Sculpture for Norwich project shelved

We have covered earlier the troubled journey of Mariele Neudecker's wonderful projected public sculpture to celebrate the Norwich School of Painters. Sadly, and with huge disappointment, Sculpture for Norwich (SfN), the charity originally set up with funds from NCAS and the Norwich Society, has announced that it has been forced to shelve the project. Good coverage in the local paper can be found to download here. 

That does not mean the end of SfN, however, and they will be moving forward with other ideas for public sculpture in Norwich. See sculpturefornorwich.co.uk for more details.

ncas Auction: Great success

ncas Charity Auction at City Hall raises record £11,500.

Every two years, ncas stages a charity auction in City Hall to boost its funds for commissioning new art, and that time came around again on 27 November.  This year Selwyn Taylor, Joseph Wang and their team organised a terrific event, which was packed with punters. One of the highlights of the sale was an oil painting by Maggi Hambling, and by the end of the evening we had raised just over £11,500, a record for our auctions. This means we are in good shape to do even more promoting contemporary art in the region over the next two years, which includes our 60th anniversary in 2016,

New Gallery Opens in Gt. Yarmouth

Skippings Gallery, a great new art gallery and studio, housed in a converted 18th century merchant's house in Great Yarmouth, is all set to showcase contemporary art and boost the already blooming local cultural scene.

In 2014, Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust, a registered charity, completed the sympathetic conversion of 133 King Street, a once at-risk grade II-listed Georgian building, to create a new art gallery, a flat, and four on-site artists' studios. Now a group of local artists, with the support of the preservation trust, has formed a panel of volunteers to help re-launch the gallery, re-named 'Skippings Gallery', referencing the building's previous incarnation as Skippings Store.

The opening exhibition, running from Saturday, January 16 to Saturday, February 13, will feature paintings, sculpture and collage work by David Chedgey, who has strong links to Norfolk.

Cllr Bernard Williamson, the chairman of the preservation trust, said: "Having saved an historic building at risk, the trust's ongoing ambition for the gallery is to develop it to further the regeneration of the King Street area, the town's emerging cultural quarter, and to boost Great Yarmouth's growing reputation as a cultural heritage centre. Great Yarmouth, already known for its popular annual arts festival, has a very rich, vibrant community of artists, and I am grateful to that group of artists and other volunteers who are giving their expertise and time to help re-launch the gallery as Skippings Gallery. The artists and the trust are already working up a full programme of exhibitions for the coming year. David Chedgey represents a great opening exhibition, which I very much look forward to.”

During exhibitions, the gallery will be open from Wednesday to Saturday, between 11 am and 4 pm.
133 King Street,
Great Yarmouth,
Norfolk,
NR30 2PQ