Exhibitions
Raw Gestures
Saturday 27th February- Saturday 20th March.
Art 1821 kicks off its 2010 season with the work of Alec Cumming, John Midgely and Frank Pond. The exhibition includes a collection of work by Terry Frost.
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2010 Opening Show
Monday 4th January- Wednesday 24th February.
The Art 18/21 Gallery begins 2010 with a dynamic and exciting exhibition that brings together a wide ranging selection of well established and emerging artists, including sculpture, painting, printmaking and installation. The exhibition showcases the work of Alan Davie, Jason Gathorne- Hardy, Derek Morris, Ana Maria Pacheco, Eduardo Paolozzi, Colin Self and Jeremy Taylor amongst others.
Festive Cornucopia
Mon 30th Nov - Thur 24th Dec
A sumptuous cornucopia of wondourous things, including work by:
Peter Baldwin, Jason Gathorne-Hardy, Derek Morris, Jeremy Taylor, Andrew Schumann, Ian Starsmore, Derek Morris, Trevor Bell, Sonia Delaunay, Terry Frost, Alan Davie, John Hoyland, Piranesi, David Roberts, James Stark, Craigie Aitchson & many, many, more ...
Colin Self - Springs Fireplace Road
24th Oct - 21st Nov
“Sometimes I like to go out. Sometimes I stay indoors and get things done.”
David Bowie
Springs Fireplace Road is the title of the suite of etchings. Printed by Maurice Payne, we worked well together at Editions Alecto (1968-1971) and then drifted our own ways. A chance meeting in the 1990s reconnected us briefly and years later Maurice visited after holidaying in Norfolk and expressed that he’d love to, “Print anything” of mine. He printed some of my distressed Slade School student plates with a rare empathy, sensitive, semi-cleaned. The prints were startling, exact, rich. Delivering them, he left a number of different sized new plates repeating the offer.
I could simply ‘fall out of bed’, remain in my indoors, daydreaming, subjective state of mind and work – away from the printhouses, cities, studios and everything of the outer macro world. In a state of reflective ‘owing nothing to anyone’, as personal and non-competitive as a diary.
Some of these etchings are based on drawings created during the run in to my Retrospective exhibition in 2008, where I found myself having to make drawings relatively quickly since work would have to be abandoned to contribute fresh energies to the exhibition. They took on a character of their own and some became the point of departure of etchings in this suite.
I seem to work like I imagine a classical composer works at a symphony. Separate parts making a whole. Prelude, pastoral, crescendo, climax, soft, loud – different instruments orchestrating the overall vision. Different and all necessary moods, sounds, colours – but as one interconnecting overall piece. The weight of double base, kettle drums giving way to the triangle.
Since I parted company with monetarist Tin Pan Alley’s ‘discover them, work them then drop them’ constraints of London gallery art dealers, my works and exhibitions span painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, ceramics, etchings etc, as a composer embraces the instruments of the orchestra. Were someone, cryptically, to say some of these etchings are ‘easy’….well, that’s exactly what some of them are – the triangle in the orchestra.
I think these new etchings are about serendipity. The antithesis of ‘getting to the point’, having no apparent logic or theme. The backwater, which no matter what else goes on in worlds of speculation, hype, investment, money, power and fashion, simply remains true, constant.
I’d shyly retreated to the furthest corner of the Slade’s old antiques room in my first year to paint and make small etchings. In this suite, Springs Fireplace Road, I have naturally returned to the same ways I made those first term, shy Slade School etchings.
I never got the hard, over energised testosterone loud music of Bruce Springsteen. But after years of perennial burnout music he retreated to Nebraska to reflect on his life, re-energise and produced an acoustic guitar collection of more humble, sensitive songs. If there’s something of that in this project I’ll be happy.
Maurice Payne has a studio on Springs Fireplace Road in East Hampton, Long Island, USA. Questioning the name with Maurice he replied, “The ‘Fireplace’ was where in the past, bonfires were lit at night to guide in pirates like Captain Kidd and Bluebeard. Later, Maurice mentioned that Jackson Pollock had his studio, “50 yards down the road”. And the tree Jackson Pollock crashed into still stands by the roadside. So, by more serendipity Springs Fireplace Road has to be the name of this suite.
Colin Self, October 2009
Letters Home
Letters Home
Thursday 9 July - Saturday 1 August 2009
.... brings 'home' to norwich a group of NSAD (NUCA) visual art graduates, showcasing their latest work. The exhibition also features work by Ana Maria Pacheco who was Head of Fine Art at the school during the 1980's .....
image: Dan Bissonnet, new work, digital image mounted onto aluminium
Please contact the Gallery for an invitation to the Preview Evening
All artworks are for sale. A special publication Collected Essays which presents texts on the work of Ana Maria Pacheco (published by Pratt Contemporary Art, 2004) will also be on sale at the exhibition.
The Point of Perception
FORTHCOMING
Madi Boyd was recently awarded an arts grant from the Wellcome Trust for a project where she will collaborate with neuroscientists based at UCL, London; (Mark Lythgoe, Beau Lotto and Mark Miodownick). The project, entitled 'The point of perception' will result in an art piece based on research into the ambiguity of perception. Specifically, the team wish to investigate the tipping point for ambiguity in perception- the exact point at which there is sufficient visual information for the brain to comprehend what it is looking at. This will be researched with respect to form, depth and colour and will involve several art experiment events held in galleries in London and at the 18/21 gallery. The work will lie on the cusp between an art experience and a scientific experiment. The public will be invited to attend and provide vital research data from their responses to the work. A symposium to discuss the relevance of the project in the context of 'neuroart' will be organised by Helen Anderson, Phd student and lecturer at UEA, Norwich and Ben Martynoga, research scientist at MRC, London.
Madi works mainly in installation art- fusing film and built environments to create original and often mesmerising experiences. She essentially sculpts light - a blank canvas being a pitch-dark room. She has long been fascinated with all aspects of the brain, perception and the connection between seeing and knowing. Recently Madi exhibited in London at the Crypt Gallery, St. Pancras. The group show entitled Illumini", featured 14 artists who use light as a medium of expression or important element in their work. It was a highly successful show, which attracted over 7000 visitors in two weeks. The event was critics’ choice in Time Out and featured in the Daily Telegraph, and Madi's work was very favourably reviewed. As a result 6 of the artists subsequently exhibited in Langthorne Park, east London as part of the launch of the Cultural Olympiad in the run up to the 2012 Olympics.
More of Madi’s work can be seen at
http://www.illuminievent.co.uk/ and http://madiboyd.com/home.html.com
Conundrum
Press Release Conundrum- Ernst Nicol
Art 18/21 is delighted to present ‘Conundrum’, a solo show of recent works by Norwich based Printmaker Ernst Nicol, long time exhibiter of the Norwich Print Fair and much respected and admired Print technician at NUCA.
Conundrum: The solo show will host a wide selection of Nicol’s intensely atmospheric Etchings and Engravings, meticulously etched and printed by Nicol himself. Nicol’s background in etching and engraving goes back 30 years, tutored by the likes of Norman Ackroyd, Leonard Marchant and Keith Howard. As a result Nicol’s current work is undoubtedly executed with masterful skill, knowledge and expertise in the mediums of intaglio printmaking.
Nicol’s imagery attempts to ‘freeze’ a fraction of time in which light reveals a detailed glimpse of the whole, which offers the audience an entrance to fantastical portals of uninhabited environments. We are confronted with mind warping labyrinths riddled in timeless decay, sublime, isolated architectural spaces caught by transient shafts of light, and a glimpse of the solitary creatures that dwell in these long forgotten environments.
Conundrum promises to be a mesmeric exhibition, filled with mysterious worlds, pictorial puzzles and an insight into the alchemical processes and results of traditional and modern intaglio printmaking.
An Absence of Windmills: Part I. Diverse Practice in East- Anglian Art
An Absence of Windmills: Part I
Diverse practice in East-Anglian art
East Anglia is rightly acknowledged for its rich artistic heritage, stemming back to the days of the Norwich school of painters in the 1800’s. Two hundred years later, beneath the surface of this well-trodden landscape, the astute art collector can discover the presence of a number of art practitioners producing an exciting and diverse range of artworks within this East-Anglian landscape.
In its latest exhibition, Art 18/21 celebrates the diverse practice of some of the leading artists working within our region. Moving from the impeccably crafted and aesthetically enticing conceptual works of Andrew Schumann, to the large, initially challenging multi-media canvases of Rhonda Whitehead’s latest series, the viewer is invited to ‘touch with the eyes’. By contrast, the playful scenes expertly captured by the illustrative work of Helen Herbert and David Jones, toy with the pleasure of the everyday. Interspersed within the space are Mark Ward’s monumental and overtly ‘in your face’ colourful canvases depicting the unreal in a realist manner. Memories are questioned as the animals in his images appear to hang, suspended in reality. Eventually your eyes will rest appreciatively on the skilfully executed works of Peter Baldwin and Jeremy Taylor, two artists where the formal aspect in their work enthralls the viewer with the capacity to hold and intrigue the gaze.
An Absence of Windmills: Part I shows at the Art 18/21 Gallery from Saturday 30 May until Wednesday 1 July. All artworks are for sale with prices from £100 to £10.000.