All Things Considered

Rob Ryan

Rob popped along to the opening of our latest exhibition on Saturday to have a chat about his show with us in November.

We're real fans of Rob Ryan's work - and it's great to have a chance to work with him. We'll have a range of Rob's prints on show - along with some of his tiles and examples of his design work. And - fingers crossed - we'll have a 2008 St. Jude's charity Christmas card designed by Rob.

If you'd like to receive an invitation to the opening of the exhibition, please sign up for our gallery newsletter.

There was a great article about Rob's work in a recent copy of the Independent by Clare Dwyer Hogg:

"The narrow back streets of east London make an ideal wind tunnel on a cold spring morning. There is little to this landscape other than old buildings, a deserted park, and a corner shop or two. But this façade belies the mills of creativity that are churning away behind closed doors. This is studio land, where artists have set up residence, toiling away behind crumbling walls and rickety doors."

Read the full article online

Modern British Posters

Last week I finally made it to this excellent exhibition of British posters from the middle part of the 20th century.

The exhibition features work by Edward Wadsworth, Paul Nash, Edward Bawden, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Abram Games and Tom Eckersley amongst others - all from the private collection of Paul and Karen Rennie.

Paul had previously introduced me to many of the artists and designers whose work is exhibited - and the show acts as the perfect introduction to the genre, as Paul Rennie explains:

"The evolution of British graphic design, from 1920, onwards has usually been presented as a footnote to developments in Europe. These posters show a graphic language of range and sophistication emerging in Britain and able to communicate beyond the established rhetoric of advertising and sales."

The exhibition runs until the 17th of May at the Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins, Southampton Row, WC1. You can also view this slideshow of the work being exhibited. Highly recommended.

Sarah Ball

This weekend sees the opening of our latest exhibition at St. Jude's, featuring paintings by Sarah Ball and Lucy Edward's handbuilt pots.

Sarah Ball grew up in South Yorkshire and having studied illustration at Newport Art College she was then based in London, working as an illustrator for a range of high profile clients.

Since 1995 Sarah has been living in South Wales and concentrating on her painting, currently producing small scale works inspired by the landscapes of Cornwall and Wales.

"The Coast series takes the colours, light and coastline of North Cornwall as their inspiration. Cornwall has been a tangible, physical presence in my life since childhood - Yellow gorse, green sea, wet moor land pasture, rooftop lichen, can all be found within these coast paintings, which also draw influence from painters such as Ben Nicholson and William Scott. "

If you're in Norfolk on Saturday 3rd May, join us for a glass of wine between 11am and 4pm.

View examples of the work we'll be exhibiting online.

Detour: Moleskine Exhibitions

I wish my selection of battered and half used Moleskine books were just a tiny bit as exciting at the ones featured at Detour, an exhibition of thirty three personal Moleskine notebooks of artists, writers, designers and illustrators of international acclaim. Sadly mine are just filled with shopping lists and to-do's that slowly get done.

Over the past two years, Detour has been held in London and New York, and this years exhibition is taking place, right now in Paris at Printemps Design Boutique at the Centre Pompidou, until 19th May. The exhibition will move on next to Berlin and in 2009 it will be in Venice, Istanbul, etc...

There is also MyDetour, where notebook submissions are open to anyone . The chosen books are displayed on-line and off-line in Paris. You can view pages from notebooks on Flickr, or you can look at videos of Detour artists notebooks via YouTube. It's quite addictive - and very inspiring.

If you feel motivated to get illustrating, we sell a variety of Moleskine's at St. Jude's Gallery.

Eric Ravilious and the Towner Art Gallery

Our friend Emma Mason is busy helping to raise funds for the Eastbourne's new Towner Art Gallery which is due to open this year.

Having studied and taught at Eastbourne School of Art, Eric Ravilious' work is a key element of the Collection. The Towner holds the broadest collection of paintings, illustrations and commercial designs in the world by this important, modern British artist of the early 20th century.

The New Towner Trust has launched the special limited edition sale of the rarely seen Lombardy Poplars, a watercolour by Eric Ravilious. The Ravilious Family and the Private Owner have given special permission for  this painting to be reproduced to help raise funds for the New Towner Trust.  The giclee print is available unfamed for £295 including delivery in the UK and framed for £395 including delivery within the UK.

For further details on purchasing this print, please e-mail Emma Mason.

Devon Guild of Craftsmen

The Devon Guild of Craftsmen looks like an interesting place to visit. The South West educational arts charity, based at the edge of Dartmoor, acquired the Riverside Mill in 1986 and in 2004 the refurbished Mill was completed. The renovated Mill includes a exhibition space, cafe and shop.

Anna Trussler from the Devon Guild of Craftsmen sent an email last week informing me of an exhibition titled 'Reclaiming Beauty' which using Anna's words, is about 're making and mutating found objects.

The show will include artists and craftsmen who work with materials such as textiles, fashion accessories, furniture and metal. For those of you who enjoy the beauty of Lucy Casson and Julie Arkell work, they will be able to enjoy their take on reclaiming beauty. The exhibition runs from 3rd May to 15th June.

Tinsmiths

Friday night saw the opening of a new exhibition in Ledbury. Hosted by our friends at Tinsmiths, it was a bit of a first for us - combining the printed work of Angie and Mark Hearld with the fabrics they've designed.

Phoebe and everyone at Tinsmiths had done a fantastic job of hanging the work in what is an almost domestic setting - all housed in a thoroughly modern showroom designed and built by Alex Clive.

We've always had an instinctive sense of exactly what St. Jude's is all about and why we set it up in the first place - but it was great to walk in another space and seeing how our work has been interpreted. Inspirational.

The exhibition runs until 12th April 2008 and you can view the work online. In addition, any personal callers to Tinsmiths can enjoy a 10% discount on our St. Jude's printed fabrics when purchased by the metre.

Aylsham, Banksy and Tesco

Not  necessarily three words you'd expect to see together in the title of a blog. But bear with me.

Secretive grafitti artist Banksy has just struck again - with this work on the side of a pharmacy in London's Essex Road (which, coincidentally, I used to walk past every day).

We assume that the image of two small children pledging allegiance to Tesco is tongue in cheek!

Tesco have recently started building their new store on the edge of Aylsham and only time will tell how much of an impact this has on the town.

But there are some positive campaigns going on in the town - the ongoing promotion of Aylsham's Cittaslow status and the recently launched project to make Aylsham Norfolk's first plastic bag free town as of 3rd May 2008.

We've always used paper bags at the gallery, but we're still pleased to be supporting the scheme - which for us is as much about the general principle of recycling.

Find out more about the project.

Folk Art and Shelf Appeal

Since writing about Julie Arkell last month, I have received a number of emails from other admirers of her work, telling me about exhibitions that she is currently involved with.

The Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown, Powys is currently running a touring exhibition called Folk Art and Fairy Tales, which examines the crossover between craft and other art forms. Work by Julie, Lucy Casson and Cathy Miles amongst other innovative artists, will be showing at various towns and cities across the UK. The show is currently being held at the Harley Gallery, Worksop, Nottinghamshire. Click to find the touring dates and venues.

Jane Audas, the author of the article in Embroidery magazine where I first saw Julie’s work, also got in touch to let me know that you can usually find Julie’s work at the Contemporary Applied Arts shop. Writer and museum curator Jane, also keeps a blog called Shelf Appeal, ‘A blog about things, anything you can put on a shelf’. It’s a fantastic design journal, where Jane documents really interesting observations and quirky finds, where and when she is inspired to do so.

Newspaper House

Later this month, a hundred  volunteers will be off gathering newspapers from public places across London so that artist, Sumer Erek can build a 'house' from the collected broadsheets and tabloids.

The reason for this is project, organised by Creative City is to raise awareness to the amount of paper that is strewn and disgarded around our cities on a daily basis. I read that approximately nine and half tonnes of freebie papers were collected off the tubes every day.

Once all the papers have been gathered they will be rolled into tubes, and fixed together to form the newspaper house. The installation will be held at Gillet Square, Hackney from the 3rd - 9th March.

If you'd like to apply for a volunteering paper collection role taking place on February 27th, click here. To follow the projects progress visit www.newspaperhouse.blogspot.com