New paintings by Amy Dennis
Painter Amy Dennis has a new exhibition of paintings at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh from 6th February to 1st March 2014.
Born in 1977, Amy studied Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art from 1996-2000. She's interested in the landscape as a stage and creates composite images with still life objects and observed views.
For this latest exhibition, she has painted landscapes and gardens around Edinburgh using the ancient medium of egg tempera on Italian gesso and more experimental techniques.
Amy was the third prize-winner of the Jolomo/Bank of Scotland award for Scottish landscape painting in 2013.
View further examples of the paintings Amy will be exhibiting over at The Scottish Gallery website.
The Scottish Gallery, 16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ.
RAMP
Visitors to my Yorkshire Sculpture Park show might have spotted the work of our friends Roop and Al Johnstone in the YSP Shop. RAMP make a range of functional and one-off decorative pieces in both earthenware and porcelain.
Roop and Al have just worked on this film with Jim Le Fevre and Mike Paterson, commissioned by the Crafts Council.
Find out more about RAMP's work - and if you visit my exhibition at Yorkshire Scuplture Park, look out for some of their pieces in the YSP shop.
Clare Leighton
December 10th 2013 sees the opening of Clare Leighton: Working Life at The Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.
The artist Clare Leighton (1898-1989) was best known for her wood-engravings illustrating rural life in England, Europe and the USA. She illustrated over 65 books, as well as writing and illustrating her own books such as ‘The Farmer’s Year: A Calendar of English Husbandry’ (1933) and ‘Four Hedges: A Gardener’s Chronicle' (1935).
In 1952 Leighton was commissioned by Wedgwood to create a series of 12 wood engravings to be transfer-printed onto dinner plates. These were on the theme of traditional industries in New England.
Several of the original wood blocks and plates will form part of the exhibition.
View more images of these plates over at Flotsam & Jetsam, a blog by Simon Martin, artistic director of the Pallant House Gallery.
Clare Leighton: Working Life is in the De’Longhi Print Room at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester UK from 10th December 2013 - 24th February 2014 Find out more
Water of Life
Available for pre-order and shipping from early December is this beautiful audio/print package from Water Of Life, limited to 300 copies.
Tommy Perman - artist and musician (formerly of FOUND) and Rob St. John - environmental writer and musician - began the Water of Life project in June 2013, aiming to use water as a divining rod for exploring ideas of 'naturalness' in Edinburgh’s urban environment. Water of Life is an alternative travelogue, where water is a conduit for exploring new geographies: field notes from a liquid city.
Recordings made with hydrophone, ambient and contact microphone recordings of rivers, spring houses, manhole covers, pub barrel rooms, pipelines and taps are mixed with the peals and drones of 1960s transistor organs, harmoniums, Swedish micro-synths, drum machines and iPads: a blend of the natural and unnatural; modern and antiquated; hi-fi and lo-fi. Drum beats were sampled from underwater recordings, and reverbs created using the convolution reverb technique to recreate the sonic space of different bodies of water.
The package comprises: a letterpressed folder on recycled card, a 7" record pressed on recycled vinyl and a set of essays by Rob and prints by Tommy exploring the themes of the project, riso printed using soy inks on recycled paper.
Pre-order one of the 300 limited edition packages online and find out more about the Water Of Life project.
Alex Malcolmson: Seamarks
This weekend sees the opening on an exhibition of recent box constructions by Shetland born Alex Malcolmson, made mainly from wood; carved and painted, sometimes using found materials.
The ‘boxworks’ of Joseph Cornell are an inspiration to Malcolmson, in addition to the works created by Picasso when he used collected items from his studio environment. Malcolmson is an experienced sailor and has voyaged aboard the Bessie Ellen, a traditional West Country wooden sailing ketch built in 1904, to Denmark and Sweden, sketching and absorbing the details of the ship. Other strands of interest for Malcolmson lie in architecture, charts, ship dioramas, lighthouses, and marine folk art.
The slatted birds started with the idea of an upturned boat; a motif he has used in other ways, drawing on the tradition of decoy making. Folk, naïve and primitive art; the kind of objects made for use and ornament, often by unnamed makers, is the main source of ideas for the work featured in this exhibition Seamarks.
The exhibition opens on Monday 11th November and runs until 25th November 2013. There is an opening event on Saturday 9th November 2013 from 12pm until 2pm.
Open Eye Gallery, 34 Abercromby Place, Edinburgh EH3 6QE. Visit the Open Eye website.
If you're unable to visit Edinburgh, Alex Malcolmson will be exhibiting alongside Angie Lewin at our next St. Jude's In The City exhibition in London in May 2014. Sign up to our newsletter for details nearer the time.
Water of Life
On 7th and 8th November 2013, Water Of Life collaborators Rob St. John and Tommy Perman will perform at Summerhall, Edinburgh at a night curated by Folklore Tapes called Echo of Light.
Rob and Tommy will play music from their upcoming 7″, essay and print release, using recordings made with hydrophone, ambient and contact microphone recordings of rivers, spring houses, manhole covers, pub barrel rooms, pipelines and taps, mixed with the peals and drones of a 1960s transistor organ, harmonium, Swedish micro-synth, drum machine and iPad: a blend of the natural and unnatural; modern and antiquated; hi-fi and lo-fi. Drum beats have been sampled from underwater recordings, and reverbs created using the convolution reverb technique to recreate the sonic space of different bodies of water.
The performances will accompany screenings of the 1964 film ‘Rain on the Roof’, an Edinburgh Water Corporation production featuring a forward-looking blend of pastoral, mechanical and futurist visions for the city’s aquatic landscapes. The film has been specially digitised by the Scottish Screen Archive for this rare screening.
The Water Of Life project will feature in our forthcoming Random Spectacular #2 journal. Find out more about RS#1 and sign up for details of the next issue.
Full details of Rob and Tommy's performance in Edinburgh can be found on the Summerhall website.
Eric Ravilious: Prints
Another treat for fans of the work of Eric Ravilious is this exhibition of prints by the celebrated artist and designer which runs until 8th December 2013.
Ravilious' career was cut short by his untimely death in 1942 whilst on an Air Sea Rescue mission off the coast of Iceland in the course of his duties as an official War Artist.
Acknowledged in his lifetime as a master wood-engraver and exceptional artist/lithographer, the exhibition explores Ravilious' development as a printmaker, offering insights into his methods and placing his work in the context of British art, design and industry between the wars.
Simon Martin, Curator, says: "Together with Edward Bawden and Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious was one of the most important printmakers working in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. His animated sense of rhythm, line and visual decoration give his prints a playful sense of design, whether as black and white wood engravings, colour lithographs, or as transfers on the ceramics that he designed for Wedgwood."
The exhibition runs until 8th December 2013 in the De' Longhi Print Room at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. Find out more
