Sunday 27 November 2011

Call for Entries - Jerwood Painting Fellowships 2013

Contact: jpf@parkerharris.co.uk     


Call For Entries - Jerwood Painting Fellowships 2013

Jerwood Visual Arts are delighted to announce the mentors for the 2013 Jerwood Painting Fellowships: Marcus Harvey, Mali Morris RA and Fabian Peake.

This is the second year of the Fellowship scheme which aims to promote and support emerging painters in the first five years of their professional practice. The purpose of the Fellowships is to offer structured development opportunities in two distinctive areas: studio practice and professional development.

Three Fellowships will be awarded with each Fellow receiving a bursary of £10,000 and one year of critical and professional development support from mentors. This programme of support will be designed to suit the needs of each Fellow. During the Fellowship year each artist will work towards a body of new work, which will be exhibited in a group show as part of the JVA programme at Jerwood Space, London in March 2013, before touring within the UK.

Jerwood Painting Fellowships is an open submission opportunity. Entry is by online application, artists must be resident in the UK and within five years of graduating or practicing professionally. 


Closing date for entries:  30 January 2012

Thursday 24 November 2011

PURE WINTER ART FAIR NOW OPEN!

PURE WINTER ART FAIR 2011

Contemporary Fine Art

The PowderMills Hotel, PowderMill Lane, Battle TN33 0SP





OPEN EVERY DAY 10AM - 6PM

 
FRI 25 - TUE 29 NOVEMBER 2011
Open daily 10am - 6pm
Admission Free

This Winter Exhibition will be a showcase of small works.

Perfect for the Christmas Season, whether your looking to treat yourself or your loved ones.
 

We hope to see lots of you and share some Christmas cheer.
Lots to See and Buy. Prices start at £65


www.pureartsgroup.co.uk
www.powdermillshotel.com

Wednesday 16 November 2011

Pure Winter Art Fair at The PowderMills Hotel, Battle



PURE WINTER ART FAIR 2011

Contemporary Fine Art

The PowderMills Hotel, PowderMill Lane, Battle TN33 0SP



FRI 25 - TUE 29 NOVEMBER 2011
Open daily 10am - 6pm
Admission Free


This Winter Exhibition will be a showcase of small works.
  Perfect for the Christmas Season, whether your looking to treat yourself or your loved ones.


The Mince Pies will be warming every day from 10am. We hope to see lots of you and share some Christmas cheer. 
Lots to See and Buy. Prices start at £65
 
         copyright: Brenda Hartill R E                                         


FOR MORE INFORMATION: PUREARTSGROUP.CO.UK
 
DIRECTIONS:POWDERMILLSHOTEL.COM

The PowderMills Hotel serve Morning Coffee, Lunch, Afternoon Tea and Dinner Daily, 
throughout the year.
Booking for Lunch and Dinner is advised but not always essential.
Tel: 01424 775511

BLOG: PUREARTSGROUP.BLOGSPOT.COM

RECEIVING CHARITY: MERU.ORG.UK



copyright:CB Buchanan

Call for Artists: Lower Marsh Public Art Commission, London Borough of Lambeth

Deadline: December 5, 2011, 12:00 pm

Call for Artists: Lower Marsh Public Art Commission, London Borough of Lambeth

Lambeth Arts and Transportation are working in partnership to commission a public art and/or signage intervention as part of a public realm improvement scheme for Lower Marsh and the connecting streetscape.

Lambeth Transportation has appointed consultants to develop detailed designs for the area which will form the basis for a major public realm improvement scheme.

The selected proposal will form the basis for a public art and/or signage project that will compliment the main public realm improvement scheme.

We are inviting proposals for a single public art intervention, or series of interventions, to a value of up to £55,000.  This will be divided into 2 phases; with the first phase being for the programme management, community engagement activity and finalising the concept designs and the second phase being for fabrication and installation. The maximum budget available for the first phase is £15,000 and the maximum capital cost available at the second phase is £40,000.

The deadline for Expressions of Interest is 12 noon on Monday 5th December 2011.

In order to download the information you will need to register with the online system first. To do this please visit: https://uk.eu-supply.com/pub/registercompany.asp?OID=1&PID=2574&B=LBLAMBETH. Registration should only take a few moments.

Click here to visit the Lambeth EU supply portal in order to download the Artists’ Brief and for details of how to apply

Monday 14 November 2011

GAP Milano Expo 2015 Residency Exchange Programme, Artegiovane

Open Call for Submissions: Artists’ Residency Exchange Programme 2011–2012

Organized by Italian collectors association Artegiovane, this programme aims to create an inspiring cultural exchange between Italy and twenty other countries participating in the Milano Expo 2015 Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.

Selected artists are invited to spend 2 months at Open Care studios in Milan.

The aim of the residency is to carry out production and research around the 2015 Milano Expo’s themes; these include issue around ecology, sustainable energies and resources, eco-architecture and our population’s nutrition.

The successful artist will have access to a workspace and accommodation, generous production costs and and an enabling bursary of 2.500 euros for out-of-pocket expenses and research.

This residency suits mid-career artists who have completed art education and who have been practicing and showing for a few years.
Deadline for submissions: 9 December 2011
Start Date: January 2012

To download the programme regulations and an application form, please visit www.sharpcut.eu or www.visitingarts.org.uk

Wednesday 9 November 2011

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

Portrait of the artist

First published : June 2011
The Times 

The Times newspaper's art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston talks to Charlotte Luxford about her new book on the 'English Van Gogh', Samuel Palmer. She reveals why Shoreham is such a source of inspiration, that she and Palmer share shepherding experiences and that she would love to hate Tracey Emin's art
Portrait of the artist 
 
Samuel Palmer © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Words Charlotte Luxford

Why did you decide to focus on Samuel Palmer for your first book, Mysterious Wisdom?
It was after the British Museum held an exhibition on Palmer as a bicentenary celebration, but it was in a dingy gallery and while I didn’t know much about his life, I loved his work. Few people are in between, they have either heard of Palmer or they haven’t. There was only one biography on Palmer but it was quite dull, so I decided that something should be done and I wanted to bring him to life. I always found his self-portrait fascinating and I felt quite close to Palmer, carrying poetry in my rucksack and being a shepherd myself; I feel we both shared the same inclination to revel in our own self-conscious romanticism with our flocks of sheep!
Did you become increasingly emotionally attached to Palmer’s life the more you found out about him?
Yes, I did; I disliked him in the middle of my book as it was his devout piety that practically killed his son he was so strict, but by the end I was crying and I just thought, “What a lovely man you are”. He started so well with his glorious Shoreham scenes and then in the middle of his life he painted somewhat tedious topographical studies, sacrificing his Shoreham beliefs for money – wrongly, unfortunately.
Why do you think Shoreham was such a haven for Palmer and his friends the Ancients?
I think the Shoreham landscape with its softly-domed hills, cottages and meadows was the attraction for Palmer; he thought that the church should be the lynchpin to every landscape and it was included in many of his works. He considered the landscape to be very rural and remote and I imagine it would have provided a place where he could imprint his pastoral fantasies. He may well have been inspired by Spenser’s writings on the Darent also.The fact it was walking distance from London, which many of the Ancients relied on for their work, would have been a considerable factor also.
What did you make of the area when you first came to Kent; did you find it as inspiring?
I spent weeks and weeks in that little valley, and I would lay and daydream as Palmer would have done – I took the 30-mile walk from London and got horrifically lost in Catford with my poor dogs, but once I had reached the lip of the Darent Valley, it all became amazingly beautiful.
The Magic Apple Tree © FitzwilliamMuseum, Cambridge 

'The Magic Apple Tree' © FitzwilliamMuseum, Cambridge
Do you think Palmer was a ‘great’ artist?
Palmer was a first-rate painter and the etchings he did with the help of his son Herbert, who became a renowned etcher in his own right, were a thing of beauty. While Palmer was a great artist he was a quiet artist; the etchings he did were kept secret between him and his son in the ‘Curiosity Portfolio’, and while contemporaries like Constable and Turner competed by creating dramatic six-foot landscapes, Palmer was more of a miniaturist. His small and passionate paintings have a sense of focus – by their very smallness they become all the more intense and the harder you gaze, a whole world opens up before your very eyes. While after his death his work remained largely forgotten, he was rediscovered by the English Modernists, who were inspired by his landscapes. In Palmer’s day, many found his works too peculiar, but that’s why the modernists loved it – Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash, John Piper and Eric Ravilious all took inspiration from his work and art historian Kenneth Clark dubbed Palmer the ‘English Van Gogh’.
You really capture Palmer’s character and as a reader I felt I was present, walking with Palmer through life – to do this with such ease means you must have done painstaking research?
There are two volumes of Palmer’s letters which I trawled through, but his son destroyed a lot of material. While Herbert was a fierce custodian of his work and published works after his death, he burnt much of Palmer’s personal pocketbooks in a back garden fire, embarrassed by his father’s open expressions of emotion and effeminate tendencies. He said once there was “too much dearest” about the relationship between Palmer and his close friend Richmond.  When researching, I steeped myself in the period and re-read novelists like George Eliot and Dickens, spent a lot of time daydreaming in Shoreham, visiting locals and also researching in the V&A. Once I knew what to look for I found tiny references in Palmer’s letters – he wrote beautifully – and after a while I began to piece them together to draw the picture of his life. He really was a charming, eccentric, funny, engaging and sympathetic man.
Did you find the transition from art critic to author difficult, especially now it is your book up for critique?
Of course I’m nervous – I just hope that all the mistakes have been proofed! I loved writing the book though and I hope people like it; you’re all so lucky to have such a wonderful landscape in Sevenoaks and Palmer was keen to look after it. He said that one should be in harmony with the landscape and to treasure it, treading on it lightly. In a way, he was one of the first ecologists and, in fact, much of his work and letters had green messages.
If you had to choose one piece of work from a past artist and one piece from a contemporary artist to hang on your wall, which pieces would you pick?
Of course I’d love to have a Palmer; a little memento after writing this book. I’d also have a Rubens just for his sheer ebullience and vitality – his work is like a red bull! It’s not really in my nature to like him actually, but I just do. I adore Francis Bacon’s work; in a way he lived such a pure life and it was uncorrupted in many ways, despite what many say. I have works from my former boyfriend Sebastian Horsley also.
If you could go to any place in the world just to sit for an hour, where would you go?
I would go to Easter Island – it’s this tiny, lost island with such a sense of wonder about it.
Which popular artist would you make a controversial comment about?
I’d love to hate Tracey Emin; her work just grabs your attention and it’s like a car crash – you can’t help but stare.
What book would you curl up with right now?
I love the wisdom and sensibility of George Eliot – her depth and quiet, understated writing is just superb. I would give Middlemarch rather than the Bible to my daughter if I wanted her to understand the way of life.
If you could jump into the skin of any artist for a day, who would it be?
Samuel Palmer

I’d be Caravaggio on the run – what a swashbuckling adventure that would be.
Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer by Rachel Campbell-Johnston is published in hardback by Bloomsbury on June 6, priced £25
Why not take a day trip and visit Samuel Palmer’s paintings in some of the best British cities? Visit The Fitzwilliam in Cambridge (www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk) and The Ashmolean in Oxford (www.ashmolean.org)

Friday 4 November 2011

Revealed: London 2012 Olympic Posters bring best out of BritArt


Bridget Riley, Chris Ofili and Rachel Whiteread offer touching idealism while others slip into self-conscious sentimentality
London Olympic posters expert view 
 
2012 Olympic posters include those by Bridget Riley and Chris Ofili, who may have created the one that 'truly lives in memory as an image of the London Games.' Photograph: London 2012/PA
Martin Creed is going to have a good Olympics. Not only is Work No 1197, his proposal to have "All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes" on the first day of the games, likely to prove the most appropriate, elegant and magical public artwork of 2012, but he also comes up trumps among the artists who have designed posters for the sporting event that will dominate our lives next summer.

Creed likes to paint layers of rectangles in bright colours that always make me think of arthouse cinema posters for some legendary 1970s film. This is a continuing series of abstract works, part of his enigmatic conceptual project of creating a numbered and interrelated corpus of art.
It just happens to be his good luck – OK, his astute and apparently effortless recognition – that his stepped design resembles in such a nice way the winners' podium at the Olympic Games.

No one will have any trouble seeing this image in his abstract painting, which is likely to make it one of the most effective posters. Not all are going to be as universally popular. Are these aimed at art fans or athletics fans? As an art fan, I find Bridget Riley's poster beautiful. But will it say much about the games themselves, or just inspire lots of arguments along the lines of "I know it's art, but is it a poster?"

Rachel Whiteread has not taken any chances. Her web of bright circles is a riff on the Olympic symbol of interlinked hoops. What connects it with her artistic touch is the use of a simple printing method to make the circles: Whiteread works with the given stuff of the world around her.

This too will be a winner, I suspect, as will Chris Ofili's very different effort, a powerful and overtly emotional graphic design. In fact, Ofili is at his very best here, passionate and engaged, and this may be the poster that truly lives in memory as an image of the London games.

There is a touching idealism about all the posters that leading artists have created. Sometimes that slips into self-conscious sentimentality that makes the designs by Tracey Emin and Bob and Roberta Smith seem egotistical and, frankly, self-indulgent.

But to see Howard Hodgkin, grand old man of sensuous painters, reach into the deep blue to create a dreamlike metamorphosis of athlete and water, the diver and the pool, is beautiful. This is more poetry than mere poster.

Olympic posters are an art form in themselves, and great ones endure as modern icons. Inviting a gaggle of artists to design these may seem a superficial bit of outmoded British art boosting, but in reality it is a romantic restatement of the Olympic ideal, inviting artists to imagine the forces of human effort and natural capacity that have always made sport a theme for modern art (think of cubist portraits of cyclists and Picasso's beach ball scenes).

On these grounds, the most introspective, serious and moving of all these posters has to be Fiona Banner's design for the Paralympics, a painted prose poem about the wonder of human, or superhuman, achievement.

Published online by theguardian 4.11.11