June Talk: Dee Ferris and Katie Ackrill in Conversation

 We used to hold regular 'in conversation' sessions with artists in our collection, so when putting together this year's talks, I thought I'd bring back the format with Dee Ferris if she was available because two of Dee Ferris' works were acquired for the Swindon Collection through the Contemporary Art Society. The two works have been on display in the space where works were shown on the ground floor of the Civic Offices before Museum & Art Swindon opened on the first floor. Here they are:

Above 'Sleepy Hollow' 2014 and below 'The Places We Go' 2022

There's also rather a good photo of both paintings with Cllr Marina Strinkovsky in between which gives you a good idea of their size.:

There was an article in the Advertiser said about the works in March 2023

We held the in conversation in the Council Chamber and photos taken from the large screens don't look too good, but I'll add them because they are a record of the event.

Above Katie Ackrill, Collections and Exhibitions Organise at MAS and on the left, Dee Ferris

Above on the left, This England, and on the right a photo of the first show at Corvi-Mora in 2004.

A very enjoyable in conversation, thank you Katie for interviewing and Dee for agreeing to go through the process.

2024 Friends' Talks

I'm pleased to have all the talks for 2024 in place and am already planning talks for 2025, so thought I'd advertise them on the blog. They are all on the website, but you can't have too much advertising when it comes to what's going on.

I aim to write up all talks on this blog, there's a record going back 13 years of what all our talks were about, and some of them have been recorded when they were on Zoom and appear under 'videos' on the website. We've already had three talks this year which have appeared on the blog, In January Michael Gray talked about repairing an Oxford College; in February Barbara Swann talked about archaeological sites in Sweden and Denmark and last month's talk was by Swindon Museum's Manager, Frances Yeo talked about the museums in Swindon, particularly Museum and Art Swindon.

This month's talk is next Thursday, 25 April at 7.30pm in the Council Chamber when we will welcome tattoo artist Gavin Jones who will talk about The Art of the Tattoo. Gavin works at a tattoo studio called 'Sinking the Ink' with a neat logo:

Friends are invited via email to come along to the Civic Offices from 7.05pm for a 7.30pm start. Tickets will be £6 on the door for Friends and those who aren't yet Friends are welcome to come and join us for an entry fee of £8. Payment by cash or card reader and there will be refreshments.

The talks for the rest of the year are as follows:

30 May Melanie Vandenbrouck, Chief Curator Pallant House Gallery

13 June Dee Ferris in conversation with Katie Ackrill

25 July Wilfrid Wright on the Elisabeth Frink exhibition

29 August Harriet Still on Hardy’s Wessex exhibition

26 September Philip Dearden researching Harold’s life and work

31 October Ann-Rachael Harwood on Edward Adrian Wilson Antarctic explorer

28 November Dr Gill Clarke curator of Purbeck artists exhibition at Russell Cotes

5 December AGM

30 January 2025 Flis Tattersall talking about her Shouting Softly project based in Swindon

Information about where each talk will be held will be sent to Friends and appear on social media.

Fenella Elms Remembered

 It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of Fenella Elms, a wonderful ceramicist, we are lucky to have at least two of her beautiful pieces in the Swindon Collection.

I met Fenella Elms twice, once when she came to the grand unveiling of her 'Large Flowpot' seen above when Grant Aston also came along to reveal 'Radioactivitat', both ceramicists chatted about their influences and how pleased they were to have their works picked for inclusion into the Swindon Collection. They came in April 2015, here's the post written at the time, where you can see the Flowpot.

Subsequently in July 2016, Fenella came and gave a fantastic 'in conversation' with curator, Sophie Cummings. On this occasion she brought a huge number of pots with her so we could see the progression in her work. Here's a link to that post.

Ken White: An Exhibition of his Talents

Our November talk featured Ken White in conversation with Andy Binks, with the same talk repeated for a second evening in order to be able to accommodate the large number of people who wanted to come. The talks coincided with the end of Ken's exhibition at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, and were intended to take the previous in conversations Andy had done with Ken on his life history, a stage further, concentrating more on paintings and linocuts in the exhibition. I was present for both evenings, and thoroughly enjoyed both, Andy Binks, is among other things, Chair of the Swindon Society, and has a great gift of being able to put a presentation together, make it interesting and amusing, and encourage the speaker to share information with the audience. Here they are during the talk, although it's a bit dark because the lights were dimmed for the presentation, it shows Andy questioning Ken:

I won't go through much history, but it's worth noting that Kenneth Lindley who wrote and illustrated 'Town,Time and People was one of Ken's teachers at art college.
  When I looked him up, I found a great link to Ken's murals for which he was famous between 1976-1985, but I'm jumping ahead, in 1969, artist, illustrator and graphic designer, Alan Aldridge was putting together a book, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics, published in 1970, he advertised in the Evening Standard for drawings of the group, Ken produced this painting:

Aldridge paid Ken £20 for the reproduction rights, and offered £100 for the painting, Ken declined to sell it and it hangs in his sitting room today. Andy did ask Ken if he was the only person to paint the Beatles naked, but he declined to answer!
Ken White's association over a twenty year period with Richard Branson took him all over the world, and notably 'The Scarlet Lady', a 'hybrid of ideas' was heat sealed onto the fuselage of  Virgin aircraft.

 The before and after photos of murals and preparatory drawings are wonderful, it's a shame we can't see most of them any more, there are lots of photos online and in Angela Atkinson's wonderfully illustrated book, Ken White: Muralist and Painter,  I love the imagination and careful execution seen in all of the murals, this one Ken at Highworth swimming pool is wonderful, from this:

to this

talking to a packed house:

Love this mural

and this one with lots of famous Swindon people of different eras portrayed, even David Murray John minus usual cigarette in the bottom left hand corner:

Ken also talked about how he made his lino cuts, and illustrated it with this lino cut of his cats

which when printed out and coloured in looks like this:

 There was another fascinating insight when Ken talked about his inspiration, he discussed photographs taken by Denis Bird, mainly in the 1960s, providing a great inspiration for his paintings. Seen below, Denis Bird's photograph taken beside the railway line

and Ken's painting of the same spot.

We had a great crowd on both nights

Here's a lovely photo with a great admirer after the Thursday talk: