Rowley Gallery Blog
Once a year, adventurous arborist and tree climbing instructor, Tim Kovar takes a select few on a climb up one of the tallest trees in the world — a summit he says less people have attempted than Mt. Everest. For an unforgettable way to battle nature deficit disorder and re-connect with the Earth, we purchased a couple carabiners and brought way too much camera equipment 180 feet up an 850-year-old California redwood called “Grandfather” to see how squirrels dream.
A birthday card for Dominic, my Rowley brother and fellow tree lover, drawn by his father in 1985 when he was just 21. Continue reading “Trees I Have Fallen Out Of…”
It’s April 2023, and I will be 70 years old. What better way to mark the occasion than to plant 70 trees, not in the ground, but in the window of the Rowley Gallery. I sent out a call to 70 artists and got lots of replies. I could plant a small forest. So here’s a small celebration of trees, of their variety and complexity, their shelter and enchantment, and all their green, filtered, numinous enlightenment. Continue reading “70 Trees”
Emi Shinmura came over from Berlin especially to install our latest window exhibition, and we are honoured to host her series of recent wood carvings – Seats For Deities – until the end of March. Continue reading “Seats For Deities”
Hollington’s Florilegium, paintings by David Hollington, a botanical alphabet, part 2: N to Z, in the window of the Rowley Gallery through January and February. They are accompanied by a selection of David’s miniature paintings, and a few words of introduction here below. Continue reading “Hollington’s Florilegium”
I’ve still not been getting out much but on New Year’s Day I managed to get 5 miles from home to visit the Minchenden Oak. I didn’t get such a great welcome, but thankfully I was not denied access. It looked like it was meant to be closed, but its makeshift gate was on the ground when I arrived. This is the only entrance to the Minchenden Oak Garden, a small walled garden created in 1934 to safeguard the ancient Minchenden Oak. Continue reading “The Minchenden Oak”
On Waiting – “even the painter is blind but he feels the necessity to see”. Film about the Dutch painter Bram van Velde who was a friend of the writer Samuel Beckett.
Here’s a turn up! Previously lost footage of Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath on French TV in 1973. Fifty years ago!
Lineup includes Dudu Pukwana, Harry Beckett, Elton Dean, Lol Coxhill, Louis Moholo, Harry Miller, Nick Evans, Mark Charig, Radu Malfatti. And Chris McGregor at the piano.
Big thank you to Riccardo Bergerone. Tracks: Do It, Nutcase, Andromeda
The date on the photo is 21 August 2022. It was a Sunday. We started out at Gate No.84, Earl’s Path north, and headed down the Green Ride into the forest. It’s a steep hill but always steeper coming back. Continue reading “Gate No.84”
There’s a celebration of Don Cherry at the Barbican tonight (Don Cherry Tribute). Sadly I can’t go. So I’ll put this video here as a consolation. And today I’ll rummage through my CDs and I’ll shake the Cherrytree. Its fruits have many flavours and taste of many places. According to Richard Williams, “he collapsed the distance between the supposedly primitive and the supposedly sophisticated more effectively than any musician I can think of.”
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This film from 1978 is about Don and Moki Cherry and others who lived with them in the school house in Tågarp, Skåne, Sweden, in the 1970s and onwards. It includes sequences from SoHo, New York, and Moki Cherry’s textiles on the walls in Hästveda and Long Island City. With Rashied Ali, James Blood Ulmer, Nana Vasconcelos, Denis Charles, Huss Charles, etc. A film by Urban Lasson.
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If you enjoyed this you might also like to see For Don Cherry.