Event date: 28 August to 7 September 2024
Review by Danusia Wurm
Madonna and Child, Robert Fox
“A triumph. Wonderfully evocative”
Described by one visitor as a “visual time capsule” of the post WW2 austerity Britain, this latest ncas exhibition celebrated two outstanding artists. Leslie Davenport and Robert Fox were friends and briefly colleagues at Norwich School of Art, each produced a stunning body of work that carefully observed and documented the everyday, the people and the rapidly changing urban landscape.
“Stunning observational work and drawings very evocative of the era”
With previously unseen works on loan from the private collections of Linda McFarlane and the Fox family and Helen Davenport and the Davenport family, the show proved a unique opportunity to observe and marvel at the artists' sharply observed and unflinching canvases.
Take the bleakness of Fox's Blindman and Children's Bicycles or the jarring, rapidly sketched Child Brides Skipping. Meantime, Davenport's urban landscapes such as Extractor, Jarrolds and Gas Works, Bishop Bridge Road solidly dominated their wall space, seemingly immutable but also vulnerable to inevitable re-development and the elements.
It was truly a slice of social realism on show, which resonated with so many visitors.
“We feel so refreshed and uplifted from seeing this magnificent exhibition”
Beautifully curated by Keith Roberts and Selwyn Taylor, the vaulted ceilings and natural stone of the Crypt Gallery provided a perfect, neutral, back-drop to the work on show. As one visitor put it succinctly, it was "a perfect partnership of colours, intensity, people and places."
The show also included contemporaneous photographs of Norwich from the George Plunkett Archive which added another visual dimension and reference point. An excellent accompanying catalogue Post-War: People and Place produced by Roberts and Taylor is available here.
Trowse Riverside, Leslie Davenport
ncas are enormously grateful to the Norwich School for their help in staging the exhibition and to all the Volunteers who stewarded at the event which attracted just under 800 visitors.
Review by ncas trustee Danusia Wurm