Rowley Gallery Blog
We were at Union Chapel in Islington recently to see The Gloaming. It was our first visit. Why had we never been before? It makes no sense. It’s a wonderful, atmospheric venue with a long tradition of showing class acts in intimate surroundings, and The Gloaming are certainly a class act. We arrived early and sat on the hard pews for far too long, but the music was worth the wait. Continue reading “Twilight Music”
This is Pink Dark Triptych, 2011, oil on linen by Sean Scully, a donation to the Pallant House Gallery Collection and the catalyst for their recent exhibition, Sean Scully: Triptychs. It sounded like a great show, I was looking forward to seeing it, but I wasn’t quick enough and now it’s closed. I was disappointed to miss it so here’s my own compilation of Scully triplets and trinities and trios. Continue reading “Triptychs”
The very next morning, right after I finished patching together Out Along Lee, my post about walking the River Lea and the Lee Valley, I found this lovely and fascinating film by Michael Smith thanks to Caught By The River. It felt like synchronicity but this is much better. It was commissioned by The Floating Cinema and UP Projects; it’s a wander along the Lea, all along, down along, out along Lee.
Sometimes it’s the Lee, other times it’s the Lea, and most times it’s confusing. The River Lea rises at Leagrave, north of London near Luton (Leatown) and flows south via Leyton (Leatown) to join the River Thames at Leamouth. Over the years many of its twists and turns got straightened out to make it more easily navigable and the artificial channels and canals became known as the Lee Navigation. Nowadays the river (Lea) and the canal (Lee) are almost indistinguishable. Continue reading “Out Along Lee”
In the Tate Modern shop we found this inspiring book of hand-drawn London rambles. Badaude takes a line for a walk around town. Not to find one’s way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance, nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city – as one loses oneself in a forest – that calls for quite a different schooling – Walter Benjamin. Continue reading “London Walks!”
Howard Phipps: Wood Engravings at Cassian de Vere Cole Fine Art, 50 Elgin Crescent, London, W11 2JJ from 22-31 January 2014. Notification of this exhibition only just arrived so we’re too late for the Wine but there’s still time for some Bloody Marys. Continue reading “Wood Engravings”
To the Tate Modern on the first Saturday of 2014, to see their beautiful exhibition, Paul Klee: Making Visible, the perfect antidote to our cold, dark, damp, grey January daze. It was just before twelfth night, so another midwinter festive celebration of light and warmth and colour. Continue reading “Making Visible”
An exhibition of paintings by Andrew Walton and poems by David Attwooll, presented by Jenny Blyth Fine Art at Art Jericho, 6 King Street, Oxford, OX2 6DF from 23 January until 23 February 2014.
GROUND WORK is the product of twelve monthly walks through the course of a year on Port Meadow and Wolvercote Common, an area of uncultivated floodplain that lies between the city of Oxford and the Thames. Continue reading “Ground Work”
This is good. I was looking for a film about Victor Skipp. I’d read that Candida Richardson had made a film about his home, which I wrote about in my previous post. But instead I found this. A beautifully simple essay on Linda Karshan’s drawings. I discovered her work 10 years ago in Notting Hill Books where I found a catalogue of her 2002 exhibition at Institut Valencià d’Art Modern. It’s a book that I treasure for many reasons. Now there’s a very good film to accompany it.
Kettle’s Yard are presently hosting – A Lasting Legacy: The House and Collection of Victor Skipp. When he died in 2010 Victor Skipp left his estate to Kettle’s Yard. He was a writer and historian with a passion for art and philosophy. This exhibition reflects his many interests, with displays of modernist and minimalist art side by side with tribal rugs, African sculpture, Indian miniatures, folk art and vernacular architecture: a perfect complement to the existing Kettle’s Yard collection. Continue reading “Victor Skipp”