Winter on South Street

December 8, 2011 at 8:47 pm · Filed under News updates, Reviews

Until 29 Jan 2012

Review By Jenny Drewery

Recently launched is our new Winter Exhibition with many new artists and makers. We have new work by regular artists Bren Head, Andrew Cheetham and Malcolm Ludvigsen.

Paintings by Bren Head

Starting at under £5 we have ceramics by Janet Hayton – perfect presents for those who love ceramics with character. Other festive hanging decorations include vintage inspired porcelain pieces by Amanda Mercer and whimsical angels and birds by Shirley Vauvelle.

Ceramic by Janet Hayton

Ceramic by Amanda Mercer

To follow is an exhibition review that poetically describes further what you will find.

Written by Jenny Drewery

Angela Chalmers’s quiet nudes lend a grounding calm to this exceedingly festive and lively exhibition.

After Glow by Angela Chalmers

In the centre of the gallery is a table festooned with an eclectic mix of felt, wool, silk, ceramics and glass, fashioned into jewellery, scarves, purses, pictures, everything under the sun – a mini-market for imaginative Christmas presents.

For sheer decorative fairy-tale vibrancy it’s hard to beat Claire West’s paintings.

Her two fat robins perched up a tree are almost but not quite camouflaged by the poppy-like blossoms and the tumbling leaves dislodged by their flutterings. Her acrylic work The Seafront is a fantasy symphony in pinks, yellows and blues, pleasing to the eye and uncompromisingly cheerful. The flowers and houses look just as excited to be beside the sea as we humans are.

Shirley Vauvelle’s glowing canvases call to mind those long-ago nights in remote places when something – maybe an owl’s hoot – has woken me up. I’ve padded across to the window and looked out at silent moonlit countryside. The awe on the faces of the artist’s birds and humans is exactly how I felt at the time.

In the bleak midwinter a figure trudges doggedly through Malcolm Ludvigsen’s atmospheric snowscape Walmgate Stray, York. Snow sits in heavy lumps on the boughs, the slightest gust will blow them down.

Memories of winter ’63 come flooding back.

Bulldog, cow, calf and rabbit have done their best to oblige by posing nicely for artist Paul Robinson as he sketches.

They look as respectfully curious as Nativity animals –but the cat, naturally, can’t be bothered. It’s having a good scratch.

Mindful of its location the gallery always includes in its exhibitions a celebration of the sea. As you look at Jean Luce’s Bempton Cliffs and Birds the cliffs come to life.  You can hear the yelling of the seabirds as they home in on their nests, and sense the texture of the grass clinging to the ledges.

Lynne Roebuck’s small and exquisite linocut entitled Tiny’s at Sea shows a boat tossed about on the crest of a wave.

It appears to be perilously poised, but what you find yourself focusing on is the exuberant bouncy playfulness of the sea.

And needless to say, Andrew Cheetham’s miniatures are selling well – the power of the North Sea, caught in a tiny frame.

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Summer Exhibition Review

July 25, 2011 at 10:12 pm · Filed under News updates, Reviews

Until 11^th September 2011

Thurs – Sat, noon – 5pm. Sun, noon – 4pm

Sometimes when your head’s full of stressful clutter, you get an urge to walk along the shore and savour the open spaces. Malcolm Ludvigsen, one of the exhibition’s feature artists, captures this feeling in his seascape Bridlington, July 19. On a tide-washed beach under towering skies, a few people are strolling, a man and his dog going in the opposite direction from the others. I like the impression that he’s passed within yards of them with maybe or a nod or a quick ‘hello’ and immediately settled back into his own thoughts. The smudgily painted figures have an impermanence in a setting that’s many millions of years old.

The other feature artist is Kate Kenney. Her design-conscious paintings show the rolling Wolds positively oozing fecundity. The farmer’s labour enhances the beauty of what’s already there. Rapeseed bursts from the soil in sizzling yellow. Tawny crops ripen under the autumn sun. Hockney-esque trees are simple statements rising from a glowing carpet of agriculture. Four of the canvases sold while I was in the gallery.

There’s an Andrew Cheetham I hadn’t seen before, showing the waves roaring past Flamborough, and some beautifully crafted driftwood wall plaques by Shirley Vauvelle. In Jon O’Connor’s ominous study of Redcar beach, the giant blast furnaces stride down to the shore in the distance.

Jon O’Connor

I know the scene well – on a fine sunny day, their industrial bullying bulk feels out of place, but here their blackness is quashed by the magnificent moody darkness of sea and sky.

There are echoes of John Piper in Adam King’s mixed-media studies – five Scarborough landmarks and a Castle Howard temple  -  which grabbed me the minute I saw them.

A solid architectural awareness shines through the seemingly loose technique. Jaunty black outlines are overlaid with splashy colour, making the structure feel alive.

In Jan Richardson’s ravishing piece of naïve art, the manipulation of perspective and colour gives us a glorious day in Whitby, seen through a child’s eyes.

A tour bus trundles down the hill and a boat chugs along the water, crammed with holidaymakers. The sea is impossibly blue, just as it appears in your memory when you look back fondly to your childhood holidays. The biggest figure in the painting is a seagull, beadily watching from a rooftop. Perhaps he’s there to remind us that birds were on the scene long before we were? No, on reflection I think he’s simply looking out for rich pickings.

I chortled at Sue Atkinson’s tiny quirky painting called Teatime. Four people head determinedly for home, beach swag packed away in enormous bags, sunbathing over for the day, minds totally focused on cups of tea, scones and maybe a nice bit of malt loaf. Wonderful!

By Jenny Drewery

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