Samuel Palmer – Frames of Reference

A Small Retrospective

I love the Annely Juda Gallery very much. I’ve been visiting as long as I’ve lived in London and it always feels like I’m coming home. I first knew it as a small warehouse space in Tottenham Mews, next-door to the Angela Flowers Gallery. It was all scrubbed floorboards and whitewashed walls hung with jewel-like fragments of Bauhaus, De Stijl and Russian Constructivist art. Most exhibitions seemed to be called The Non-Objective World and they were always a great education in abstraction. In 1990 she moved to Dering Street where I first discovered the work of Eduardo Chillida, and saw an exhibition of minimal white reliefs by Alan Reynolds. It was a revelation. Continue reading “A Small Retrospective”

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”

Garden & Countryside

Sometimes a garden can be the best room in the house, a great place to spend time with friends and family, to walk together and share its beauty, to be diverted and distracted, to pass the time and forget ourselves. We can wander off and make discoveries, tell tales, find reflections and common ground. Continue reading “Garden & Countryside”

Around Sudbury

Sudbury is a place we often pass through on our way to somewhere else. But this time we stopped for a closer look and pretty soon we realised we’d already done this walk before. It all fell back into place.

The market town of Sudbury has a unique feature on its doorstep. The Sudbury Common Lands make up some 115 acres of water-meadows on the flood plain of the River Stour. Cattle and horses graze here, as they have for a thousand years, and the area is crossed by footpaths, making it perfect for a peaceful walk. Continue reading “Around Sudbury”

Around Shoreham

I’d often wondered about Shoreham. It’s famous as the inspiration for many of Samuel Palmer’s bucolic paintings, but on the map it’s surrounded by motorways, an edgeland bordered by the M20, the M25 and the M26. I suppose I’d worried that it’s spell must have been broken. But then after a recent visit to Ankerwycke, also on the rim of the M25, I realised that magic can persist. Continue reading “Around Shoreham”

My Life As A Tree

Last summer on holiday in Catalonia, we visited Girona where we chanced upon this striking installation by Àlex Nogué. It occupied one room of a small municipal exhibition space, Bolit-La Rambla. It consisted of 28 sheets of paper with ink and pencil drawings on the back wall, 56 trays filled with water on the floor, 2 digital second counters on the ceiling, one counting forwards and one counting backwards. It was possible to step through the hole in the wall and walk around the installation, but really best viewed from this position where it appears framed. It seemed to be an archetype, a symbol of time & place, heaven & earth, shadow & light, growth & decay. It was so simple and elegant and memorable, and more perfect for being found by accident. Continue reading “My Life As A Tree”