At the suggestion of one of our members, my husband and I visited this delightful walled garden with some very interesting plants, shrubs and trees. The sun was shining on us that day and although a lot of the plants were over there was still plenty to see. It is relatively small and easy to walk around and there is a bench under one of the trees to sketch or simply sit and contemplate.

On site there is also a coffee shop cum cafe with indoor and outdoor areas with an extensive menu and Norfolk Ice Cream. There is also a nursery which offers a wide choice of plants at very reasonable prices.

If you are a keen gardener or plant lover I would definitely recommend a visit. The best time to see the gardens would probably be May/June time.

The gardens are off the beaten track but there are signs showing how to get there.
www.westacregardens.co.uk

‘The Artocracy’

On the way into the car park you drive through a large wooded estate and you can see the back of a very, very large historic house together with a life sized sculpture. I enquired at the Gardens and was told that the country’s most famous sculptor, Sir Antony Gormley OBE owned the house and the gardens. (Antony Gormley is probably most famous for his vast sculpture ‘Angel of the North’ as well as ‘Another Place’ at Crosby Beach, Liverpool, which consists of 100 cast iron figures facing towards the sea). His work nearly always involves casts of his own body.

West Acre High House originally came up for sale in 2008 for £9.5m including 1100 acres but it remained on the market for some time until Gormley purchased the house in 2010 for £3m – the price being reduced for less land and factoring in a £1.5m restoration programme.

West Acre High House was built in 1756 and added to during the 19th century. I only saw the back of the house, which in my view is not very appealing, however I have since seen photographs of the front of the house which is much more attractive. It is an unusual house in that the South front has 7 bays but the North front has 13 bays.

Antony Gormley is one of several artists glibly named ‘The Artocracy’ as they are buying historic properties and are willing and able to finance the huge restoration projects.

One of the first ‘Artocrats’ was Peter Paul Rubens who bought the Castle of Steen Manor House in the Netherlands in 1635 which is said to have led to some of his finest landscape paintings.

Damien Hirst also purchased the historical country house, Toddington Manor, in Gloucestershire which had been empty for 20 years with serious concerns about outbreaks of dry rot and the need to replace the acres of roof.

Hirst purchased Toddington Manor in 2005 for £3m with a planned £10m programme of restoration although it is thought that the costs could be much higher.

The house has been shrouded in scaffolding for 13 years (much to the annoyance of conservationists and neighbours) to prevent further decay and to protect a temporary roof.

It is expected that the restoration will be a lifetime’s work.

Another sculptor, Sir Anish Kapoor CBE, RA was very interested in taking on the lease from the National Trust of Ashdown House in Berkshire but it eventually went to Pete Townshend of The Who. Leasing would have given Kapoor the status without the huge restoration costs.

It is heartening to me to learn that some of our great artists are protecting the future of these beautiful historic homes.

Esther Marshall

My thanks to www.thecountryseat.org.uk who have been an invaluable source of information.

Recently on reading a news item in a national newspaper ‘Nudity Rings Alarm Bells at Cathedral’ I was prompted to write about my own experience of exhibiting art in churches since living in Norfolk. I have always felt slightly inhibited by the atmosphere of religious spaces for exhibitions, particularly having only previously exhibited in a gallery environment where I felt free to show work without boundaries or restrictions.

In the newspaper it described the four acrylic canvas works by the artist Joe Greenwood as being ‘ to in your face’ for display at Portsmouth cathedral as part of the summer show by the Portsmouth and Hampshire Art Society. A spokesman for the Diocese of Portsmouth said “ When planning the exhibition the paintings were considered to be suitable but a number of visitors and regular worshippers expressed distress about them” The nude paintings were subsequently removed and returned to Mr Greenwood. How humiliating and ridiculous particularly when one considers the ‘Sistine Chapel’ in Rome.

My work often depicts the human figure, male and female, but I have never exhibited these images in our Summer Exhibition in St Nicholas Chapel for this very reason but more to do with not offending the Friends of the Chapel and visitors as the congregation no longer exists. The chapel I understand is for weddings and funerals. I notice whenever nudes, usually small intimate studies , are presented the curators tend to tuck them away behind a screen not at the front to greet visitors.

The first exhibition I saw on arriving in Norfolk was at Salthouse church part of the North Norfolk Exhibition Project and this felt exciting and not inhibited by the surroundings. All manner of topics and subjects were represented including the human figure on a grand scale. Not always obvious but that was the interesting part. The church lent itself so well as an exhibition space being austere and white without too much ornamentation and offering an insight into the artistic life of Norfolk and beyond.

This autumn our exhibition will be in the Fermoy Gallery at the kings Lynn Arts Centre and a great opportunity to feel free of any restrictions on subject matter. In the past the Summer Exhibition has been held at the Arts Centre and there will hopefully be further opportunities to do so in the future.

Lydia Haines

July 21 to August 4, 2018
Open daily 10.30am–4.00pm.

Impressions of this year’s exhibition at St. Nicholas Chapel in King’s Lynn.

The Preview

We launched the exhibition with the preview on Friday evening. Special thanks go to Robert Rickard, the 14-19 advisor for Norfolk County Council for opening the exhibition and selecting the Syd Davison Award winner.

His thoughtful consideration of the all the work was evident through his words and greatly appreciated by all.

Fabulous music was provided by Ed & Laura.

The Winners

The work chosen for the Syd Davison Award was Silver Seals by Izzy Wingham.

This year’s Inga Miller Award chosen by the committee went to Neil Leggett for Maquette No. 1 (Marengo).

The Visitor’s Choice Award goes to Jill Ilett for Le Jardin Anglais.

The Exhibition

The Workshops

Supported by

1. House extension, downstairs Showing Italo Valenti’s collages (1964) and Lucie Rie’s bowl ‘The Wave’ (1971)

Looking at the origins of Kettle’s Yard in 1957, it is hard to imagine the legacy it has become. Although Jim Ede would have preferred a stately home, he was offered 4 tiny condemned slum dwellings from the president of the Cambridge Preservation Society.

The actual origins predate this. On first appearance it was his meeting Ben and Winifred Nicholson in about 1924 while he was an assistant at the Tate Gallery. In fact, it was a visit to the Louvre at 13 years of age and access to the Free Library at the Fitzwilliam at 15 where his love of early Italian painting began and started him on his collector’s journey.

This collection is also a personal journey of circumstance and chance meetings. It was Ben Nicholson who introduced Ede to contemporary art. He was able to purchase unsold Nicholson paintings for the price of the canvas and frame for the price of one to three pounds when he could afford it. Some, Nicholson gave him.

In 1926 his position at the Tate brought him into contact with Alfred Wallis. Again, he bought as many paintings as he could afford.

His collection of work from the estate Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was acquired “for a song” because nobody else wanted it.

Now the collection contains work by over 100 artists also including Joan Miró, Constantin Brancusi, Naum Gabo, Christopher Wood, Barbara Hepworth, David Jones, Henry Moore and Italo Valenti (one of my personal favourites).

I’m amazed at the forsight and humanity of Jim Ede. Ede describes Kettle’s Yard as “a continuing way of life from the last 50 years, in which stray objects, stones, glass, pictures, sculptures, in light and in space, have been used to make manifest the underlying stability which more and more we need to recognise if we are not to be swamped by all that is so rapidly opening up before us.” These words are as relevant today as when they were written. Maybe moreso.

The atmosphere of the house is exceptional through the mix of art and found objects. Through Ede’s nature collections we are reminded that this space is personal, home. The library is Ede’s actual library. All books are available to study. This in keeping with the open house tradition.

From 1957 to 1973 when the Ede’s lived there, their home was open to visitors every afternoon. Kettle’s Yard, today, continues in this spirit. It is a place to spend hours of discovery and well worth visiting again and again. A wonderful place to use and be.

In the new gallery Antony Gormley SUBJECT uses the space and architecture to show 5 works into which we are drawn, become participants or maybe even the subject (?).

It’s well worth watching the BBC documentary, imagine … Anthony Gormley: Being Human to gain tremendous insight into Gormley’s life and work. (Shown Thursday to Sunday.)

Antony Gormley SUBJECT runs until 27 August.

Kettle’s Yard
University of Cambridge
Castle Street
Cambridge
CB3 0AQ

+44 (0)1223 748 100
mail@kettlesyard.cam.ac.uk

Visit Kettle’s Yard website for more information.

Esther Boehm

Further photo information:
3. House cottages, downstairs Jim Ede’s bedroom table
4. House extension, upstairs Designed by Sir Leslie Martin, opened in 1970
7. Showing the Buddha from the Prang Sam Yot Temple, Lopburi, Thailand (13th or 14th century) and works by Mario Sironi, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Ben Nicholson
8. House extension, upstairs showing Winifred Nicholson’s ‘Roman Road’ (1927)
10. Installation view Antony Gormley SUBJECT © Antony Gormley
11. INFINTE CUBE © Antony Gormley

Photos 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 & 8 © Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge
Photos 3, 7 & 8 by Paul Allitt
Photos 5, 6 & 9 by Helena Anderson
Photos 10 & 11 by Benjamin Westoby

Pictured from left to right Andrew Schumann, John Hughes, Michael Bell and Syd Davison. Photo by Alan Miller, Lynn News Nov. 2001

The Schumann Cabinet was made in 2001. The Association had only been formed the year before and no exhibition programme had yet been formulated.
I had the idea of a cabinet of small works hanging on the wall and Liz Falconbridge agreed that it could hang on the wall of the Arts Centre foyer. I commissioned it from Toby Winteringham, our wonderful local precision cabinet maker.
It first appeared in November 2001 in the Arts Centre and was nicely illustrated and reported on in the Lynn News. After a few months in the Arts Centre it was moved to the Doric Arts Gallery in King Street, where it was well received (until the gallery eventually closed).
Andrew Schumann

Please click the image to open the slide show. You can click the ‘pause’ button on the top right to read the articles.

Damien Hirst, Myth and Legend, by the entrance to the hall at HOUGHTON HALL, NORFOLK
Photo by Pete Huggins

The first Damien Hirst piece, Sensation, is encountred while driving to the carpark. From the car it look looks like something from an amusement park or fun fair. Looking like brightly coloured plastic. On closer inspection, it appears to be a magnification of a section of skin complete with hairs.

This concept is carried through several works. Myth (unicorn) and Legend (Pegasus) are built with clean precision but at the same time highly stylised. The ‘outer skin’ is painted white, a stark contrast to areas where the skin is ‘peeled away’ to reveal the insides horrifyingly red with touches of pink and yellow.

The same graphic depiction of this scientific disecting into parts of the figures is seen in the oversized torso Temple and the massively grotesque The Virgin Mother. In the gift shop, you can recognise the same general feel in the type of anatomy books which inspired Hirst.

Damien Hirst, The Virgin Mother, in the Pleasure Grounds at HOUGHTON HALL, NORFOLK
Photo by Pete Huggins

The monochrome works may be subtle as far as colour goes but definitely not in content. Anatomy of an Angel in Cararra marble, carved with mechanical precision exposes sections of the anatomy to the bone. Wretched War – The Dream is Dead in silver shows a decapitated pregnant woman with baby exposed in the womb as already seen in The Virgin Mother. Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain in black is poignant at first glance but the use of scalpel and tailor’s scissors give an unexpected twist on a theme already blatantly conveyed by Marco d’Agrate in 1562.

Also on the grounds are Charity the oversized replica of a collection box in the shape of a sweet girl with a leg brace has been ripped open with a crowbar, coins strewn on the ground and The Hat Makes the Man after Max Ernst’s collage of 1920.

In the house, all Walpole and Cholmondeley family portraits were removed from the stately rooms of Houghton Hall and replaced with Hirst’s Colour Space painings. A total of 46 paintings are being displayed for the first time at Houghton. We were told by the guides that these were selected from the 300 paintings in the series made with the help of assistants.

The red walls of the Saloon provides an excellent backdrop for the first 8 paintings on display. What is striking about the paintings is the complete contrast to the sculptures outdoors. The dots are happy.  They are taken out of the rigid grid of the earlier Spot paintings. They interact. They make you smile.

Damien Hirst, Colour Space series, in the Saloon at HOUGHTON HALL, NORFOLK
Photo by Pete Huggins

Hirst says of his work: “I originally wanted the spots to look like they were painted by a human trying to paint like a machine. Colour Space is going back to the human element, so instead you have the fallibility of the human hand in the drips and inconsistencies. There are still no two exact colours that repeat in each painting, which is really important to me. I think of them as cells under a microscope. It felt right to show them somewhere historic rather than in a conventional gallery space and Houghton’s perfect. It feels totally right.”

Damien Hirst, Space, Time, Form, Matter, Substance, Change and Motion and Observe, Identify, Reason, Analyse, Measure, Modify and Reproduce, in The Stone Hall at HOUGHTON HALL, NORFOLK
Photo by Pete Huggins

Space, Time, Form, Matter, Substance, Change and Motion and Observe, Identify, Reason, Analyse, Measure, Modify and Reproduce are a kinetic translation of the spots into three dimensions. The balls dance randomly through the box for the 5 minutes when air is blown through. Then they rest and then the cycle begins again.

One of the many very helpful guides told me, “There is one thing about this exhibition, everyone is smiling. Some because they think it’s a joke and others because they really love the work.”

It’s well worth the visit to Houghton Hall to make up your own mind. The exhibition runs until 18 July. The outdoor sculptures will remain until September.

Visit the Houghton Hall website for more informaiton and booking.

All images ©Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2018