Frames of Reference

Arborealists In Lady Park Wood

A short film by Kashfi Halford about Lady Park Wood, a rare natural woodland in the Wye Valley, as seen through the eyes of The Arborealists, a group of artists with a shared love of trees. There is an exhibition inspired by their visit at Monmouth Museum from May until September, including work by Robert Amesbury Brooks, Graham Arnold, Richard Bavin, Philippa Beale, Ann Blockley, Karen Bowers, Guillaume Brandy, Emma Buckmaster, Tim Craven, Annabel Cullen, Francis Dalschaert, Tom Deakins, Jane Eaton, Alex Egan, Janet French, Jelly Green, Sarah Harding, Richard Hoare, Abi Kremer, Fiona McIntyre, Lesley Slight and Jacqueline Wedlake Hatton.

Tangle

Oil paintings and watercolours by Jelly Green and bronze sculptures by Freddy Morris in the Rowley Gallery window throughout May. It’s a meeting of kindred spirits. Both artists are woodlanders, each in their own way exploring the beauty of the trees. Both have been artist-in-residence in various treehouses. Jelly has painted in the rainforests of Brazil and Borneo as well as in woods closer to home. Freddy loves to forage for fallen branches, looking for shapely specimens to cast in bronze. Continue reading “Tangle”

Cucuruzzu & Capula

We’d tried to visit earlier but been turned away, the site was closed due to the high risk of wildfires. But today, touch wood, the situation appeared safer and we were allowed inside. And maybe because we’d already been denied access once, this second attempt seemed especially privileged, so please excuse me if I go on a bit. This felt like my ideal habitat, the dappled light and the ancient stones, it was a natural sculpture trail, so it’s really no surprise I took far too many photographs. Continue reading “Cucuruzzu & Capula”

Wychling Wood

I saw this on an OS map and couldn’t not investigate. A place of worship symbol in the middle of bloody nowhere on the edge of a wood. It was a foggy, atmospheric day up on the North Downs, so I decided to walk three sides of a square through the wood to reach it. Continue reading “Wychling Wood”

Stems

Stop motion animation by Ainslie Henderson in collaboration with Poppy Ackroyd.

“Poppy would send separate ‘stems’ — that’s where the film got its name — of each track of music. I would make characters and instruments that looked like they might make each of the sounds she’d given me and we’d go from there.”

Cool For Cats

The Rowley Gallery window is cool for cats. They like to meet here. The collective term for a group of cats is a clowder. So there’s presently a great multi-coloured clowder of cats gathered together on parade in the window of the Rowley Gallery. All looking cool, calm, collected, present and Corr-ect. Continue reading “Cool For Cats”

Ravilious & Co

We detoured from the M6 via the M42 to the M40 and a few miles south of Warwick we arrived at Compton Verney to see the exhibition Ravilious & Co: The Pattern Of Friendship. There’s an echo of William Morris and Morris & Co in that title. It had been snowing when we arrived and the gallery was closing early. We only had an hour to look around. It was a mad rush with far too much to take in and too little time. I took this photo as we left, since photography was not allowed inside, and this tangle seemed a suitable souvenir of all the various artistic connections explored in the exhibition, not to mention the miles of twisting roads to get there. Continue reading “Ravilious & Co”

Cakes & Ale Press

I went down to visit Jonny Hannah recently at the Cakes & Ale Press, a deceptively humble garden shed strategically located at the heart of Darktown, its inspirational source leaking pervasively up through the floorboards and onto the drawing board. Sited with the aid of dowsing-rods, it serves to trap the hidden force within. The door opened with a howl and I rushed in, cameras blazing. Continue reading “Cakes & Ale Press”

Coppard

It was Easter Sunday and April Fools’ Day, an auspicious coincidence and ideally a time to be full of the joys of spring. But the day was wet and gloomy, and I was down with a heavy cold. The space between my ears felt clogged with cobwebs and glue. My brain needed rewiring. There was nothing else for it but to visit my favourite tree and unwind my head. The resulting photos might be stitched together like a ribbon of investigation tape, but really they record a circuit of mutual embrace. A step by step two-way revolving observation, the tree’s branches like the spokes of a wheel. Continue reading “Coppard”

Bonifacio

This drawing of Bonifacio by John Minton is one of his many illustrations from Time Was Away: A Journey Through Corsica by Alan Ross, and it was pretty much the same view that greeted us when finally we inched our way into town. The queue of traffic snaked down the hill to the harbour, known variously as the Port de Commerce, Port de Pêche and Port de Plaisance. We crawled our way along the narrow street, passing parking complet signs at every turn, climbing steeply beneath the walls of the Haute Ville and up to the ancient citadel, past the multi-storey tenements and beyond the empty barracks to the last car park at the end of the peninsula, a windy harbour high on the Bosco. Continue reading “Bonifacio”