THE opening of an exhibition at Gallery150 in Leamington is always a bit of an occasion.
It’s the only gallery where you get called sir or madam as you’re handed a glass of wine, and the canapés are always beautifully presented.
But tonight’s opening was the first where at opening time the exhibition was still being hung! LSA Chair Gerry Smith, fresh back from holiday, and an able assistant were busy fixing the last digital prints to the wall as the first drinks were poured, but they were soon all in place and in a straight line too.
Interviews
Meter Room is exciting new Coventry venture for city artists
AN UNUSUAL and exciting exhibition space has opened in Coventry – but you have to be very observant to find it.
The Meter Room is at 58-64 Corporation Street in the city centre – just round the corner from the bottom of The Burges, with the entrance in a side alley between the pub and a charity shop. It says Meter Room above the door and also the name of the building’s previous occupier – the CVSC.
Go up a couple of flights and the doors open into a corridor which at the moment has various exhibition spaces off it, and also studios for lots of local artists.
Tanya is hitting the big time
A woman who has found her big passion and escape in life through art is exhibiting at Bedworth Arts Centre until March 5.
Tanya Martin’s first solo exhibition is called Art Is My Life, and she showed it by taking so much work along there wasn’t space and some had to go home again!
And she’s proving controversial, as three pieces from her Body Form collection had to be taken down after people were “a bit upset” about them – although she had asked if it was ok to display them at first and had been told it was.
Help save fantastic paintings of Coventry
A set of fantastic watercolours of Coventry painted in 1819-20 has been discovered – but the public’s help is needed to secure it for the city.
Coventry’s Conservation Officer George Demidowicz spotted the album of works by William H Brooke on an auction house’s list of items for sale. He persuaded The Herbert that they should be bought for the city, and the gallery has now launched a £12,000 public appeal to buy them and make them ready for display.
The album is dated 1819, and includes about 80 watercolours and lots of line drawings of familiar and unfamiliar sites in the city centre. (more…)
How teens took to morris dancing for art’s sake
An interest in how current identity is shaped by the past inspired Faye Claridge to look at morris dancing during her year as artist in residence at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum.
She had a bit of a head start on the subject, as her dad was a member of Green Man’s Morris in Birmingham, which itself is interesting as morris dancing comes across as much more of a village pursuit.
She said: “I am very interested in how people connect to history and relate to history and my dad was a morris dancer so I spent a lot of my early years going to folk festivals.”
Welcome to Private View
This blog has been launched as a spin off from the art column which appears in the Coventry Telegraph’s What’s On guide on Fridays.
I’ve been writing the newspaper column for four years and it follows the format of a review of a new exhibition, listings and short bits about other exhibitions in the area, or events at galleries.
I’m often frustrated by having more things I want to write about than there’s space for – interviews with artists, pieces about excellent but brief exhibitions which have been and gone before I get a chance to write about them in the paper.
So in this blog I want to go beyond the column, to include observations on the Coventry, Warwickshire and larger art world, gossip, interviews, plus bits of news I’m not able to squeeze into the newspaper column.
This is of course the worst week of the year to launch a blog – but it’s not long til January and I’m already looking forward to sipping a glass of wine at the first exhibition private views of the year.
Private View II 