Rowley Gallery Blog
We’d been told to stay indoors and not go out, except for exercise and if so to stay two metres apart, breathe fresh air, think separate thoughts and cast our own shadows. Stay safe, take care and not go viral. It was the sunniest Sunday I’d seen in ages, the car parks of Epping Forest were overflowing, all of us fleeing the city to escape the epidemic. That’s how it felt, as if there was protection here. Continue reading “Chasing Shadows”
In the incongruous setting of London’s Southbank, among all its heavy-duty architecture and its everyday hustle and bustle, there is a safe arbour in the concrete jungle, a quiet sanctuary of beauty and harmony where we can remember the trees. The Hayward Gallery’s surprising exhibition Among The Trees reminds us of the many ways in which we have forgotten our close arboreal connections. Continue reading “Among The Trees”
Returning home from a family gathering in the North West we took a detour from our usual route, and despite the dark clouds and pouring rain and the warnings of queuing traffic and closed roads we found our way over the Pennines to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It was our first visit and it was long overdue. The way was slow and wet and windy, but as we approached the sky cleared and by the time we left the sun was shining again. And in between the park was a revelation. Continue reading “Yorkshire Sculpture Park”
Quite by chance I found myself in Golden Square. I’d arrived early for lunch and rather than sit in the restaurant alone I walked around the block to pass the time. I should have known about the Marian Goodman Gallery, but it was a great surprise. It’s usually closed on a Sunday but they had opened specially because of Frieze London with a fantastic exhibition by Giuseppe Penone. The large piece on the wall was made of acacia thorns, like iron filings magnetised into the shape of a fossil leaf, or now that I look again perhaps it’s a pair of giant lips. Continue reading “Fui, Sarò, Non Sono”
A Walk In The Woods
There’s a lovely and surprising exhibition by Jelly Green at the Alde Valley Spring Festival, and there’s not a single cow in sight! She’s abandoned her usual subject matter and gone for a walk in the woods, and lost herself in the green and tangled delights of the trees, and found herself there. Continue reading “A Walk In The Woods”
After climbing out of Menaggio on tight switchbacks up to Croce, high on the ridge, the road scoots along the floor of the Val Menaggio, passing Bene Lario and 3km later reaching the small, reedy Lago di Piano, protected as a nature reserve and breeding place for water birds. Drop into the little information office beside the lake, or ask the Menaggio tourist office for the route description of a pleasant, almost flat two-hour walk here that takes in woodlands and a fortified cluster of medieval houses on a peninsula in the lake, known as Castel San Pietro. Continue reading “Rogolone”
This is probably one of the most famous lavender fields in all of France. It is cultivated by the monks of the Abbaye de Sénanque and blooms in early summer. By the time we got here it was all over. We hadn’t intended to come but the road from Venasque to Gordes was closed at Sénanque and we could go no further, so we turned around in the car park. That was the nearest we got. Continue reading “Three French Abbeys”
They seem to be mostly larch. This intricate timber frame construction is made from 17 cubic metres of larch. It stands on a traffic island by St Botolph’s church at the start of the A11, the road from London to Norwich, and it marks the place where the Aldgate once stood. Continue reading “The Trees Of Aldgate”