ncas awards prize at Schools 6th form open art show

Crypt Gallery,  Norwich School, Cathedral Close 16-23 March 2018

Florence Wright's winning painting

Selwyn Taylor at the Response exhibition

Sixth formers were invited to respond to one or other of three recent art exhibitions in Norwich. Entries from five Norfolk Schools were judged by representatives from NUA, Hudson Architects and ncas. From among the works accepted for the subsequent exhibition, called Response, each team chose one work to be awarded a prize of a £25 book token for the Book Hive. Our judges were Selwyn Taylor and Keith Roberts, and they unanimously chose a work by Florence Wright from Wymondham High Academy as the NCAS prize winner. The exhibition was curated by Norwich School's Claudia VanOosterom. The prizes were awarded at the Private View on 15th March in the Crypt Gallery.

Derek Morris work acquired for Sainsbury collection

It is very appropriate that the Russia Season is currently showing at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts. The Radical Russia show includes the work of many of the Russian constructivists, whose legacy is continues within the whole modernist movement in British art and architecture. That tradition lives on in the practice of many contemporary artists, including our NCAS trustee and sculptor, Derek Morris. So it is a great pleasure to announce that the Sainsbury Centre has just acquired one of his key ceramic sculptures for its permanent collection. Derek studied sculpture at Newcastle and then Chelsea before moving to Norwich where for nearly twenty years he was Head of Sculpture at what was then Norwich School of Art, now NUA. He was President of the Royal Society of British Sculptors between 1998 and 2004 and has been a trustee of NCAS since 2005. Congratulations to Derek, and we hope that the work will go on show in the near future.

Tina Hannay wins our annual NUA prize

Each year ncas awards a cash prize of £500 to the artist judged to have produced the best work in the degree show. This year the panel of trustees judging the works on our short list were unanimous in choosing the vast ceramic assemblage by Tina Hannay, called et ceter01100001. Her hundreds of porcelain light switches, some on and some off, cover a whole wall, the whole work gently mottled by subtle colour variations in the different firings. Congratulations to a very worthy winner.

The binary code embodied in the on/off switches contains a hidden message (allegedly reflecting family member's attitudes to leaving house lights on or off!). We were very pleased to learn that Tina also gained a first class degree and that her work also won the vice chancellor's commendation.

Tina is a mature student who did her Foundation course in Art & Design at Central St Martins in 1992-1993, before returning to do her degree in Fine Art at NUA. Her cheque for £500 was presented to her by ncas chair, Brenda Ferris together with the vice-chancellor, John Last.

Become a Trustee

Have you ever considered becoming a trustee of the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society (NCAS) and playing an important role in the arts locally?

Each year at the AGM the Society appoints trustees for a three-year term. The trustees are responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charity and ensuring that it is governed effectively and meets its charitable and legal obligations.

NCAS can appoint up to 16 trustees who meet as a committee around five times a year, usually in Norwich. Trustees are also encouraged to actively contribute to the Events Committee or the Exhibitions Committee, the two committees which deal with our programme. . .

More details can be found here

Contact Keron Beattie if you wish to talk further about the idea.

Sculpture Installation at East Ruston Gardens

One of the sculptures in our ncas artworks collection is ‘A Trouble With Worms’  by artist Ben Southwell from N.Norfolk. This had been installed for many years at the old May Gurney site in Trowse, but with its demise, our 1997 work has now been installed in the wonderful gardens of East Ruston Old Vicarage in North Norfolk. This is a happy result of the very generous offer by the joint owners and creators of the gardens, Alan Gray (see above photograph) and Graham Robeson.

Do go along and have a look at this ever-evolving garden extravaganza, and catch A Trouble With Worms at the same time! The garden will open on Sunday 26th March 2017 and close on Saturday 28th October 2017. More details can be found on their website.

Barbara Hepworth sculpture gets its plaque

It is some time now since NCAS trustee and sculptor, Derek Morris, designed and made this proper bronze plaque to go with Norwich City's wonderful Barbara Hepworth sculpture, Sea Form (Atlantic), 1964, that sits opposite the Playhouse on St George's Street, Norwich. The unlabelled work was neither well understood nor appreciated and its complex patina was getting eroded by boisterous children. The new plaque (below), paid for by NCAS, has finally been installed by the Council to our great delight! Definitely worth a detour!

Publication of new book, ncas Sixty Years On

To coincide with the launch of the exhibition NCAS Sixty Years On: Treasures from the Castle's Collection in the Timothy Gurney Gallery, NCAS has published an updated and fully illustrated book covering the history and activity of the society. Building on the original book written by Robert Short for our 50th anniversary, it has been brought up to date by Keith Roberts and is now fully illustrated in colour. It is given free to all new joining NCAS members and can also be bought from the Castle bookshop, priced at £4.

The book can also be downloaded here

Julia Cameron wins the NCAS prize

The NCAS prizewinner at our biennial open exhibition at the Forum, nca16, is Julia Cameron. Her prize, a years supply of wine, was presented at the private view by Adam Edwards representing our sponsor, Naked Wines (below). The selectors were impressed with her collection of quiet, elegiac landscape photographs of the Edge in Great Yarmouth.

Annual Art Prize at NUA

Saskia Jonquil with her work after the prize giving

Each year ncas awards a £500 prize to the best work by a fine art student in the degree show at Norwich University of the Arts . This year it was another tough decision for the ncas trustees on the judging panel. Having fairly unanimously chosen a shortlist of six, it was harder for the full group then to reach a final decision on the winner. But in the end we have chosen Saskia Jonquil and her set of four sculptures entitled Dirt Candy I – IV. Her cast bronze works of bio-organic forms, metamorphosed into sexually-resonant, imaginary constructions particularly attracted us, as did the immaculate, welded steels mountings. The runner-up was Ellie Davison-Archer, whose delicious and meticulous graphite studies of the minutiae of natural-history objects also charmed us. Brenda Ferris, the chair of ncas, awarded Saskia her prize in an informal ceremony at NUA just before the degree show opened on the 31st May, and she thanked Joseph Wang who had organized this year's prize process but who could not be at the ceremony.

ncas celebrates its 60th Anniversary

ncas was founded as a charitable association in 1956 to promote the interests of contemporary art in Norfolk, and special 60th birthday events are planned for this year. Members can keep up to date with events and activities by consulting this page during the year. Check here for details of two major anniversary exhibitions in September.