Rowley Gallery Blog
Lucca was our nearest and most favourite city this summer. We visited many other places but often ended up here and we got to know it better each time. This was my first photo in Lucca, in Piazza Anfiteatro – a ramshackle circuit of medieval buildings, it incorporates elements of the Roman amphitheatre that once stood here – and there’s always another photographer in the middle. Continue reading “Another Look At Lucca”
This summer we decided to drive to the south of France. My brother Anthony and his wife, who hails from Nice, my wife Criselda and I took two cars down to Gattières, a village perched overlooking the River Var, in the Alpes Maritimes. Catching the earliest Eurotunnel from Folkestone allowed for a leisurely drive through Northern France, Picardy and the Champagne region. We were heading for an overnight stay in Corps near the pilgrimage site of Our Lady of La Salette in the Alps, before continuing our drive on the Rue Napoleon through Grasse and on to Gattières. Continue reading “Le Jardin des Fleurs de Poterie”
Another post, another London art installation. This time a petrified forest of Frankenstein-style trees by artist Ai Weiwei in the Royal Academy courtyard. This display consists of eight of Ai Weiwei’s ‘trees’ – the most that have been exhibited together at one time, which originally came from the rural mountains of China. Continue reading “Ai Weiwei: Tree”
Susie Freeman & Liz Lee: What Once Was Imagined
This summer I visited São Paulo to install a new work at Oscar Niemeyer’s OCA pavilion in Ibirapuera Park. The exhibition INVENTO is best described as a science museum designed by artists. Created by matching significant scientific advances from the past 150 years with artists whose work acts as a response to each invention, I used thousands of medicines in packets to make a giant Amazon mantilla which illustrates the development of pharmaceuticals from plants to pills.
The exhibition runs until October 4th after which we hope to mount What Once Was Imagined in a venue closer to home. Continue reading “What Once Was Imagined”
We came back to the North House Gallery in Manningtree to see Fin · River · Swift, a new exhibition by Julian Meredith. This piece is called Elmigration, a large woodcut measuring 3 metres by 1 metre, printed from a single plank of elm wood. Continue reading “Manningtree (Slight Return)”
Driving to work the other day I was diverted from my normal course and led to discover the Isokon building. I’d never seen it before but instantly it seemed familiar and true, as if it were an archetype, elegant and beautiful, the epitome of 1930s utopian modernism. Continue reading “A Short Diversion”
The Tower of Babel presently stands alongside the Medieval & Renaissance sculptures in Room 50a at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It’s an exhibition of 3000 miniature ceramic London shops stacked precariously 20 feet high, ranging from bargain basement shops down at the bottom to exclusive and aspirational shops up at the top. Continue reading “The Tower Of Babel”
Thirty paintings by David Mabb at the William Morris Gallery – The Arts & Crafts Movement meets Russian Constructivism. Mabb has superimposed pages from the Kelmscott Chaucer by William Morris with images by El Lissitzky from For The Voice, a book of revolutionary poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky, to create a double celebration of utopian art. Continue reading “Announcer”
My article appeared recently in the August issue of The Artist magazine. This is the first time I have been asked to write such an article and I was concerned about how my text would be edited etc. But they did this very well and I am very pleased with the way it looks. Continue reading “Abstracting From The Landscape”
The Pittenweem Arts Festival has been happening for about 30 years. Every year the committee invites 5 artists to show their work in venues around the town of Pittenweem. Continue reading “Pittenweem 2015”