All Things Considered

Jelly Festival 2009
Posted by Kate Sullivan

The second annual Jelly Festival 2009 takes place tomorrow at Compton Hall, South Creake, Norfolk. This year there will be more stalls, bigger acts, an acoustic stage and camping.

Headlining the festival are The Bays, a group of four musicians who improvise live dance music.

“What drives this band is a need to communicate with their audience in a way not possible with traditional live bands. There are no ‘songs’ as such to perform, there’s no album to promote, and there are no commercial imperatives at play. The Bays only perform live, they never rehearse, they don’t have a set-list and they couldn’t ever do the same performance twice. It’s all about the moment – an experience or an event that exists between the band and the audience for one time only.”

Also playing are 6ix Toys, Yimino, The Sleeping Years, Boy-Com, Peas and Swede Lil Rice and The Three Beards who I recently saw at Norwich Arts Centre – an Eastern European foot stomping Cossack sound.

Tickets are available on the gate from midday at £17.50 (£27.50 camping). Children under 12 accompanied by an adult go free. Contributions are made to the Spinal Injuries Association. Photo of The Bays by Tom Oldham.

Posted by Kate Sullivan on July 31st, 2009

Eric Ravilious’ High Street
Posted by Simon Lewin

Can you help identify the restaurant below?

Seventy years ago Country Life Books published High Street, a children's book of shops, featuring twenty-four exquisite lithographs by the English artist Eric Ravilious (1903-1942). The book wasn't a limited edition, but the destruction of the lithographic plates during the Blitz meant that only 2000 copies were ever printed. Subsequently High Street has become one of the most highly-prized artist's books of its time.

In "The Story of High Street" Mainstone Press have tried to locate the whereabouts of Eric Ravilious' 24 businesses and shop fronts in their wonderful limited edition book that reproduces the original lithographs and text of High Street, along with essays, preparatory sketches and drawings.

One of the locations that proved elusive was the 'Restaurant and Grill Room'. Does anyone recognise this room with it's distinctive five or six sided skylight?

J. M. Richards, the author of High Street tells us that ... "All the pictures are of real shops, though they are not in fact all in the same street. Most of them are in London, but except for those of a very specialised kind - such as the shop that sells fire-engines and the one that sells diving suits - you could find shops like these in almost any big enough town".

So where was this London restaurant? The first person who can help successfully identify the location will receive a copy of the 'The Story of High Street', worth £160.00. Please contact us if you can help.

Posted by Simon Lewin on July 30th, 2009

Salthouse 09
Posted by Angie Lewin

Better late than never, we made it over to Salthouse yesterday to catch the end of this year's Salthouse 09 art festival.

Salthouse Church is not a typical  venue for  a contemporary art exhibition but every summer this 15th century building on its elevated coastal site becomes an exciting exhibition space. This year’s guest curator is Simon Martin, senior curator at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester.

This year’s theme, ‘Salt of the Earth’ has been interpreted by a wide range of artists and brought together to create an inspiring exhibition. There's so much good work here - a series of six strong, simple linocuts by Jo Hincks, two large scale confident charcoal portraits of local fishermen by Malca Schotten which hang either side of a large sculpture by Ana Maria Pacheco (below) and around the font is Beth Marie Groom’s installation of terracotta multiples in the form of life-rings - a reponse to the lives saved by her ancestor who was both a fisherman and lifeboat man.

The churchyard is dotted with sculptures including Miriam Grey's ‘Red, Roe, Fallow’ - three sculptures made of carved wood and salt-licks. Made to be licked by wild deer, they will only last a season or two while they are transformed into organic forms shaped by the animals’ tongues.

The exhibition runs until the 2nd of August at Salthouse Church on the North Norfolk coast.

Posted by Angie Lewin on July 28th, 2009

The Balvenie
Posted by Simon Lewin

Consultancy Here Design have been working on the redesign of packaging for Speyside's The Balvenie Distillery.

Although lithographically printed due to the volume, the designers collaborated with calligraphers, letterpress printers and wood engravers as they worked on the finished packaging.

Posted by Simon Lewin on July 28th, 2009

Edward Bawden
Posted by Simon Lewin

For no particular reason, here's one of Edward Bawden's wonderful illustrations for Fortnum & Mason. 

There are still some copies available of  "Entertaining À La Carte" (published by Mainstone Press) which brings together the advertising material that Bawden illustrated for the firm in the years before and after World War II. 

To find out more about the book and to order online visit our website.

Posted by Simon Lewin on July 26th, 2009

Port Eliot Festival
Posted by Simon Lewin

Our friends from Caught By The River are currently packing their bags in preparation for a trip to the Port Eliot Festival in Cornwall where they're hosting a series of readings, gigs and DJ sets with performances from Will Hodgkinson, Kathryn Williams, British Sea Power, Chris Watson, King Creosote, The Heavenly Jukebox and many more.

The festival runs from the 24th-26th July and full details can be found on the Port Eliot Festival website.

Posted by Simon Lewin on July 23rd, 2009

The Queen Of Hungary
Posted by Simon Lewin

Many thanks to Stephanie Douet who publishes The Queen of Hungary blog for her review of Colin Wilkin's exhibition of recent watercolours that opened here on Saturday...

"They are also map-like and exquisitely precise, even though he draws in the rough and wild open air. Sometimes the chemistry of the atmosphere dampens the paper and gives the colour greater strength. The colours are not naturalistic, it is almost as though they stand for real-life colours in a shaggier, rougher world. This precision is intriguing because he describes the process of making in a sort of existentialist way; he draws not only what he sees but peripheral and sensual stuff - the path his feet took, the sound of the shingle, raindrops from a vertical dimension."

Read the review in full here.

Posted by Simon Lewin on July 21st, 2009

Colin Wilkin
Posted by Simon Lewin

Our exhibition of paintings by Colin Wilkin opens at 10am tomorrow morning. And it's a stunning selection of work. Here's "Young Trees On Flinty Ground".

Iris Weaver of The Fry Gallery has kindly written a few words about Colin's work...

"Colin Wilkin is principally landscape watercolour artist in the tradition of Eric Ravilious. He inhabits the same spaces which inspired Ravilious to paint a number of his early watercolours. He also lives, and has done since childhood, in the same part of rural north west Essex. So it is not surprising that when you look at Colin's work one is reminded of that modern master of English watercolour."

Visit our gallery website for further examples of Colin's paintings.

Posted by Simon Lewin on July 17th, 2009

Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo
Posted by Simon Lewin

We spent Saturday night at the Southbank Centre enjoying an event organised by the team behind the Caught By The River website and book.

Several extracts were read from book, some accompanied by sound recordist Chris Watson.

Lots of thought provoking content, particularly the last piece - a reading by Michael McCarthy of his book 'Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo'. CBTR's Robin Turner summed up the event...

"As Michael read extracts from his book, slowly a picture unfolded of the UK at an environmental tipping point – one where migratory birds have stopped visiting our shore, where they no longer use them as breeding grounds.

You start to think about what the signifiers of the seasons are – birdsong, flowers budding, fruit and veg reaching maturity… and then you realize that these days, from the vantage point of behind a computer screen in a concrete and glass city centre, you don’t really have any idea of what’s going on past the end of the road anyway. I be surprised if any of us are really sure when spring smudged into summer or what’s seasonal to this country anymore – the supermarkets spreading out a bounty plundered from the four corners of the Earth (do we really need to source asparagus from Kenya? Shouldn’t we just eat it when it’s available here?). I walked away from McCarthy’s talk with a vision of a country suffering from a homogeny of seasons, where Britain’s local distinctiveness has been replaced by shelves stacked with foreign bodies and silences on our village greens and hedgerows. And that really scared me."

I must order a copy of the book. The cover is illustrated by Joe McLaren who we're hoping to work with at St. Jude's in the future.

Posted by Simon Lewin on July 16th, 2009

A short film
Posted by Simon Lewin

Angie met photographer Cristian Barnett when he took the photographs for a Gardens Illustrated article a couple of years ago. Cristian made contact earlier in the year regarding a new series of films he was developing. The results of the project can be seen here - Angie is printing a copy of 'Winter Spey', a combined linocut and wood engraving.

Posted by Simon Lewin on July 13th, 2009