Showing posts with label Meldreth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meldreth. Show all posts

Sunday 18 November 2012

Svetlana steals the show

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


18 November



Lovely and legendary artist Svetlana Baibekova from St Petersburg will have a solo show this December at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth


Living in Cambridge and a member of Cambridge Drawing Society, Svetlana has the distinction of having one of her fish paintings (shown here) being admired so much that a young man stole it from one of the society's exhibitions in The Guildhall in 2009 to give to his girlfriend (as reported by Raymond Brown of Cambridge News, and on Anglia News)






After a very successful joint show held at Michaelhouse in Cambridge this autumn, and Burnished Burgundy, a recent solo display in Ely, as well as exhibiting previously in several venues in Cambridge, Edinburgh, London and her native Russia, Svetlana offers this change to become familiar with and immerse onself in the captivating universes that are her painted work




The exhibition will be open between 12.00 and 5.00 every day from Friday 7 December until Sunday 16 December, with a private viewing on the evening of Thursday 6 December from 7.00 till 9.30




The Tavern Gallery, so called because it occupies the premises of the former Railway Tavern in Meldreth, is easily accessible by transport from Cambridge or from Royston (and beyond), because its station is on the King's Cross to Cambridge line, and the gallery is a few hundred yards away from where one alights


Friday 17 February 2012

Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society

Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


17 February

Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society




It’s unmistakably someone whom you know – they say that people divided as to whether they supported The Stones or The Beatles, but I think that I just happen to know the former less well, so I would have struggled to find the name of Ronnie Wood, but I knew the connection. (Saying that, it’s alleged that people have trouble naming all of the Fab Four straight off: Can you do it?)

Which is not the sine qua non of a good portrait, that it should resemble the person who sat for it, as Picasso [may have] proved, but this one is a striking likeness, and I think that, as with the divide just mentioned, there might be those who dislike the schematic of the colours and textures employed, whereas others will be very pleased with it.

To judge for yourself, it is one of the most obvious works on entering The Tavern Gallery, and be informed that this show welcomes visitors between 10.00 and 4.00 from Wednesday to Sunday, with its last day on Sunday 26 February.


The rest of what I shall share here, in the form of my attempts at producing images of some of the other sixty-three framed works, is almost inevitably my taste, as why would I choose something that I don’t like – OK, that didn’t stop me with my major dislike of The Future (to which the series of postings The Future or How do you choose a satisfying film? bear testimony) - when I can enthuse over something that I do? Sorry about that, but the breadth of what is on show (and Val Pettifer, to whom I talked about it there yesterday afternoon, tells me that there are probably around another one hundred unframed works) means that I have to start somewhere, so I have selected a few things as representative of the whole.

So why not start with a figurative piece (which, you will see, has sold)? Winter Fox by Rosalind Ridley (which was priced at £110), next to which I have dared to place Beth Hardwicke's Winter Scene after Lu Cheng-Yuan, priced at £95*.









Other than the season, the works, in feel (let alone technique), have nothing in common- which is my point, that there is much to please in the variety of approaches. Moving on, as if promenading through the gallery in Mussorgsky's suite for piano...

I am a sucker for this view towards Santa Maria Della Salute (which Dennis Langridge has called The Grand Canal, Venice and put on sale for £70), and I have contrasted its colours with those in A Solitary Existence by Val Pettifer, which sold at [price to come].






















... And so on to the landscape in watercolour, juxtaposing The Ouse Washes by Norman Rushton (on sale at £55) with Derek Bunting's West Highlands, which is £38.

And for a finishing-touch, as I really don't want to say any more, or display further inadequate attempts to capture the spirit of these works (which words can only hint at), View through Crumbling Cottage by Caroline Fookes for £75, and which very much puts me in mind of the artistic interests of a painter friend of mine.























End-notes

* I do apologize for the lack of quality in the images that I have made of Beth and Rosalind's images (and of those that follow), but it is down partly to trying to avoid unwelcome reflection, but largely to the inadequacy of the photographic device (a camera on a phone) - the aim is to give an idea of what is on offer to see, not to substitute for going to Meldreth.



Thursday 3 November 2011

Nicola Malet at The Tavern Gallery (Meldreth)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)



4 November

I was very glad to be able to make it to-night to the private view of the new show at my friend David's gallery, the work of textile artist Nicola Malet. (On the invitation, David calls it multi-media textiles, which also seems OK as a description.)



One of Nicola's points of departure for creating this very varied display of her work - there is a long wall of the gallery where almost every piece is different in feel (not sure if one was invited to touch, so I didn't, but these works have a tactile as well as visual quality) and compositional make-up - is a tour that she made of South East Asia, and the interest that it gave her in the plants (leaves and flowers) that she had seen.

Another (because Nicola has gained a degree in this sort of art) was the colour and characteristics of all the fabric that she saw, presumably both on sale and in clothing being worn. When I asked her what her guiding light was in juxtaposing fabrics, as, for example, she has done in a long vertical canvas, she told me that it was a visual sense of what goes with what. (I say 'canvas', not because it is painted, but because, as artists like her do, there is a strong sense of a coherent unity that is much more than the sum of the individual elements.)



As I hope that I have already indicated, there is a wealth of techniques employed from subtle gold shadings that bring out the texture to a filigree-like overlay using machine embroidery that gives a multi-dimensional sense of depth and complexity. I could say more, but this needs to be looked at, not described!

What can be described, though, is Nicola's thoughtful inventiveness and belief in her own work when talking to her, which is there to see at The Tavern Gallery, Station Road, Meldreth, till, I believe, 18 November - if a visit is possible at the weekend, there is a good chance of talking to Nicola about her exhibition, too...