Rowley Gallery Blog
A new exhibition at the British Museum brings together artefacts from museums across Europe, some as old as 42,000 years, and juxtaposes them with modern masters such as Henry Moore and Piet Mondrian. The Venus of Dolni Vestonice is displayed alongside Grand Nu by Henri Matisse. Continue reading “Ice Age Art”
All this talk of winter trees and William Morris and I realise it’s time I went back to Epping Forest. It seems different every time I visit but today is something special, I’ve never seen it so thick with snow. It’s another world, silent and monochrome like an old movie. Continue reading “Epping Snow”
The William Morris Gallery is at Water House in Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow. William Morris was fourteen when his family moved here in 1848. They had downsized from Woodford Hall where William’s playground had been Epping Forest. At Water House he played in the grounds, particularly the moated island where he imagined there be dragons. Continue reading “William Morris Gallery”
First there was this Christmas card from a painting by Mick Moon, made with oil paint & string on board and called simply Tree. Then I heard the three Staveley-Taylor sisters (aka The Staves) singing Winter Trees:
Continue reading “Winter Trees”
The Hedge Warbler or Dunnock
Printed from the boxwood block engraved by Thomas Bewick for his
History of British Birds, 1797
Continue reading “Bewick’s Nature Print”
August 1954, aged 77, Pablo Casals performs Bach’s G-Major Suite for solo cello at Abbaye Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa near Prades in the French Pyrénées.
In an ancient abbey in the south of France I once heard invisible plainsong. I realised eventually that it came not from speakers, nor from monks hidden behind a screen, but from a fellow tourist who sang as he moved through the building, exploring its rich acoustics. It was surprising and beautiful. How amazing it would have been to discover Casals playing Bach.
Bach Unwrapped is a year long series of over 70 concerts throughout 2013 at Kings Place, London.
When these children in Paraguay were given the opportunity to learn music there were more students than instruments. Cateura is Paraguay’s biggest landfill with a resourceful tradition of recycling. It seemed only appropriate to make musical instruments from waste materials. Scrap was transformed into violin, cello, double-bass, flute, saxophone, guitar and The Recycled Orchestra was born.
‘MERZsonata is a homage to Kurt Schwitters’ sound-text masterpiece, the Ursonate…Every sound…has a biographical connection to Schwitters (for example, he wrote a sneezing poem, and he used to bark like a dog each night during his time in the Hutchinson Square Internment Camp on the Isle of Man during the Second World War)…Like the materials of a Schwitters collage, each element is both itself and part of something new.’ – Christopher Fox, 1999. Continue reading “MERZsonata”
We just got word that Jonathan Gibbs is exhibiting his wood engravings alongside Brendan Hansbro at The Rectory Gallery on Fournier Street behind Christ Church, Spitalfields. Continue reading “Wood Engravings”