Mirror Mirror at Chatsworth House

Chatsworth looking out

A recent visit, with friends, to Chatsworth House in Derbyshire allowed me to reflect on the practice of exhibiting contemporary art amongst the paraphernalia of days gone by.
(We are all familiar with the annual exhibitions at Houghton Hall.)

The current exhibition at Chatsworth, Mirror Mirror, Reflections on Design, co-curated with writer, historian and curator, Glenn Adamson has the stated aim – “to place original works in direct relationship to the historic design at Chatsworth, creating unexpected connections with the house’s architecture, interiors, furniture, ceramics, as well as its essential materials of glass, stone, wood, and light”.

We wandered around the house and grounds coming across the pieces, some, in our view, placed more successfully than others. What is it that makes some pieces “work” in a setting? Were the creators artists or designers?

What to make of Italian design studio Formafantasma’s ‘Charcoal series’ a cabinet of glass vessels and pieces of charcoal, seeking to compare and contrast charcoal connections to destruction and purification? Most visitors hardly glanced at it.

In contrast Jay Sae Jung Oh’s seat assembled from musical instruments wrapped in leather cord stopped people in their tracks, In the music room, it prompted observers to try to identify the instruments, while acknowledging how well it had found its place in the room. The ornate outcroppings, reflected in the carving and decoration of the other much older furniture, the natural material sitting comfortably on the wood floor.

The enigmatic coil pots, ceramic stoneware of Andile Dyalvane lured us along the Chapel corridor where they were displayed amongst stone and marble statues commissioned long ago. Somehow he seamlessly combines elements from his South African tribal homeland with influences from a recent Cornish residency. The pots draw the observer in to begin to notice the details, small holes and seams and scars, eyes and lips. Each pot different but making a coherent whole.

We all agreed we would like to have the Enignum VIII Bed, by Joseph Walsh but how would we get it up the stairs?

Chatsworth Cascade

There are 16 global artist/designers represented through the house and grounds and as with many exhibitions, there are pieces which are thought provoking, interesting, beautiful or boring.
The exhibition is on all summer so if you are travelling in that direction, it’s well worth a visit.
(We got the bus from Matlock where we were staying. It delivered us to the door.)

Michele Summers

Chatsworth House
Bakewell Derbyshire DE45 1PP

2023 Spring Exhibition in Pictures

Thornham Village Hall has been the venue for the West Norfolk Artists Association Spring Exhibition for many years. This year is no exception.

Our Spring Exhibition over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend was a great success, with higher visitor numbers and more sales than ever before.

Here some of the works in the exhibition.


Congratulations to Neil Adams for winning the Curators’ Prize with his painting “Mapperton Garden. (Photo Neil Adams and Esther Marshall chair of the West Norfolk Artists Association.)

Three Member Artists Exhibiting in King’s Lynn

Norfolk Landscape by Kerry Long

Three WNAA member artists are exhibiting at Purfleet Brasserie, just off King Street, 50 yards from the Customs House in King’s Lynn from 26th March to 7th May. Kerry Long and Michelle Louise Carter both from Heacham, are exhibiting alongside Snettisham based artist Helena Anderson. It’s an exciting opportunity that is curated by the West Norfolk Artists Association. Continue reading →

5 Upstairs

4th April – 28th April, from Tuesday to Saturday each week .
The Gallery Venetia’s Yarn Shot, 16 Norwich Street, Fakenham, NR21 9AE.

The yarn shop is closed on Mondays .

5 artists getting together to put on an exhibition in the upstairs gallery of the yarn shop in Fakenham. The exhibition space has been running for about a year. WNAA member Tom Thompson whose work is well known to members.

Pia Henderson Is a painter, Kate Vogler is a potter who makes wonderful pit fired pots with abstract surface variation, Karen Callinan is local potter who creates beautiful glazed pots, Lesley Ash, is a sculptor, she creates bronze resin animal sculptures.

Download poster

Winslow Homer Force of Nature.

The Gale 1883-93

National Gallery London until 8th January 2023.

I’ve been a Winslow Homer fan for a long time but was long resigned to no one here having ever heard of him, despite his standing as a major artist in the USA.

So, I lost no time booking my ticket when I realised the National Gallery were putting on a major exhibition “Force of Nature” featuring works from his long career.

To quote the National Gallery.
“For the first time in the UK, we present an overview of Winslow Homer (1836–1910), the great American Realist painter. Well known to many but not everyone, follow Homer’s journey from magazine illustrator to sought-after artist in oil and watercolour.”

Northeaster 1895

With more than fifty paintings, covering over forty years of Homer’s career, the exhibition is a lot to take in in one visit. Many of the paintings have travelled from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Homer first came to public notice as a war artist in the American civil war which had a massive impact on him. From exploring aspects of war, he went on to paint the lives of emancipated former slaves reflecting the difficulties they faced. He had a deep interest in people living in times of struggle. However, he also painted young society women and children.

He always let his work tell the story, not elucidating if asked for an explanation.

Apart from some early months in Paris, he lived and worked between the USA mainland and the Caribbean, Barbados and Bermuda.

The interlude that has always interested me is the 18 months he spent in Cullercoats, a coastal fishing village in the north of England. It was an artist’s colony, but he stayed through the winter when most visitors returned home. He made many sketches and paintings in his time there illustrating the tough lives of the women. These images also informed his later works.

Through his career he also had a love of seascapes painting the sea in a myriad of moods and the wild seas at Cullercoats added another dimension. He witnessed the life savers rowing out to rescue the crew of the Iron Crown inspiring a major work of his career. Towards the end of his life the sea, a central theme throughout his life became the dominant subject of his art.

The exhibition has a wonderful selection of watercolours and oils which trace the development of his painting style, always with the consistency and development of his colour palette and his attention to light.

It’s difficult to sum up such a huge body of work completed over 40 years, but I loved having the rare opportunity to see all these works together and would recommend a visit.

Michele Summers

Visit the National Gallery website

Fabulous Creative Experience

A section of the installation showing the height increasing.

In September I was invited to take part in an Art Symposium in Neukirchen, Bavarian Forest, Germany.

The theme was Cosmos.

When thinking of Cosmos – the first impulse is to think of the universe. So when I took a look at my huge book by Alexander von Humboldt called ‘Cosmos’, I was surprised to find it more to do with natural science and geology than planets and stars – and that Cosmos can also mean order and harmony. Humboldt’s work had to do with the earth as an interconnected whole.

The objects are growing from the ground around an ant hill.

My concept for the Symposium took aspects of all. Based on my installation of 2019 in Norwich where I built pillar-like objects using armatures (wire structures) covered in plaster – I imagined these objects as a sequence growing out of the ground. The first of eleven was about 15 cms, the last over 2 metres. Symbolically, I was taking Humboldt’s earth and having it grow into the heavens.

The other aspect of my concept had to do with using natural elements and experimenting to see what would happen if I mixed them with cement instead of plaster.

At the Symposium, I met seven artists each with their own concept of Cosmos. We were able to choose to work in a former butcher’s/pub with rooms up above, post office or café (a sad sign of the times that villages are losing such services). For us, an amazing opportunity to develop our ideas and create.

The discovery of a neglected garden on site was the perfect spot for me to create. The Symposium and experimental nature of it, gave me the freedom to fail. It didn’t matter if the projects were complete or if your exact proposal was realised. It was the exchange and development of ideas that was important. For me, some of the ‘failures’ were the most exciting parts of my experience. One of them was mixing elderberries into the cement. All previous experiments worked wonderfully – so it was quite surprising when the cement didn’t set and crumbled when pressure was put on it. Also, my hope of colouring the cement purple turned to grey!

In the garden while clearing the long grass, I discovered several ant hills. Not wanting to disturb them, I used rubble found on site to ring each one, forming an ant hill constellation. It became part of my installation. My object placement therefore naturally included these mounds so that everything in the garden became it’s own system – Cosmos. I started creating the elements of my sculpture using chicken wire stuffed with crumpled newspaper for my sequence of evolving objects. I was going to use cement. Other artists suggested that it looked good as it was. So, this part of my work was complete.

In the time I had left, I devoted myself to two further objects using my original idea of oxide coloured cement mixed with natural materials. Rain set in. The rods for the pillar-like sculptures couldn’t hold the weight of the wet cement. With the help of a couple of the other artists, we constructed a support system. It didn’t end up looking as I had planned – the cement set with the addition of rose hips, bindweed roots, stinging nettle stalks, seed heads, berries (not elderberry) that I added to it. In the context of the Symposium I wasn’t able to see what would happen over time but it was a wonderful basis for new experiments.

What this Symposium showed me was that embracing mistakes made it much more fun. They weren’t ‘mistakes’ they were just an observation of the state of things – the magical part of learning. So often we restrict what we do because we are so intent on getting it right the first time. We can get it right in the end but why not have fun on the way?

My Studio is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 10-1. Visitors always welcome. (Do call first if you are coming from further away.) We could talk about projects to get you started be it lino-cut, clay, plaster and a whole lot more.

Esther Boehm

Studio @ 55 • 55 High Street • Heacham, PE31 7DW
https://www.studioat55.com • eb@estherboehm.com
T 01485 570 506 • M 07538 986 235