Beth Bartlett wins this year's NCAS art prize at NUA

This year's selection process was organised by artist and ncas trustee, Andrew Eden. After a short list of five works were chosen, the final decision rested with those remaining trustees who could attend the final marking on the 18th June. Their decision was that Fine Art graduate Beth Bartlett was the clear winner, and she was subsequently presented with her prize by Andrew. Congratulations, not only to Beth, but to all the students whose work was presented in this year's degree show, and thank you to the committed NUA staff who conducted us helpfully around the show.

Andrew Eden and Beth Bartlett (photo courtesy of NUA)

Her work is described here by NUA:

'Beth Bartlett’s work is heavily inspired by geometrical forms found in the spiritual faith of Tantra. These Tantric inspired diagrams represent the balance of Male and Female energies within a person. Different shapes and colours are used to represent each side of the spectrum: shapes with curves and warm colours represent the Female and straight shapes with cold colours represent the Male. When these elements come together they create a balance. As Bartlett works with two disciplines in conjunction they create layers within the original meaning, abstracting the concept and visual image. Vibrant paintings and large scale constructed sculptures, seen as drawings, create an exciting dynamic that blurs the boundaries between technical drawing/painting with sculpture. The size of the sculptures makes them command a space; this is amplified by the added projection that acts as a light source to focus the eye to the central point, further creating chaotic shadows within the sculptures.'

ncas Policy on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

There is an important new EU legal deadline (GDPR) on the 25th May, when all charities and other organisations have to update the way they handle people’s personal data. NCAS already complies with this legislation. When you join ncas we simply record your name and contact details and keep these on a database. This database is kept solely in order to send you our ncas programme and newsletter, and to email you about strictly ncas-related events. We interpret your decision to join ncas to mean that you want to be sent this material. We neither share your data nor sell your data to others. We are very clear that you always have the right to opt out of receiving our communications at any time by emailing our administrator, who can also remind you of the data that we do hold about you.

Your data is held by our administrator in a password-protected file and is removed if, after reminders, you do not renew your membership, or if you ask for your membership to cease.

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.

90th Exhibition of the Gt. Yarmouth and District Society of Artists

This is the first time that the permanent collection has been on show. There will be 40 works by present members and 34 from the permanent collection, including paintings by Campbell Mellon and Rowland Fisher. The Society will also be launching a book covering 90 years of the their history, and containing over 100 colour plates, at a cost of £20 for the hardback book.

The exhibition is at the Library Galleries, Tolhouse Street, Gt. Yarmouth NR30 2SH from 2nd to 4th November 10am to 4pm.

Further information from ra.carver@btinternet.com or telephone 01493 728446.

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.

Exhibition at Fairhurst Gallery Norwich

Máté Orr: Masks, Mysteries and Other Worldly Pleasures.
Exhibition at Fairhurst Gallery Norwich

Fairhurst Gallery continues to go from strength to strength as an imaginative and enterprising contemporary art venue for Norwich. This exhibition is the first in what they hope will be a series of ‘East to East’ presentations of artists from Central and Eastern Europe (a project that nicely echoes Lynda Morris’s philosophy at NUA when she ran EAST international). It has been facilitated by Lance and Jane Hattat, a lively couple of art enthusiasts who live partly in Norfolk and partly in Hungary. They have been crucial behind the admirable decision to give the young artist, Máté Orr, his first UK outing, and the show is a sell-out! His motto is Carpe Noctem (seize the night!) and the other-worldly ambiguity in his title echoes the appeal of his mysterious canvases, which riff on Dutch Old Masters, mythic animals, very early Velasquez, the baroque, and surreal sexual encounters. Each is a heady mix of flat silhouette, checkerboard motifs and hyper-realist brushwork, all immaculately painted and framed. He calls his work ‘Neo-Baroque Futurism’, a term I can’t quite fathom, but never mind that, this show is well worth a visit, so catch it before it finishes on 10 June. See here for images.

John Kiki Nessus and Deneira, 200 x 192cm Acrylic on canvas, 2008 Norwich Castle and Art Gallery

One reason I mention this exhibition at all is because I find it so reassuring to encounter contemporary artists who are both figurative painters and at the same time embrace and respect the long grand European tradition of artistic motifs and concerns. A key element in Orr’s work is myth, both contemporary and Classical, and I am now trying to grasp the fact that there are two large paintings hanging in Norwich, at the same time, each showing a totally different take on the myth of the centaur Nessus and Deianira. So how likely is that!?

There are many versions of this ancient story but the most quoted concerns the Tunic of Nessus. A wild centaur named Nessus attempted to kidnap or rape Deianira as he was ferrying her across the river Euenos. She was rescued by Heracles who shot the centaur with a poisoned arrow. As he lay dying, Nessus persuaded Deianira to take a sample of his blood, telling her that a potion of it mixed with oil would ensure that Heracles would never again be unfaithful.

Deianira believed his words and she kept a little of the potion by her. Heracles fathered illegitimate children all across Greece and then fell in love with Iole. Deianira, fearing that her husband would leave her forever, smeared some of the blood on Heracles' famous lion-skin shirt. When he put it on, the centaur's toxic blood burned Heracles terribly, and eventually he threw himself into a funeral pyre. In despair, Deianira committed suicide by hanging herself or with a sword.

Tough stuff, but great visually! The stunning painting by Orr has Nessus with a horse’s rather than a human head, as does Deianira in her hunting togs. The other version is by Yarmouth painter John Kiki, whose large canvas was shown at his exhibition in the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery in 2008 and now resides in the Castle’s contemporary collection (sadly not currently on view). Well worth the effort of a ‘compare and contrast’ session! It is such wonderful serendipity that confirms to me just how lucky we are to live in Norwich!

The Fairhurst exhibition is on from 25 April – 10 June 2017

Máté Orr Riding the Centaur Nessus 100 x 80cm oil and acrylic on canvas 2017

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.

Four Makers at the Crypt Gallery, Norwich School

28 Jan to 17 Feb, 2017

The wonderful exhibition, Four Makers, marks a coming of age for this welcome new gallery space in Norwich. It is a collegiate and inspired re-purposing of the 14th Century ossuary, or charnel house, beneath the chapel of Norwich School, once used to house the dry bones of Norwich citizens while they futilely awaited resurrection. It is now transformed into a bright and cleverly-lit gallery space, and considerable credit must go to both Norwich School and to Andy Campbell, artist, teacher and the creative projects coordinator in charge of it, for imaginatively bringing this win-win venture to fruition.

The current exhibition is curated by local sculptor, Bob Catchpole, whose own work figures alongside that of three other sculptors, Derek Morris, Ainslie Yule and Bruce Gernand. All have a long history of ‘making’ in every sense, and, appropriately in this venue, three of them also have a long record of teaching, both in schools and in art schools. Gernand, who has lectured in the past to the society on his work, produces objects that have been created in silico and then, via a rapid prototyping step, have been moulded or cast, for example Dune, cast in aluminium. Although essentially abstract, his forms are all derived from and reflect the real or natural world. Morris’s work is also firmly abstract but again is firmly rooted in the real world, in this case our experience of how we interact with the walls that always surround us, and the windows and openings that penetrate them. His Blue and Silver Relief is a winning example here.

Bruce Gernand Dune Cast aluminium 2004

Catchpole continues with his long-term project to link local making, particularly of tools, with the land, buildings and churches of Norfolk. His chimeric works, with blades, and their handles that spring, hydra-like, from them, offer a powerful reflection on what ‘hand-made’ means in our modern world. Yule’s playful, compact, mixed-media creations riff on the idea and associations of ‘goblets’ to explore community, celebration, trophies, and from there they spin off into more baroque and surreal directions. My favourite is Architectural Structure on Goblet.

Ainsley Yule Architectural Structure on Goblet Mixed media

Together, these four sculptors have more in common than first impressions might suggest. All of a certain age, and already with long professional careers, all now embrace a mature and sophisticated approach to sculpture that still manages to be both serious and light-hearted at the same time, reflecting their fun and joy in the process of making. A seriously good show in a seriously good new gallery.

28 Jan to 17 Feb, 2017
Mon-Fri 10.00 am to 5.00 pm.  Sat 10.00 am to 4.00 pm