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John Kiki The Infanta Paintings, Keith Roberts
If you missed the ncas event about John Kiki at the Forum last June - or would like another chance to view - the film about the artist’s work is now available online.
John Kiki has been a prolific painter for more than 55 years and his 2021 solo exhibition at the Yare Gallery in Great Yarmouth was much enjoyed. While it was showing, Pete Huggins and Keith Roberts snuck into the gallery and grabbed a couple of hours of film. This formed the basis of a short thirty-minute documentary.
We are very sad to report the death on 23 August 2022 of a dear friend, Brenda Ferris, former Chair and long term Trustee of ncas. We convey our condolences and thanks to her family & friends. Our thoughts and memories of Brenda are expressed perfectly by Robert Short, fellow former Chair and ncas Trustee for many years.
"Like the rest of you, I was bowled over to learn of Brenda's sudden death last Tuesday. She had seemed so self-sufficient, and only a week or so ago was still enjoying one of her favourite pursuits: 'birding' at the Cley saltmarshes reserve.
Brenda was a pillar of the NCAS as a Trustee for decades. In 2013, she succeeded Keith Roberts as Chair. We counted on her passionately engaged presence to such a degree that we all felt the palpable loss when she resigned from the committee in 2021. That she was also a Norwich City Councillor for much of this time - not to mention Sheriff, Mayor and Deputy Lieutenant of the County! - enhanced the profile of the Society. That our biennial fund-raising auctions could be held in the Council Chamber of City Hall was owed to that too. Among numerous local arts causes, Brenda was particularly a champion of public sculpture in Norwich: think Bernard Reynolds, Ros Newman, Jonathan Clark, the Poiriers....
My family and I have been fortunate enough to have Brenda and her children as friends for the last fifty-five years, taking in plenty of holidays at home and abroad. We've had so much fun together. And no one should forget the fun that Brenda helped bring to the everyday life of the NCAS over all these years. When you're next in City Hall, go and take a look in a corridor on the first floor at David Chedgey's 1990s group portrait titled 'The Alibi Crowd' which prominently features Brenda in the joyful company of some twenty fellow art lovers at their revels!”
The funeral arrangements for Brenda are:
Thursday 15 September, 11.00am at Norwich Crematorium, 2.30pm at St Peter Mancroft Church.
Photo of Brenda, taken in January 2012 at an artist’s preview evening. Credit: Archant.
We are very sorry to share the sad news that our dear friend and Treasurer, Cate Allwood, passed away peacefully on 3rd August.
Cate had been a valuable member of the ncas committee for a number of years. As Treasurer she kept the affairs of the society quietly, calmly, and efficiently in control, and as a trustee she offered very sound advice to the ncas committee.
A good friend, she will be sadly missed by us all.
Chris Mardell - Chair ncas'
The Annual General Meeting and Lunch, held on Sunday 24th July, was pronounced a resounding success - and a delightful day to remember! To read more about the afternoon and enjoy a few photographs, please click here. For the financial reports and other documents, please see under Events - AGM.
Lol Sargent and Peter Higgins will be presenting a talk on 10th May at 7pm in the Norwich School Blake Studio. These highly talented digital artists have collaborated since their multi-award winning work at the Millennium Dome and will discuss why they believe digital sits alongside paint, sculpture and print to become the ‘fourth’ intangible medium. Not to be missed! For more details, see under EVENTS.
The Geoffrey Lefever Retrospective at 90 Exhibition is taking place at the Norwich School Crypt from 21 - 29 April, 10am - 4pm. For more details, click the Exhibitions tag.
On Monday 21 February, we were delighted to welcome Ann Christopher RA as our first speaker since the onset of Covid-19. Many thanks to Norwich University of the Arts for hosting the event in their splendid new Riverside Lecture Theatre. Over 70 ncas members and NUA students attended the event. Anne was in conversation with fellow sculptor Derek Morris, providing an insightful view into inspiration, the creative process, ways of working and the physical making of her work. Ann was accompanied by her partner of 52 years, Ken Cook, who has his own foundry and has cast many of Ann’s sculptures.
For more talks in the series, see under the Events tab. All welcome!
The 'Call to Artists' had a good response with 240 works being submitted by 95 artists.
Works for the nca21 exhibition were selected by an independent panel: Rosy Gray, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Norwich Castle Museum & Gallery, Lee Grandjean, Sculptor and former Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art and Carl Rowe, Artist and former Associate Professor in Fine Art at Norwich University of the Arts.
The selection process was anonymous and a total of 52 works by 46 artists were selected. It was good to see several students from NUA had joined ncas and submitted work.
Due to the price increase at The Forum, we had to find a new venue for the members show this time round. The Hostry proved to be an excellent space to host the exhibition, fully supported by Sue Bell, the Exhibitions Volunteer, who was very professional and helpful when hanging and taking down the exhibition.
More than 150 guests attended the Private View, Professor Richard Sawdon-Smith, Dean of Arts and Media at NUA formally opened the exhibition and talked about the growing relationship between NUA and ncas.
The ncas prize of £500 for the most outstanding work was awarded to Maria Pavledis for her work Jacket Woman.
The Adnams prize for the most distinctive work was awarded to Geoffrey Lefever for his work Postwick June 2020.
The footfall in the Hostry was very good with a constant flow of visitors to the Cathedral, many of whom stopped to view the show.
Our thanks to the participating artists and ncas members who kindly volunteered to steward the exhibition for a whole three and a half weeks, and to Janey Bevington for organising this.
We were pleased to sell 12 artworks, including 2 from visitors to the city. A 25% ncas commission was applied to these sales.
More than 150 guests attended the Private View of the NCA21 Exhibition at the Norwich Cathedral Hostry on Wednesday evening. With so many compliments on the quality of the art and the curation of the exhibition itself, the ncas trustees declared it a resounding success.
Professor Richard Sawdon-Smith , Dean of Arts and Media at Norwich University of the Arts formally “opened” the exhibition and talked of the growing relationship between NUA & ncas.
Professor Richard Sawdon-Smith
The ncas prize of £500 for the most outstanding work was awarded to Maria Pavledis for her work “Jacket Woman”.
Prizewinner Maria Pavledis & ncas chair Chris Mardell
The Adnams prize for the most distinctive work was awarded to Geoffrey Lefever for his work “Postwick June 2020”.
Prizewinner Geoffrey Lefever
The exhibition continues until 4th December. Open Monday to Saturday from 10am – 4pm.
Click here to read more in the EDP’s article featured in Saturday’s weekend page.
(Posted 13 November 2021)
It is with great sadness that we have to tell you of the death, aged eighty-two, on Monday 25 October 2021, of the sculptor and long standing NCAS and Norwich 20 Group member, Ros Newman.
In the loving care of her daughter, Delphi, Ros had been physically ailing for some time, though her mind remained sharp as a tack.
We cannot think of a better tribute to Ros than these lines borrowed from past NCAS Chair, Keith Roberts', essay in the catalogue of Ros's solo retrospective exhibition at the Fairhurst Gallery two years ago.
Artists who model in plaster or clay frequently start out by making an initial metal framework, or armature, to act as the support for the modelling material. Ros Newman, ever since developing her unusual oxy-acetylene welding technique in the early sixties, turned this practice on its head, by transforming the welded steel armature itself into the airy, delicate, figurative works that are her instantly recognizable trademark. As she has said, “I found that I could use steel as a modelling material . . . steel found me, and I embraced her with all my passion”. Her method stands in sharp contrast to the (more macho?) ways that iron and steel are more conventionally used; the heavy cast figures of Anthony Gormley, or the static welded steel of Anthony Caro. Currently, one of the very few affinities with her practice can be found in the lively, figurative work of local artist Rachael Long.
She came from a remarkable, artistic family. Her mother went to the Royal College of Art (RCA) and her father, a scientist, co-invented the Altair Design geometric colouring books. They in turn were both from artistic families. Her maternal grandfather was Sir William Rothenstein, painter and principal of the RCA from 1920 to 1935, her uncle, Sir John Rothenstein, was Tate director from 1938 to 1964 and wrote Modern English Painters while her uncle Michael was a noted print maker. This all raises that perennially interesting question of whether artistic talent is in some part familial or whether it is simply socially inherited.
Following her somewhat unconventional early education Ros spent a short time at Chelsea Art School in 1955, but then took various jobs before finally landing up at Hammersmith College of Art as a mature student in the early sixties. It was here that she discovered, became entranced by, and subsequently developed, her own technique of oxyacetylene welding that would become central to her way of working. One of the oldest forms of welding, and rarely used today in an industrial context, oxyacetylene welding uses a very high temperature flame to melt the iron or steel, while a rod can be used to add a new molten pool of metal to the growing work.
Ros used her skeletal skeins of steel to create over the years a joyful menagerie of animated people, animals and birds. Minimalist chickens, cockerels, starlings, and seagulls whirl around with the harlequins, dancers and acrobats all surveyed by lively horses and cheetahs, all seemingly in perpetual motion. Hers is physically tough work but made harder by the fact that she had to adapt her manual processes after breaking both wrists in a motorcycle accident in Taiwan. Her earlier work was made largely in mild steel, which could be polished, galvanized or even plated in nickel or tin, and many of these works were of necessity essentially domestic. Later, and as public-art projects came along, she embraced stainless steel, including welding together worked forms that had been laser-cut from sheet metal. In much of this she was helped by Chris, her late husband, an engineer turned sculptor.
An early example is Bird Flight, commissioned as the result of an intense selection process by the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society and paid for with money from public subscriptions and a raffle of the maquette. For this major new work, she used multiple cutout steel doves that swirl upwards from a quiet pool in the friend’s garden in front of the Oncology Department at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. It was installed on a bright and blustery day in June 2005. Many related works since used this basic motif, including Birds in the Wave Garden at Pensthorpe in 2010, Seagulls at St. George’s Park in Great Yarmouth (2008) and Freedom Fighters at Salthouse in 2006 and numerous private commissions. She was represented for many years by the Alwin Gallery in London (later the Alwin Sculpture Gallery, Kent) following her first solo show with them in 1971.
