The Third Newsletter
Hello and welcome back!!
This is the third edition of our newsletter, in this months edition we will cover:
Chattering Thoughts, The tufting endeavour, Autumn brings us indoors and what are we to do, The Controversial Carrot Dump and new card online as well as new limited edition prints!
Chattering Thoughts
Chattering Thoughts has been one of most noticed works in the gallery, with its deep background and layered details it allows you to build your own narrative through the already present characters. I am therefore excited to say that this piece will be exhibited in the 159th Online Open Exhibition of The Society of Women Artists.
So what was the inspiration behind the painting? Chattering Thoughts reflects George Perc notion of The Everyday it is an expressionism of the act walking with the motive to capture stolen sentences from the passer-by. The use of negative space in the piece reflects the missing words and phrases, the enigma of a stolen sentence. The layers of narrative that you can see is another act of weaving these dissociated fragments into a complete form.
The exhibition is now open online for everyone, if you would like to check it out click here, it also includes a public vote where you can choose Chattering Thoughts or any of the other pieces in the show for a prize.
The Tufting Endeavour
Within our first newsletter, I mentioned a new endeavour of mine, tufting! It has taken me some time to build the skills needed to create high quality and well crafted pieces for the gallery. This has gone through many methods: YouTube, articles and advise from friends, here I would like to thank Karolina please go check out their tufts and all their brilliant pieces via Instagram @karolinkkasworska.
I am now excited to say that I have created a handful of tufted works which I am more then happy with and they along with some other work will be appearing in the gallery by the end of this month.
Autumn brings us indoors and what are we to do?
So it has just got incredibly cold and rainy! If you are like me, it means that it is time to shut the doors, put on all your woolly jumpers and get to all of those skills you have been putting off learning. But this autumn things might be a little different, due to COVID more opportunities are available from the comfort of our own homes.
Over the lockdown, many institutions and companies had to take another look at their methods of teaching and peer learning, this lead to many more online art based courses. Taking part in courses like these is a great way to keep involved with the arts over the winter months as we may face more local lockdowns, or even just some rather unpleasant weather.
Here are some links to keep an eye on:
The Royal Drawing School , The Essential School of Painting , Toast , The Royal Academy
The month of October is host to The Big Draw, the worlds biggest drawing festival! It is organised by the charity Campaign for Drawing, there are lots of events happening up and down the country to keep an eye on. And many artist are drawing everyday and posting it to their social media accounts, which is quite a fun way to get involved from home. Find out more here .
The Controversial Carrot Dump.
As I have previously mentioned, I am an alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London, which has once again made the News for something rather unusual.
As of Tuesday the 29th of September if you google the words goldsmiths and carrots you will find 29 tons of carrots deposited outside of the art department. These carrots (and some potatoes) were surplus. They, therefore, would not be accepted by UK supermarkets. The work is titled Grounding created by Spanish-Welsh artist Rafael Perez Evans. Who states via his website that this it is "a site-specific intervention exploring some of the tensions in visibility between the rural and the city" (check out his full description here).
This work quickly became controversial. Initially, many thought that the carrots were to be left to rot, mimicking a form of protest used by predominantly French framers. However, this is not the case, although these protests are an inspiration for the work, the artist claims they will be collected and fed to livestock. Thought this now brings into account the environmental issue of livestock farming.
But let us stay more local to this piece. The biggest issue or at least the most commonly discussed is the concept that this is a waste in its self, Lewisham is one of the most deprived boroughs of London, many of its residents rely on food banks which through COVID have been low in stock and/or closing. The work, therefore, comes across as wildly insensitive to its location, making the alumni, students, Goldsmiths staff and the general public simply angry. An in true goldsmith fashion they have taken protest in the form of vegan baking. They have taken carrots from the pile to make soup and cakes which are now being sold next to the carrot pile. The money made from this endeavour will be donated to the Trussell Trust having already made over £900.
Now that I have told you the story I am going to leave it to you to make up your minds on whether this is Art or Waste or something else entirely (as I have a somewhat skewed perspective). Yet I will leave you with this it did work whether it was the artists' original message and intention or not, it has brought a discussion to the table.
Cards Online and Limited Edition Prints
Last month we were working hard to bring you some different limited edition prints and put our cards online… I am now happy to say we have done exactly that, welcoming to our website our base collections 1 and 2 as well as our landscape and narrative collection. We have also created prints of Spun Moments of Sentiment, Bird In a Bush and Between White Walls and Dark Skies We Share, which will be in the gallery and online soon!