown with Curwen Gallery since 2010. This is his first solo show at Curwen.

Henry Walsh: Presence and Absence

07-29 November 2012
Private View Tues 06 November 6-8pm

“My work begins with snapshots of busy city life and by a process of elimination I refocus the image on elements that encapsulate a sober thoughtfulness.’ - HW

Henry Walsh, Eleure, 100 x 100cm, £4000

Henry Walsh’s third solo exhibition with Curwen Gallery, will be the largest collection of his work together to date. Many of the themes that have run through his work in the last few years will be visible. His fascination is largely with people in a space, be it crowds of people or solitary individuals. He gathers imagery of bustling city life, and the quieter parks and squares of the city where people go to find space and time to rest or reflect.

The resulting paintings show often only a few details of the scene, a couple seated on a park bench, their surroundings except for the bench, eliminated by white paint. This simplicity allows the viewer to fill in the gaps. What half narrative we are given, we can complete ourselves. Each painting is given its own obscure title, often a little-known word from the dictionary, leaving the viewer to reconcile it’s meaning with the visual image.


Henry Walsh, Strata XI, 13 x13cm, £200 

 In several works there is a sense of shared purpose; groups of people all walking in the same direction carrying suitcases or searching in the ground for something. But devoid of any setting in time or place where they are going to, what they are carrying, or looking for, all remains a tantalising mystery.

Occasionally the work is stripped back completely leaving only figures standing, seemingly stranded, on a plain. In this nothingness, stripped of their natural surroundings and any other objects, there can be no other focus than the figures themselves. A high viewpoint and miniaturisation gives the viewer a deific look over humanity. Are they looking at a black bleak horizon and recognising their own precious fragility, or are they bravely forging a path to an unknown future? The presence of light and shadows brings drama and somehow an intense presence of hope.

Henry Walsh, Confluentia IV, 50 x 70cm, £1100

Whatever the narratives behind the imagery, Walsh’s work seems to captivate viewers through a basic human curiosity of other people. We all like people watching to some extent, wondering what others are doing, saying or thinking, picking out the clues that might answer our desire to know.

Born on the 20th April 1978 in Norwich, England. Henry studied art at Ipswich College in Suffolk, and then Loughborough University in Leicestershire. In 2011 he moved to live in the Peak District. He is now a freelance artist & designer. Henry continues to exhibit regularly in group and solo exhibitions in London, New York, Scandinavia and Northwest England.


http://www.curwengallery.co.uk/gallery/walsh12/title.htm

John Brokenshire: 3rd October-3rd November

John Brokenshire’s work skirts the boundary between abstract expressionism and figurative landscape painting. In much of his work the natural world is used as a vehicle to carry a particular emotional response, with the figurative elements of the landscape seeping through an ethereal and expressive foreground. Often the figurative inspirations for the paintings are almost totally eclipsed by an otherworldly haze. It is in these moments where John Brokenshire leaves the constraints of the figurative that his most sensitive works are made.


John Brokenshire works primarily with oil on canvas and aims to deal with the universal themes of dream, mortality and healing. His love of the medium of paint is evident from his playful and unconventional colour choices and the atmosphere which these choices produce. In his recent works he has created peaceful, meditative canvases which project a feeling of spaciousness and respite

John Brokenshire has been showing regularly with Curwen Gallery since he was chosen for our annual Northern Graduates exhibition in 1995. This October we are John Brokenshire’s seventh solo exhibition, in which he has produced some of his most profound and sensitive works to date.


John Brokenshire, Cloud Descending, 100 x 100cm, £1850


http://www.curwengallery.co.uk/gallery/brokenshire12/title.htm