Ludlow Exhibition
Alex Malcolmson ‘Connections’
18th July – 22nd August 2020
“Over the last 40 years or so I have had the good fortune to be able to collect paintings, sculpture and ceramics by artists whose work I admire. I have been even more fortunate in getting to know some of the artists, so for this exhibition, along with the Gallery, I have invited a few of those I have had connections with to join me in showing at Twenty Twenty in Ludlow.
The art and objects that I live with inevitably have an effect on what I make myself and this is reflected, consciously and unconsciously, in the many different methods and media I use in my own work.
I use bits of old boats and found objects, as well as more conventional painting and carving techniques. My work, like the work I have collected, lies somewhere between painting and sculpture, art and craft, representation and abstraction. There are certain themes that I return to frequently; usually connected with watery places and often somewhere in a northerly direction.”
Alex Malcolmson July 2020
Lucy Casson studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and at the Hereford College of Art. Her work is highly collectable by private collectors and institutions including the Victoria & Albert Museum. She utilises various found objects; tin cans, sheet metal, wood and wire to create her wonderfully humorous pieces which are in essence three dimensional cartoons of everyday situations often involving endearingly naughty dogs.
“I observe. Some ideas stick and form themselves into the physical. Characters find objects and materials adapt. Humour seems to bubble up and arrive. Recently I have been incorporating ceramic elements, often in the form of stairs.”
Lucy Casson June 2020
Jonathan Christie (b.1969) grew up in South-West London before completing his Foundation at Kingston and his Degree at Maidstone. Jonathan lives in East Sussex and has exhibited his paintings and drawings throughout the United Kingdom.
‘Jonathan Christie’s paintings are all inspired by real places and objects, but in the memory, reimagined, conflated, obscured and elucidated. Deploying watercolour, graphite and sgraffito on a gesso board, he will incise, distress, glaze and wash, but always guided by the powerful impulse of drawing.
Christina Jansen, Managing Director, The Scottish Gallery
Mark Hearld was born in 1974. He studied illustration at Glasgow School of Art followed by an MA in Natural History Illustration at the Royal College of Art. Godfrey & Watt gave Mark his first exhibition in 2001.
His work is based on his observations of the natural world, influenced by mid twentieth century Neo-Romanticism and the gaiety of 1930s Modernism. He is inspired by British artists such as Eric Ravilious, John Piper and Edward Bawden. Mark’s practice extends across painting, collage, ceramics, sculpture and print. His long-standing collaborations with Simon Lewin from St.Judes have extended to exclusive designs for wallpaper and fabrics.
In 2015 as part of a major refurbishment of York City Art Gallery Mark was commissioned to curate one of the new galleries, it proved so popular that ‘The Lumber Room’ remained open for 2 years. In 2018 Mark curated the rehang of the British Folk Collection at Compton Verney.
Jason Hicklin’s work captures the feel of the weather and light and its effect on the landscape. All of Jason’s work is begun outdoors. Carrying the minimum of equipment, he will walk and climb the desired area for days and sometimes nights, often in extreme weather.
He describes working outdoors in these tense and exciting conditions as a tremendously connecting experience – feeling a part of the land itself. The result is a striking record of the elemental collisions between earth, sea and weather. He conveys the bleak essence of driving rain, when the mist closes down, and masters the polarities of bright skies and shadowed rocks.
Robina Jack creates both intricately patterned ceramics and paintings on found wood. Her work is informed by a childhood spent mucking around on an Oxfordshire farm and makes frequent nods to a vanished past.
Much of it is populated by a menagerie of characterful animals, from wistful horses to purposeful hens. Often a ship in full sail cuts across the waves somewhere between the viewer and a distant horizon, a nostalgic allusion to her family’s maritime connections and to a great grandfather who captained a transatlantic clipper during the reign of Victoria.
No piece is complete without an elaborately decorated border or two, Robina’s motto being, “why have only one border when there’s room for several more?”.
Nigel Lambert’s pots are both decorative and useful. He began his love of pottery and paintings whilst at art college in Cornwall. His interest in the work of abstract painters, particularly Roger Hilton ,Terry Frost, Patrick Heron and other artists from the Cornish peninsula; has influenced his work and the decorative marks he makes. His work is approached not as a painter, but as a potter.
Clay is the starting point. After the pots are thrown or pressed from flat sheets of clay, these are cut and re-formed into oval and square forms. They are dipped in a white clay slip, dried, and then coated with green, amber and clear glazes, which produces a flat surface on which the blue oxides are painted, with new and old brushes, and odd bits of sponge. Lines and motifs are often scratched through the blue, adding another narrative to the image.
Angie Lewin studied BA (Hons) Fine Art Printmaking at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, followed by a year’s postgraduate printmaking at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts.
She creates limited edition linocut, wood engraving, lithograph and screen prints – inspired by skeletal plant forms seen against the sea and sky of North Norfolk and Scotland where she now mainly lives and works.
As well as designing fabrics and stationery for St Jude’s, which she runs with her husband Simon, Angie has completed commissions for Penguin, Faber, Conran Octopus, Merrell and Picador as well as designing fabrics for Liberty.
In 2006 Angie Lewin was elected to The Royal Society of Painter Printmakers and in 2008 to The Society of Wood Engravers. In 2010 she was elected to The Art Workers Guild.
Guy Royle’s jewellery inhabits a space between the definitions of Art and Craft; mingling influences from both, yet never so far as becoming exclusively one or the other. Brooches are paintings in metal, necklaces are sculptures for the human form, while the tones, shades and textures of raw materials are his palette.
This combination of elements brings a timeless and natural quality to his work. What is more, Guy’s jewellery is graceful for its functionality; whatever beauty stems from his work, has derived, and is inseparable from its intent to be worn.
Emily Sutton was born in North Yorkshire and studied at Edinburgh College of Art and Rhode Island School of Design. Since graduating in 2008, Emily’s art works, sculptures and designs have been much sought-after. She has had major solo exhibitions at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh and is also well known for her illustration work, mostly for children’s books.
David AP Thomas trained at Cheltenham, Cardiff & Leeds art schools and has lived and painted for 30 years on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, where he lives with his wife, the ceramicist Anna Lambert. Quiet observation is central to his practice. David AP Thomas paints still-lifes as a means to explore formal and spatial qualities.
The work is a record of the slow, incremental nature of looking, as well as being exquisite, architectonic paintings that are both reflective and connective.
Paul Young’s ceramics are a modern continuation of the Staffordshire slipware tradition overlaid with influences of European folk art and humour.
“I make a range of Domestic and Decorative Earthenware ceramics using a combination both thrown and hand building techniques.
My inspirations are drawn from the Glorious English Folk Arts and wider European traditions. Making reference to many historical pieces my aim is to convey a joy and a narrative a sense of humour and naivete very often found in early English ceramics.”
Paul Young
