Great Yarmouth Art College doorway as it was a few months ago, photograph by Derek Jackson 2011

A rather numinous photograph  of the building at dusk taken at the end of September 2011.  Note that the name marked on the tiles above the door reads Municipal School of Art.

The neglected college was becoming an ever more tragic sight. so it is good to see it being refurbished by Flagship Housing for conversion to flats.  The building works are being undertaken by Wellington Construction under the architect Paul Dunthorn of Design Partnership.  It is a listed building so the exterior will be returned to its former glory at any rate.   Expected completion date is November 2011.

Saturday 1 October to Sunday 4 March 2012

Sea View by J.S.Cotman, c1810-20

Discover Great Yarmouth through the eyes of the Norwich School of Artists in this exhibition of paintings and drawings.

This delightful exhibition of paintings and drawings from Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service collections includes atmospheric views of local landmarks – the beach, jetty and quay side – by artists such as John Sell Cotman, John Crome and Joseph Stannard.

In the 19th century, Norfolk was home to this close-knit group of painters, who formed the first regional group of artists in England. They were inspired by Great Yarmouth, with its bustling quay side and growing popularity as a holiday destination. And as many potential patrons and benefactors lived by the quay, some of the artists chose to make Yarmouth their home.

A programme of talks and family activities complements the exhibition.

For details visit www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk

Admission to the whole Museum £4.80 adults / £4.10 concession / £3.50 Young person (4-16yrs) / under 4’s FREE / Adult in family group £4.00

Opening Times

Until 31 October: Mon – Sun 10am – 5pm

From 1 November: Mon-Fri 10am – 4pm, Sat & Sun 12noon-4pm

“The War”, by rabiD.

rabiD  is currently exhibiting at Great Yarmouth Central Library Galleries (15th-20th August, 2011) with a powerful show of drawings and paintings in aid of MIND, the charity that supports mental health.   rabiD is now planning to take this exhibition to Norwich.  To find out more about this artist  and his work (and an explanation of the image illustrated), go to www.nuffsed.co.uk

Norfolk Libraries has now got a Facebook page where you can find out more about what is going on: http://www.facebook.com/NorfolkLibrariesUK.  To find out about the galleries at Great Yarmouth Central Library and how to book an exhibition, click here.

It was good to bump into Mark Leech resting on a bench in the Great Yarmouth Library Community Garden this morning and to have a chance to look through his latest sketchbook that he happened to have with him. 

Mark helps out as a volunteer in the Growing Together Community Garden where an amazing crop of vegetables has already been harvested this year – onions, garlic, herbs, mange tout, radishes, courgettes, French beans, broad beans, lettuces!   There are fruit trees in the garden and lavender, attracting butterflies and bees.  Caroline Fernandez is keen to welcome new -volunteers who would like to help in the garden and share in the harvest on Tuesday mornings, 10.00-12.00 hrs.  She can be contacted on 01493 855441 or 07825281846 or by email at caroline.fernandez@norfolk.gov.uk.  

Workshops to be held in the garden over the summer include fish painting, children’s summer gardening workshops, bite sized bats, bugs and birds workshops with Norfolk Wildlife Trust, autumn wildlife and gardening workshops, herbal first aid and sustainable gardening workshops.  Contact Caroline for more details or keep an eye out for posters in the library.

As well as a keen gardener, Mark is very productive artist.  He attends the Priory Gallery workshops run by the National Gallery and the Priory Art Group.  He also participated in the Transitions project: to see the work he contributed to this project, click here.

Conversations from the Edge is a research project undertaken by the sculptor Bridget Heriz which was supported by SeaChange Arts and funded through the Working Neighbourhood Fund.  Transcripts from conversations with 25 artists from Great Yarmouth have been posted to the Transitions site linked to EastCoastNet, and can be accessed by clicking on the name of the artist in the list below. 

Charcrit Boonsom, photographer

Janice Burgoyne, sculptor, workshops

Julia Cake, sculptor, workshops

Margaret Carver, RSM, SWA, landscape painter and Chair of Great Yarmouth and District Society of Artists

Bill Casey, photographer and member of Great Yarmouth and District Photographic Society

Ernie and Karen Childs, Great Yarmouth Potteries, workshops

Katarzyna Coleman, painter, printmaker, workshops

John Dashwood, painter, muralist and poet

Jankie Drummond, textile artist, community arts and carnival, workshops

Lorraine Finch,  paper and photographic conservator, workshops

Kevin Griffiths, painter

Jane Hall, painter

Matthew Harrison, film-maker, community arts

Derek Jackson, photographer

John Kiki, painter

Julian Macey, RMS, painter, President of Great Yarmouth and District Society of Artists

Jason Parr, sculptor and poet, community arts

Emrys Parry, painter

Emily Payne, film-maker

Manuel Seixas, photographer, community arts

Bruer Tidman, painter

Jonathan Tooke, poet, writer and artist

Ian Walker, marine painter and Chair of Great Yarmouth Guild of Artists and Craftsmen

Nick Ward, RE, printmaker

Central tower with Eric Gill mural and crucifix hanging over altar, St. Peter the Apostle, photograph by Derek Jackson

Of the many unsung architectural gems in Yarmouth and Gorleston St. Peter the Apostle in Gorleston-on-Sea, designed in 1938 by the famous sculptor Eric Gill, must be one of the most unusual. 

Eric Gill had trained in an architect’s office in his youth, the experience proving useful when he was later commissioned to ornament buildings and monuments.  When he was asked to design a new 300 seat Roman Catholic church for Gorleston, he must have seen this as a welcome opportunity to put his architectural ideas into practice, along with his view that the altar should be placed at the centre of the church in the midst of the congregation. 

The Parish Priest whose idea it was to commission Gill was Father Thomas Walker: he had made friends with the sculptor whilst serving as a curate in High Wycombe.   Gill used the High Wycombe architect Edmund Farrel to assist him design a plain bulding that could be built by local craftsmen and with local materials.  The structure was designed outwards from the altar, as Gill believed that a church is there “first and chiefly as a canopy over an altar” (Plain Architecture by Gill).   Crossed arches create an octagonal central space for the altar, with the crucifix suspended above it from the central tower. Arches are used throughout the church, springing directly from ground level, not supported on piers as is usually the case in churches.  The dynamic affect is very striking.   The structure of the roof timbers is also very eloquent in its truth to function.  

Photograph by Derek Jackson

The Yarmouth firm H.R.Middleton &  Co. were contracted to build the church and the foundation stone was laid in  February 1939. The church was opened in June 1939, so it didn’t take long to build.  The whole cost was £6,700.

The Stations of the Cross were created by Denis Tegetmeter, Gill’s son-in-law.  The stained glass  window at the east end was designed in 1963  by Joseph Edward Nuttgens, who had been a friend of Gill’s and was the leading stained glass maker of his time. 

Externally, Gill designed a very pleasing arched passageway from the church to the priest’s house.  It is a real delight to visit this unique church and much appreciation is due to Father Henry MacCarthy for accommodating this visit by Derek Jackson and Bridget Heriz.

Interpretation by Derek Jackson of interior of St. Peter’s

Over the past 6 months, the Fusion Youth Group, based on the Middlegate Estate, have been working on a photography project alongside the Comeunity Team and the Middlegate Community Association. The funding for the project was obtained through the Your South Yarmouth, Your Decision 2009-2010 Participatory Budgeting programme, which saw local residents in South Yarmouth vote for and allocate funding towards the project.

During this time, the young people received training in photography from a GY College Tutor, and took hundreds of photos of their local community, which were shown in early November in the Rumbelow Gallery in Great Yarmouth Library.

Apart from the 50 plus photos that were  on display, the young people  also put together a delightful brochure of the photos taken during the project, and this is still available to pick up at the current Transitions exhibition at the gallery, on until the 19th November. 

 The young people also participated in workshops run by poet Rupert Mallin and young filmmaker Jade Yaxley.  The decided they wanted to explore bullying past and present, and did this through cartoon, words, a visit to the Tolhouse Museum, and film.  Emily Payne edited the film material they produced to create a short video posted to You Tube:

For any enquiries related to Fusions, please contact Katie Folkes on 01493 845 929 or at katiefolkes@voluntarynorfolk.org.uk

TRANSITIONS EXHIBITION

10th-19th November, 2010, 10-17 hrs (not inc. Sunday)

Central Library Exhibition Galleries, Tolhouse Street, Great Yarmouth

 Yarmouth Beach, 2010, by Derek Jackson

Transitions is an eclectic project engaging young people, artists, museums and long-term residents to bring together views about change in Great Yarmouth past and present.

                 supported by 

Saturday 16th October 11am to 3pm Education Room, Time and Tide Museum

Kate Coleman is delivering an exciting and unusual workshop at the Time and Tide Museum on Saturday, 16th October, offering the opportunity to view, discuss and draw selected museum objects not usually on display. These objects include domestic design icons, tools and leisure objects from the past 50 + years, which will no doubt evoke memories and inspiration. You will be able to make pencil, charcoal & pastel drawings and have the opportunity to make exciting prints. In addition to this, poet Rupert Mallin will be there to listen to and record your thoughts about memories raised by the objects. Resulting words and images will be exhibited at the Central Library in November.

Free admission to this workshop for pre-booked participants includes refreshments and materials. Participants must supply their own lunch. Normal admission applies to visit the museum.

Great Yarmouth artists group, ARC, has been funded by Awards for All to run Transitions, with the aim of profiling grassroots cultural life in the Borough, past and present.

Transitions will conclude with an exhibition at the Central Library from 10th-20th November 2010 and the interactive website www.eastcoastnet.org will be used to gather and share materials and as a focus for discussion as the project develops.

To book your place or for more information please conta  Kate Coleman tel: 07765281970 or email here

       In collaboration with Great Yarmouth Museums Service

(written in response to the post about the collector and patron Dawson Turner )

On 4th July 1803, Cotman was in York with his fellow artist, Paul Sandby Munn. They were making their way to stay with the Cholmley family at Brandsby Hall, Yorkshire. July 4th is a significant date because it marks the boundary between the aspiring artist in search of a “voice”, and the mature artist who, in the blink of an eye, found it.

Like all great moments in Cotman’s oeuvre, the event was marked, not by the drama attendant upon the production of a big or powerful statement, but by a small pencil drawing. In “Ouse Bridge, York, 4th July 1803″, what we have is not an embryonic statement of things to come but a fully formed manifesto of intent. The drawing, now in the Norwich Castle Museum, measures 127mm by 228mm. Unlike previous works by Cotman, it shows a sureness of touch and an economy previously unseen. Here we have the “art of leaving out”, (a phrase used by Cotman) manifested in blank paper, punctuated with very little pencil. The bridge comes into focus through pressure brought to bear on the pencil. There is, at one and the same time, consummate control, and relaxed detachment. Cotman is not attempting to dominate the scene, nor is he dominated by it. What he registers in this small drawing is a perfect equipoise—the contemplation of the object by the subject—which results in a meeting of the two, or rather a fusing of the two, so that, looking at the drawing, we see through the artist’s eyes; yet, because Cotman’s ego has taken second place, the artist as subject disappears.

What is true regarding this particular drawing is also true about Cotman’s subsequent early work. From 1803 to 1808, nearly everything the artist produced has about it the quality—one could say, the ambiguity—which all great art has: that it was produced by someone yet, coming into the world fully formed, it has a life and identity of its own.

Such ambiguity is reinforced stylistically by the fact that Cotman can never be labelled either a Romantic or a Classicist. His “involvement”, his ability to convey “sensation”, is certainly a Romantic trait, but such identification with the object, whether it be a great monastic ruin or a few leaves by a stream, is balanced by an objectification. Cotman is both fully there in the scene, and coolly detached.

What attracts us today to Cotman’s first and greatest period, is his consummate ability to abstract, or take out from the real only that which is necessary to convey the ideal. For this reason Cotman is not “realistic”; he deals, as did Claude or Poussin before him, with the mythic and universal. In Cotman’s case, however, the universal is conveyed through the particular seen object of pastoral England. Such transformation, from particular to universal, means that the image becomes symbol and, as with all symbols, is multivalent: it works on many levels.

At this point, a word should be said about the way in which Cotman produced his early work, which was entirely made up of pencil drawings and watercolours. Economy is the watchword here. In his great series of watercolours, which are often at one remove—i.e. studio productions made from preliminary drawings done in the field—we see a further transformation: colour, even if only one is used, becomes all important; the build up of washes is always “clean”, and hardly ever does Cotman “bleed” one colour wet into another. His technique could be termed “linear”, since each area of tone or colour is well defined. However, such is his skill as a colourist that Cotman often allows the second wash of colour to “slip”, so that it is difficult to say where one colour area begins and another ends. Such technique gives a wonderful, slightly “off-key” effect, similar to that seen in Japanese block prints and in Warhol’s silk-screen printing. There is no attempt, on Cotman’s part, to hide the medium in which he is working. On the contrary, he allows each layer of wash to speak, inviting the viewer to take a closer look, to move in to the surface, in an attempt to crack open its secrets.

In these early works, Cotman is the consummate colourist. Each colour has a familial relation to the others and, usually, only a few are used. The unity of effect amid the diversity of the scene is achieved through such family relationships of colour. Hence the eye is not bounced breathlessly from area to another. Like Girtin before him, Cotman achieves a monochromatic effect, even when he uses colour—thus his watercolours are full of colour but are not (paradoxically) “colourful”. Even when he is depicting a complex tangle of vegetation or a highly detailed architectural motif, the result is poise and balance, which has a stilling effect on the viewer. Cotman’s ability to “take out” and reassemble the constituent parts in a way which seems inevitable, is what marks him out as one of the great early 19th century artists.

Stephen Horton is a watercolour artist. Examples of his work may be viewed on the Prinknash Abbey website www.prinknashabbey.org