Author: Julie Chamberlain

I'm a freelance journalist and PR writer living, writing and working in Coventry. One of my interests is art, and this is my blog about the art world of Coventry, Warwickshire and beyond - and occasionally the other good things in life. Follow me on Twitter @JulieinCov

Double surprise with a sparkling start to exhibitions in Leamington

What’s better than one art exhibition opening with Prosecco on a Friday evening? Two! Specially when the second one was completely unexpected. And the artists are twins!

The exhibition opening at the Deasil Gallery in Oxford Street in Leamington offered pictures by about a dozen photographers and a painter.

After enjoying a chat with artists, fizz and nibbles with the two Kates who run Deasil, I was off home until I passed the Whitewall Gallery in Regent Street and was drawn in by the sight of a tray of sparkling full glasses in the window.

The occasion was the unveiling of a set of paintings by Chris and Steve Rocks, 30-year-old twins from Durham who studied art together in Leeds, and work together. The paintings are described as tributes to the power of nature, and are on a tour of Whitewall Galleries around the country, along with the artists.

Chris said they have their own technique and approach, both bringing something different to the works, with him working on textures and Steve concentrating more on detail. He said: “Some are more descriptive than others, they have that fantasy feel and maybe remind you of somewhere you have been.”

It seems the paintings will only be on show there for a few days before they and the artists move on.

At Deasil, you have until October 2 to see the new exhibition.

Stuart Ellis’s abstract paintings fill the small back room, and the photographs out front are vary varied in style. A number wouldn’t be out of place in a classy travel magazine; James Callaghan’s Antigua photographs make you long for the blue sea and sky, and Matthew Sugars’s works make St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall mysterious and Venice as attractive as it is. Hilary Roberts has, in her word, fiddled with the images digitally to make a Cuban car stand out against a fading background, and to turn wave marks in sand into trees. Ray Spence’s black and white images date from 25 years ago and use altered negatives taken on film.

Other artists use mixed media, cutting, collage and old postcards to interesting effect; more detail to follow in the Coventry Telegraph on Friday.

Art in Design exhibition is stylish draw to Deasil Art Gallery

The creativity and talent that go into design work are the focus of the current exhibition at the Deasil Art Gallery in Leamington.

Art in Design is the title of the exhibition showing works by various artists taking in ceramics, jewellery, wood carving, furniture and lighting, plus mixed media art work.

Usha Khosla’s ceramic pieces stand out as art but also vases you could happily use, with earthy and green colours and with an unfinished, natural look to the rims.

David Male has used sustainable, local timber from Clifford Chambers to make a limited-edition pepper mill.

Claire Murray’s lampshades, one with a delicate pattern of a heron on it, would be a very attractive feature in the home, and Bren Boardman’s mixed media poppy and fritallaria images are also very pleasing. There are also several paintings and mixed media works by Jane Powell. Sarah Turner’s Rainbow Butterflies use the colourful metal of discarded drink cans to make attractive wall displays.

Will Morrison’s clocks, in reclaimed wood on the wall, or a pile of what looks like wooden boxes on the floor, are interesting and statement pieces. Steve Johnson’s wall-shown works are a mixture of cogs and gears, internal workings brought out of machinery to be the centre of attention (both above).

Michael Grassi’s lights illuminate one corner, made from unlikely items including a camera (above).

Jason Willis’s driftwood and greenery combinations (below)would look good in a corporate or hotel setting, and Dominic Gubb’s reclaimed leather and furniture leg models of a bulldog and pug dog raised a smile and would make a statement in the right place.

It’s another interesting and varied exhibition from the Deasil Gallery which is on show until September 10.

Fascinating Imagine Hillfields exhibition depicts changing post-war life in Coventry suburb

An exhibition which is part of a research project has drawn out some amazing never-seen-before photographs of the Hillfields area of Coventry, and added in some new pictures.

The Imagine Hillfields Exhibition is on at the Box in Fargo in Far Gosford Street, Coventry, until the end of the month. It is part of a project of the same name run by a team of sociology researchers from the University of Warwick which in turn is part of a national project looking at the way society imagines its present and future.

There are work by five photographers on show, all showing post-war Hillfields. John Blakemore (one photo top), born in 1936, had wanted to be a social documentary photographer, and his photos from the early 1960s have never been seen before. They are quite astonishing, some looking much older than they are, especially a chimney sweep and his wife in their home with the wallpaper hanging off damp walls.

In many labelled Urban Playground, children play amongst rubble and a terraced street stops dramatically with a gap where a house once stood. In Eric Green’s Triangle lots of terraced houses disappear into the grey background and in another a cheery shopkeeper, cigarette in hand, smiles for the camera. There is a young child in a mosque, and a Sikh family walking down Primrose Hill Street, reminding us Coventry has been welcoming new people for a long time.

Richard Sadler, now 87, used to photograph celebrities visiting Coventry, but his pictures on show here document a day in the life of his grandmother, Minnie Sadler (one image above), who lived in Hillfields. She’s seen sitting on the edge of the bed in her tiny attic room, all tussle haired, then looking much smarter when done up. She’s seen washing the doorstep, like a good 1950s woman, going shopping, pictured artily from behind a street display of prams, and having tea. There’s also a little boy dressed as a sailor at the Coronation celebration.

Masterji, now 91, came to England from Mumbai in 1951 and became the owner of Master’s photographic studio in Stoney Stanton Road. His images are all portraits of South East Asian families through the decades, and so document changing fashions and styles. There’s strict moustaches on men in 1965, and a more laid –back cool look in 1975. A Sikh family pose in their own home, husband and wife either side of the big TV also in 1975, and Indian weightlifters with long hair show off their muscles at Sidney Stringer School. They are all very atmospheric (one image right).

Jason Tilley, former Coventry Telegraph photographer, has created new works in response to the Blakemore ones, showing in vivid colour portraits of the varied population of Hillfelds today, often looking away from the camera in the street, or proudly outside their own homes, showing the continuing changing make up of the population (image left).

In the entrance area, Nick Stone’s photographs use ghosting to merge old pictures, including a horse-drawn drinks cart, with photos of the area now to show change and continuity in one.

It’s a fascinating exhibition and essential viewing to those keen on photography, social history and Coventry.

Excellent Nancy Upshall exhibition puts Deasil gallery on the map

A Coventry-based artist is holding a retrospective of her work with paintings and drawings going back to the 1960s.

Nancy Upshall moved to the city from Dorset to teach art at the then Barkers Butts School in the 1950s.

She said: “I left my first job very easily – I was teaching art and they had a polished floor in the art room and the caretaker would grumble (about it getting dirty) so I gave my notice in. After about two months I thought I better get another job and when I applied for Coventry I thought that’s the furthest north I am going to go. It was a secondary modern school, and they had been told by an inspector their art and music was useless. They wanted to get a graduate in and I thought when I was being shown round, this job is mine!

“I came from a small town in Dorset and coming to Coventry it was so industrial … I couldn’t believe people lived like that, it was a real eye opener for me.”

Nancy thought she might stay in Coventry for a couple of years, but then, as she put it, “love struck” and she has been in the city ever since.

A few of the works in the exhibition are from the early years. Nancy said: “Some of them go back quite a time, and some of the early ones are from when I was first married and living in Coventry.”

She recalled going out on a Sunday morning when she only had her first daughter, Jane, and Nancy would draw and Jane took her drawing book along too, but it got too complicated by the time her second daughter came along.

The post-war reconstruction was going on in earnest. She said: “I remember being on the roof of Broadgate House and painting – there’s one in the Herbert in Coventry which I did of Smithford Street.

“There were car parks which for me were ready made abstracts, you got a space and beyond it another space.”

Now retired but still painting in Earlsdon, Coventry, Nancy taught for many years at Coventry Technical College, a Lanchester Polytechnic annex, Rugby School of Art and until recently on open studies classes at the University of Warwick.

This exhibition at the recently-opened Deasil Art Gallery in The Warehouse in Oxford Street, Leamington, has around 50 paintings, prints and drawings on the walls, plus 70 prints in racks.

The early works include a pen and ink drawing of the Owen Owen building being constructed, with the old stone of Holy Trinity also visible, from 1962, and a painting of the rebuilding made of lots of bright squares from 1964. Portrait of Greta, a delicate close up of a woman with a beehive hairdo is also an early work from 1962.

Later works develop her familiar wide palette of colours, usually including purples. Some works are entirely abstract, others more figurative but in the same colour-filled style. Others stand out as very different.

Mind the Gap from 2004 has what looks like a large cut-away bit of earth so you can see what’s below ground, while the words ‘mind the gap’ are repeated and fall into a hole. Not Waving but Drowning of 1976 is a rather symbolic pencil drawing showing a small hand waving from behind a curtain in a house, which in front of it has a hedge and two fences. Green Belt of 1981 is a larger-than-normal work with a green bit in the middle, dividing many overlapping pencil-drawn houses.

There are also a few works inspired by a visit to Ayers Rock in Australia in the 1990s, including Tree Ancestors, a delicate screenprint of strange-faced creatures.

Geranium from 1980 is an identifiable plant, and Inkwells from 1983 uses what is now a flaking orange paint as the background colour, with three inkwells painted on. Other more abstract works feature brightly coloured shapes and swathes of colour, some in series like the Division series of 2007, or the large Rift from 2004. And it’s good to see Nancy’s still working, as the Poseidon’s Kingdom, with what look like watery bubbles, from 2015.

It’s a wide-ranging exhibition from an interesting and popular artist which shows the variety of her work from over the decades, in a pleasant, fresh-looking space which plans to show new exhibitions every three weeks.

The retrospective is the third exhibition at Deasil Art Gallery, a pleasant, clean-looking space on the ground floor of what was Oceans nightclub, and is now occupied by creative businesses,a design company and social media firm.

Deasil is run by Kate Livingston and Kate Bramwell, and the name Deasil apparently comes from the meaning of the direction of the sun’s movement clockwise, moving forward, to tie in with the Kates’ aim of being an Art Agency and displaying art in different venues across the Midlands – moving art forward. I look forward to hearing more from them, and seeing what other exhibitions they put on in the future.

Koans take centre stage in St Ives summer exhibition

An exhibition at the Tate St Ives will have a familiar feel for anyone who’s ever visited the University of Warwick’s Warwick Arts Centre – and another piece in the show may well ring bells for those who’ve visited The Herbert in Coventry.

The Tate’s summer exhibition, Images Moving Out Into Space, takes its name from a series of kinetic sculptures that Bryan Wynter began to make in the 1960s – this is the Cornwall-based artist’s centenary year. The exhibition leaflet says the exhibition uses the series, which Wynter called Imoos, to “consider how abstraction can move us”.

Gallery 1 though features a series of koans by Liliane Lijn – a large one of which has stood outside the Arts Centre for decades, ready to feature in student sci-fi fantasies and be the backdrop to graduation pictures. They are apparently so named because of the similarity to cone, which they look like, and the Japanese word pronounced koan, which means question without an answer. The room full of differently-named, differently sized, but similarly-shaped spinning koans certainly brought on a sense of déjà vu.

The exhibition includes other works linked to the theme, though it’s not always obvious how.

The fascinating Dan Flavin’s work “monument” for V Tatlin from 1969-70 features white fluorescent tubes, and there’s a further room of his work, all in T shapes made up of different coloured fluorescent tubes, and a quote from Flavin: “it’s important to me that I don’t get my hands dirty….it’s a declaration: art is thought.”

John Divola’s Zuma project involves photographs of a derelict house by the sea, each one showing changes in it or developments brought about by him or others, and a number of sculptures including works by big-name artists including Elizabeth Frink, but casually laid out on tables created by Nicholas Deshayes so they are easy to almost disregard.

There are also lots of typical paintings by Bridget Riley, and by Bryan Wynter, including Saja of 1969, and Green Confluence and Red River; lots are concerned with the flow of water, as suited a keen canoeist. There’s also one Imoo, number VI, from 1965, hanging between rooms where you can linger to see yourself reflected, then not, in the slowly moving shapes.

It’s not a perfect exhibition but fun and interesting, and with those déjà vu moments for anyone who’s familiar with the koan at least.

Gosford Books is interesting venue for Sight Reading performance film installation

An installation in Coventry second hand bookshop Gosford Books is a feature of a conference being held in the city this weekend.

The Dance and Somatic Practices Conference 2015 has a free events programme running alongside it. One of the items is the installation Sight Reading from 2007 which can be seen in Gosford Books from mid-day until late tomorrow, Saturday, July 11, and from late morning until 2pm on Sunday, July 12.

Shop owner Robert Gill, who has run Gosford Books for 38 years, doesn’t possess either a computer or a TV so it’s a bit unusual to see the flat screen TV propped on top of a bookshelf, with the nine-minute film playing on DVD. But there are two stools – of vastly differing heights – where you can perch to watch the film.

Sight Reading, made with an Artsadmin bursary, was apparently inspired by artist Lucy Cash’s chance finding of a second-hand book, which led her to explore how particular forms of somatic skills might destabilize our relationship to the world around us.

The information leaflet explains it: “As a film Sight Reading offers the viewer a cycle of performative gestures which deliberately evoke a strange, dreamlike sensation of synthesia through collaging re-enactments of ‘eyeless sight’ experiments with a choreographed exploration of an eclipse. The soundtrack includes a partial rendition of Eric Satie’s Vexations by Finnish pianist Timor Fredriksson.”

Sitting amidst the shelves, watching the screen and listening to the soundtrack through headphones it’s certainly unnerving to see people in the film, their eyes covered, but ‘reading’ through their arms. It’s certainly likely to be the strangest art event in Coventry this weekend……

* There are also glass photographic slides and writing on show at Drapers Bar, and limited edition posters available from the Rising Café from the Rubble at the Cathedral.

Photographic exhibition captures different views of city life

A small exhibition tucked away in the centre of Coventry celebrates city life in several different facets.

The exhibition, on the first floor of the Belgrade Theatre, is the work of 11 keen photographers, who each show three images under the title of City Life. They were challenged with interpreting that title to capture their city’s people, nightlife and environment, though some have chosen Birmingham or London instead of Coventry. It’s interesting to see the similarities and differences between the pictures.

Jim Harris pictured the large Primark building against a bright blue sky with the brutalist architecture and large open spaces in front giving it the stark appearance of an eastern European city in the communist era. Another shot looks down as two women sit separately near the escalator in the Upper Precinct, both alone with their thoughts or their phone. Jim said he was fascinated by the triangulation in the paving and an incongruous traffic cone (both works above).

Kim Slater’s images are attractive black and white ones of people walking on the cobbles of Hay Lane. In one, an old man looks at the ground, and in another a man looks down at his feet as if he’s stumbled, and another shot captures a walker at a lower level. She said it was only now they are on show together, she sees as well as the area which she likes, they all involve a concentration on people’s feet.

Tony Skipper has captured a colourful vegetable stall on the market, a street performer framed between passing pedestrians, and a cheeky monotone image of a young man, baseball cap pulled down as he poses with his skateboard next to a ‘no skateboarding’ sign (above and below).

Rebekah Mason’s three images show dramatic graffiti art at the Custard Factory in Birmingham (one of them, left), and Maria Ahmad’s London photos include some pretty flowers, in front of a sleeping homeless man. Angela Haworth also concentrated on a London train station, taxis in a row and bicycles also lined up, while Craig Simpson’s three images show increasingly blurred images of buses going by, one cleverly capturing the bus framed between flashing beacons on opposite sides of the road.

Kelly Upton concentrated on the Flying Standard pub and the surrounding area in Coventry city centre, Caroline O’Hagan on grand buildings in Coventry and further away, Tommy Byatt on people and the area around the cathedral, and Magdalena Tomczyk has photographed night scenes of Coventry, which with the blurring lights make it more exciting than the reality.

All the photographers are evening class City and Guild Level 2 Photography & Photo Imaging students at City College, showing the high standard of work produced by the students taught in Simon Derry’s class. The exhibition is free, and on until June 20.

Don’t miss University of Warwick’s art collection on show at Mead

An exhibition not to miss is on for only a couple more weeks in Coventry.

Imagining a University: Fifty Years of the University of Warwick Art Collection is on at the Mead Gallery at the university until June 20.

I have already written about it in the Coventry Telegraph, but it also seems worth mentioning again alongside the book produced to go with it, which is a delight in its own right.

The book contains pictures of the university when the site had just a few buildings in open green fields, and art works in position from the early days. There are also many beautiful photographs of the works of art discussed. The book contains a series of essays by experts in the field which add a lot to our understanding of the foundation of the collection and the Mead Gallery.

Simon Patterson, Cosmic Wallpaper, 2002, digital wallpaper

Alan Powers writes what is logically the first chapter on The University of Warwick: the architect, the collector and the patron, which explains how it came to be built, the brutalist architecture and the founding of the collection.

The exhibition tells the story with Coventry Telegraph newspaper cuttings about the permission being given for the University of Warwick and six others to be established in the 1960s to provide higher education for a more socially diverse cohort of students.

Some of the first paintings are those discussed by Powers and by Beth Williamson in her chapter on Becoming a Collection. There are some of the nine huge, colourful abstract paintings given by Alistair McAlpine. Large abstracts dominate the first room, including two works by Patrick Heron, and one by John Hoyland, and one full of zig zag lines by Roger Barnard, who travelled from Japan to the exhibition opening, plus Terry Frost’s Red All Over.

Williamson discusses the difficulties that went with the decision for the collection to not be kept in a gallery or store room, but to be displayed around the place to add to everyone’s education. Along the way some pieces have regrettably been damaged, but others have become part of people’s daily lives.

Throughout this book, current and former member of staff and students explain the importance of individual pieces to them, sometimes as an irritant but more often something to gaze at for inspiration or to escape daily life.

In my own five years as a part-time Warwick student I remember several pieces in rooms in the humanities block, and when my mind wandered to them I knew it was time to concentrate harder on the seminar. Other works on library stairs had me causing a crush when I stopped to read the labels.

Later, as a part time university worker, I was delighted in my first office to have a Michael Rothenstein one side of the doorway and a Stanley Nolan the other; sadly an office move left me lacking that daily art. Visits to University House were a joy to see a Terry Frost, or Maggi Hambling’s portrait of a former VC on the way to a meeting room.

The exhibition gives a chance for everyone to see artworks from all over the University gathered together.

Screenprints and lithographs feature in one section, including Birmingham Race Riot by Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein’s red and blue Sandwich and Soda. There are 12 Paolozzi screenprints inspired by Wittgenstein.

The exhibition moves on to a wall of screenprints and etchings, including works by Paula Rego, Babe Rainbow by Peter Blake, a Kitaj collage, and two small works by Coventry artist George Shaw, showing desolate garages and fence posts by a hedge, lacking a fence.

There are some works donated by Cyril Barrett, a Jesuit Priest and Reader in Philosophy at Warwick, including two boxed mixed media works by Harry Thubron. Other works came into the collection with the merger with Coventry College of Education in 1984, whose principal Joan Browne had collected paintings and ceramics.

A collection of land art works include The Wet Road by Richard Long, and Hamish Fulton’s Callanish, A Five Day, One Hundred Mile Walk photograph, as well as Andy Goldsworthy’s Bullrush Debris, a photograph created on site when he was the university’s first artist in residence. In the catalogue, former registrar Michael Shattock writes of focusing on this work during many meetings, and being grateful for then discovering the artist.

Newer additions to the collection include Hannah Starkey’s posed photograph of a woman with leftover office flowers in a bag, Olga Ivanova’s two photographs of people in Russia from a 2014 exhibition, and the painting Scenes from the Passion: The Swing, a George Shaw work showing nearby Tile Hill.

Other essays in the book cover the forming of the Mead Gallery in the 1980s, the development of the collection and site-specific installations, and its future.

Wherever it goes in the future, don’t miss the chance before June 20 to see so many fantastic works brought together in one place.

*The book, Imagining a University: Fifty Years of the University of Warwick Art Collection, is £18 or £25 after June 21. The exhibition is free to visit.

Coventry University degree show is full of art but has painting gone out of style?

Where have all the painters gone? That was what I was left wondering after visiting the Coventry University annual art degree show last night.

Over several floors, graduates showed their skills, from Foundation students fittingly in the basement to graphic design, illustration and fine art. It’s on the top floor where most of the paintings are usually to be found, and there were some, but not as many as expected. It’s a national trend according to a locally-based painter I spoke to later. The opening night seemed quieter than normal but on the plus side, there was a welcome return of lots of (cheap) free wine stations.

But anyway, what’s good to see about the degree show 2015, which continues in the Coventry University Graham Sutherland building on the corner of Gosford Street and Cox Street until Thursday. Photography is also only up the road in the Lanchester Gallery and Glass Box Gallery.

The Foundation students’ work seemed more interesting and better produced than I’ve seen for years, and is definitely worth a visit. Georgiana Irina Catana’s animation entitled Everything Remains Possible, with a little stuffed creature seemingly playing the piano was entertaining, and Tolu Olubrade’s Autonomic brought order to a china animal collection.

Rohanie Campbell-Thakoodun’s use of a polling box type device where people can confess a secret or confide their sorrows, and then shred it, was inventive, and Harjinder Rahore’s painting machine, using bicycle parts to create splattered T shirts was also fun. Testa Joseph’s Restriction in Freedom photographs combined bondage and fashion and Testa is off to Central St Martin’s next year to study fashion design. It’s always worth remembering George Shaw did his foundation year here before moving on.

Also on the ground floor, graduates who’ve created larger more sculptural items are showing. Myah V K Sahota has taken traditional pinafore designs and stitched them with more feminist slogans. Marc Evans was in a separate room and had the best hair of the night, possibly helped by taking a head set on and off again and trying to persuade other people to use it to literally light up the room with the power of their minds.

On the top floor, Camille Louise combined natural objects such as driftwood with weaved wool, and had a room full of sand with paint-splashed walls. Bethany Dartnell’s tiny and detailed drawings of flats in Birmingham were also interesting.

Muziwethu Nduma’s paintings were my favourite of the night, showing in a colourful, direct painting style, parts of Coventry that have become home, including a bus pulling into nearby Cox Street. The image in KFC was particularly arresting, the customer faceless with their back to the door and the two staff equally so, blocked by the customer or items.

I counted three people writing that their inspirations had included Tracey Emin, and one of them was Peige Smith, whose room had a parental guidance warning. In the corner one latex model of several penises dripped a white fluid into a metal bowl. She also referenced Helen Chadwick and Sarah Lucas, and the direct influence of both could be seen in the use of tights to create sexually-outspoken models of genitalia, and plaster casting of male and female genitals.

Eleanor Hudson’s black and white room was also interesting and detailed, and Chidera Ugada’s paintings, inspired by West African masquerades, stood out for their imagery and originality.

In the Lanchester Gallery, Oliver Wood’s The Farewell Train’s Last Whistle photographs of a former rail route were displayed in a interesting concertina way. Jenny Stonely explored the Anglo-Indian experience through portraits, and Ella Parkinson explores the state of dreams though some spooky self portraits.

These are the ones that stood out for me, so have a look and see who you think we should be seeing more of in future years.

Family photo exhibition launches Coventry University Romani Week

An exhibition opening tonight began a week-long event celebrating the culture of a community now established in Coventry.

Coventry University Romani Week continues until Friday, May 1 and through it, in the words of one of the organisers, senior lecturer Marcos Young: “Our University confronts the last bastion of acceptable racism, promoting positive images about Gypsies.”

The exhibition opening was celebrated with food made by the local Romani community, including a huge chunk of one of the tastiest, if stickiest, cakes I’ve ever eaten. It was lucky no politician tried to eat it in front of a camera.

The works on show are photographs by Antony Weir, taken at a specially-organised Romani Family Picture Day, curated by Rosamaria K Cisneros and taken in collaboration with the Coventry Roma Project Families. The exhibition is called Family Matters, or Chestiuni de familie.

All posed against the same dark background they show couples hugging, families posing starchly or casually, a mum or child falling about with laughter, little girls in pink pretty dresses and little boys unsure whether to smile or cry. They show a community happy to be photographed together, demonstrating their close ties, and many of those in the pictures were at the exhibition opening.

Deputy council leader Phil Townshend, cabinet member (policing and equalities), officially declared the exhibition open, and said he did not play lip service to the idea of community cohesion, but tried to make things happen.

He said he had recently made a presentation to the Romanian ambassador and 60 members of the government, and hoped soon to welcome the ambassador to Coventry for a third time, this time for a forum with members of the engineering industry and representatives of other eastern European EU states.

He said: “There are more things that unite us than divide us and we must not let people divide us because there’s no need for it, that’s not how life’s meant to be, and it is about recognising the contributions of the people who come to Coventry and make their home here.”

Being a proud Romanian and a proud Coventrian were not exclusive, he added. “We welcome the contributions the Romani community make in this city at all levels. Coventry takes pride in the richness and diversity of its community and the Romani community is a central part of that.”

The photographic display is on in the Coventry University Alan Berry Atrium Gallery, opposite Coventry Cathedral steps.

Other events this week include films, talks, a performance installation and conversation series, including Ramón Flores, from the Council of Europe’s Forum of European Roma Young People Program, making a special visit from Seville to talk about his work with the European Commission, and an evening of entertainment in Opre Roma in the Lanchester Gallery at 7.15pm on Thursday.

There are more details below and on the Facebook page Romani Week Coventry University.

Private View II

A look at the art world of Coventry, Warwickshire and beyond by Julie Chamberlain