April Talk about the 'Seriously...' Exhibition

 

Our April talk was about the exhibition in the small gallery curated by three members of the Friends. This is what the Chair, Andrew Cross said about it at the time via email to members:

Seriously... The Friends Exhibition by the Friends

The Friends' exhibition "Seriously…" has now been on display for a few weeks. It was good to see many of you at the Private View, but what do you think of the choices? Our show draws its name from the old Sir Kenneth Clarke quote but one of its aims is to show that Swindon is as serious about new and challenging work as it is proud of its "big hitters". That's why amongst Alfred Wallis and Michael Ayrton we selected some less well known artworks and some striking work by living artists which MAS has acquired more recently. 

We want to challenge preconceptions of what the Swindon collection is. It isn't preserved in aspic, it's a living breathing thing. In this hopefully entertaining and lively talk the three living breathing things who put "Seriously…" together (Miles Franklin, Claire Parsons and former chair of the Friends Linda Kasmaty) will talk you through three works and how we challenged each other on their merit for inclusion in the show, and we'll invite Friends to have their say. 
Katie Ackrill, the MAS curator who helped us put the show together will also be available to answer your questions.

A flyer advertising the event appears below:

A Traveller in Space and Time: Michael Ayrton

We were very pleased to welcome Justine Hopkins, after our AGM and a sandwich break, to give a very personal, highly knowledgeable and fascinating insight into Michael Ayrton.
This was a return after a 25 year break to Swindon Museum and Art Gallery. Amazingly Erik Burnett-Godfree was present at both talks! Coincidentally he has written an article in our SwindonMAG on Michael Ayrton's Roman Window, our famous Michael Ayrton painting in the most recent edition.

Roman window is painted from a hotel bed across the road from this room, and wonderfully described by Ayrton in an the essay from the collection 'Golden Sections' (published Methuen 1957). (Added to the end of this post). As Justine said the painting involves mysterious communication and unspoken drama and is technically fascinating.
Starting at the beginning, Michael Ayrton, left school at 14 in 1935 and began painting to the disappointment of his parents. Earliest paintings show a story behind the picture, often intriguing and  hard to read. He met John Minton at St.John's Wood art college in 1937 and was later to share a studio with him.He was also to work with Minton on stage designs for Gielgud's Macbeth. They both joined the RAF when war was declared, although Ayrton was invalided out, enabling him to continue painting.
After the war, Ayrton went abroad as did many other artists, he was keen to search out all paintings by Piero della Francesca in Italy. He also became fascinated by myths including the myth of Daedalus and Icarus tells the story of a father and a son who used wings to escape from the island of Crete. Icarus has become better-known as the flyer who fell from the sky when the wax that joined his wings was melted by the heat of the sun.
Ayrton also produced many sculptures based on myths, modelling rather than carving , inspired by the Cumaen labyrinth. Ayrton spent much of his career wandering Daedalus's mythological labyrinth. By the mid 1960s he had written, painted, sculpted, and sketched the labyrinth numerous times, culminating in the commission to build the Arkville Maze, the largest masonry labyrinth in the world. 
It was fascinating to hear Justine Hopkins, step granddaughter of Ayrton, reminisced about spending time in Ayrton's rural idyll where he had 15 acres of land and a tithe barn where he retired to pastoral solitude with Henry Moore living nearby and dropping in to compare sculptures..

This hugely talented painter, sculptor, writer, broadcaster and art critic left behind a huge body of work, but sadly died of a heart attack aged 54. What a fascinating insight into a great artist.
Essay from Gold Sections kindly reproduced by Justine Hopkins, please contact me if you'd like a readable jpg

Stone Age to Corinium Talk

For our September talk, we were pleased to welcome Amanda Hart, director of the Corinium Museum. They are our nearest museum outside Swindon, and have recently been successful in their Heritage Lottery Fund application, so it was very interesting to hear more about the bid, the museum and some of it's artefacts.  Summarising their HLF grant, they say: 

'Corinium Museum has embarked on an exciting £1.87 million project – “Stone Age to Corinium: Discover the Archaeology of the Cotswolds” and has been successful in securing support from The Heritage Lottery Fund.

The aims are to create a museum that is more relevant to today’s communities, maximising on the building spaces, enhancing the visitor journey through reinterpretation and improved access, and working with new partners to produce a vibrant programme of archaeology related events and activities, which will help to make the museum more resilient and sustainable.'

 Amanda gave us a run through of the history of Corinium Museum, firstly saying that they had undergone a rebranding exercise in 2013 with funding from the Arts Council, including a website with an online shop. Here are some of the main points gleaned from the talk:

In 1849, two mosaics were discovered when putting in new sewage pipes, the Earl of Bathhurst, an avid collector of archaeology was keen to show them to people, and opened a museum in 1856, at the same time William Cripps also built a museum at Cripps Mead. There were 2 collections, both gifted to the town. A single museum opened in 1938, and a photograph showed the audience at their talks were exclusively men, and artefacts were seen leaning against walls. The museum closed again in 1939, but from 1960-75, there were large public excavations in Cirencester, in 1964, they found the remains of Cirencester Abbey which was medieval, mostly Roman. In 1970, the urban district council proposed buying the neighbouring buildings to the main museum, so there are two buildings forming the museum.

Amanda talked about considering their street presence, visitor welcome desk, community space, volunteers, audiences, under 5s giving us a fascinating insight into their plans.

Amanda talking to the audience, and below a general view of the audience taken after the talk

Taking photographs from one side of the room is not a good idea, but thought I'd include them.
The slide below is a photo of rare objects that will go on display.

  A couple of weeks before the talk, I visited the Corinium Museum and took a few photos.

 The right hand side building had a lot of scaffolding around it, and that's the main entrance, and below is the left hand side. I do like the hanging flag things. I wonder if Swindon MAG could have one?

 There's a charming garden area beside the cafe with a central weeping tree

 and a couple of beds with Verbena bonariensis and box taking centre stage. The Bloom judges said, if you want to gain good marks, Verbena b is the plant to use.

 One of the fundraising ideas is to ask people to buy a Corinium creature sticker to help raise funds to help conserve stored objects and tell their story. There are five animals, a hare, £500, lion, £100, owl, £50, cockerel £25 and a dog £25, more information here

 I loved this stone relief of three mother goddesses found at Ashcroft, Cirencester in 1899. They are made of local ooilitic limestone, and date back to 2nd or 3rd century AD

 This one was found at the same time, it is also of mother goddesses, it is very classical in style and in marked contrast to the one above which is rather stern and upright.

 Here's the Hare Mosaic, it's virtually complete and was found in a Roman townhouse at The Beeches, it dates to 4th century AD. Not long after it was covered by a hypocaust system, an ancient Roman heating system, comprising a hollow space under the floor of a building, into which hot air was directed. This is apparently a unique motif as a centrepiece in Britain. It has tiny pieces of green glass in the hare's back.

 I took this photo on the way out because  I was talking to Amanda in one of the rooms behind the yellow machinery

 On the way back to the car park, I walked through the centre of Cirencester and was reminded of how old the place is.

I'm hoping we can organise a visit to Corinium Museum in 2020, it's a fabulous place.

 

 

International Tennis Art, an illustrated lecture by Professor Ann Sumner

For our July talk, we were very fortunate to have Professor Ann Sumner talking to us about the history of tennis in art, following the publication of a book, or to give the full title:
 International Tennis Art – Swindon’s Vicente do Rêgo Monteiro Tennis  of 1928 in context
This was the basis of the talk:
' Professor Ann Sumner will highlight the painting Tennis of 1928 by Vicente do Rego Monteiro (1899 — 1970), held in the collection of Swindon Art Gallery.  He was a Brazilian painter, sculptor, and poet, who trained in Paris at the Académie Julian, returning to Brazil in 1917 and being linked to the Brizillian Modernist movement in the 1920s. Ann will discuss his famous tennis painting in the context of artists who have been drawn to depict the game of tennis from the 1870s onwards, beginning with  British artists such as John Lavery through to Laura Knight and Eric Ravilious, before exploring European depictions of tennis particularly by French, Italian, Spanish and German artists and then considering American and South American examples of the genre. These paintings illustrate the wide ranging developments of the sport,  and the challenges artists faced in capturing the grace and movement of the game on canvas and in sculptures.   The talk is planned to mark the publication of Routledge’s Handbook of Tennis which considers the culture and politics of this popular sport invented in Britain, which  quickly became popular internationally.  The Swindon painting was selected to be on the cover of this new book.  If you are a tennis fan or not,  this fascinating survey of paintings inspired by tennis which contextualises the Swindon painting will include discussion of the different approach to tennis art across the world, and a wealth of attractive works by artists from the end of the 19^th century through to  the 1920s and 30s and up to the present day'.
 Looking up Ann just now on Google, I found a myriad of entries for her, including this Wikipedia one. We were very fortunate to have secured Ann for our programme of talks, and did so because having contributed two chapters to the book, and edited it, Ann asked if she could use Vicente do Rego Monteiro's image on the front:

Curator Sophie Cummings agreed it could be used, it looks fantastic and perfect for the book. Details of the book can be found here.
We'd booked the talk in February little knowing that Thursday 25 July would be the hottest day of the year, breaking records in Cambridge for the highest temperature ever recorded at 38.5 degrees Centigrade. Not a good day for traveling from Yorkshire as Ann did, or for encouraging people to come into the gallery. However we had a wonderful introduction given by Dr Carol Osbourne, assistant editor, and a thought provoking talk. Even something as apparently simple as why do tennis players wear white? Apparently in the latter half of the 19th century, players wore white because it was considered a genteel game, and women would be seen to sweat if they wore anything but white.

Throughout the talk, Ann, seen above, traced tennis through art up to the present day, and afterwards took a number of questions, including one about that very successful photograph of The Tennis Girl, which also has its own Wikipedia page. Afterwards we all had a much better look at Vicente's tennis players and conversations carried on.

There were several of us posed in front of the painting, or beside it which I'll ask Ann if we can have.

Laughter and Loss: British Artists in World War II

This was James Russell's second visit to Swindon Museum and Art Gallery to give a talk to the Friends. We were so impressed by his talk on Eric Ravilious to coincide with the exhibition he curated at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, we invited him again to come and talk to us about World War II artists. For those unfamiliar with James Russell, more can be found here, he's a lecturer and author of many splendid art books.
The talk was fascinating and accompanied by slides of the many superb artworks produced by artists he talked about who took part in Kenneth Clark's War artists scheme. I took some notes, but didn't download the photos pf the paintings James talked about, so what follows are paintings I discovered when I looked up the artists.
There were 247 war artists in the second world war, but only 37 employed at any one time, often for 6 months, and paid £325 for their work. Probably the most famous and admired painting by this group is 'Totes Meer' (Dead Sea) painted in 1940-41 at a salvage dump in Cowley

 There's also the 'Battle of Britain' painted in 1941:

Charles Cundall's painting 'Withdrawal from Dunkirk' is rather spectacular:

and then in contrast, Edward Ardizzone showed the human side of war, often with a dog in the painting, although not in this one, 'Lunch in Nieppe Forest', 1940

Richard Eurich and Graham Sutherland's 'An East End Street' were also mentioned.
Here's John Piper's 'Coventry Cathedral' painted when the embers were still hot:

And Henry Moore's 'Grey Tube Shelter Space':

and Ethel Gabain's ' Women Welders':

Evelyn Dunbar also produced some fine paintings during World War II,  here's 'Land Girl and Bail Bull':

Dame Laura Knight is aslo famous for paintings such as 'Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring'

The last three paintings by women illustrating the varied occupations women were engaged in during the war.
Stanley Spencer was of course mentioned, I'm hoping we can have a trip to Sandham Memorial Chapel where the space is filled with his paintings.
Eric Ravilious featured as well in the talk, here's 'HMS Glorious in the Arctic':

 and this is Great Coxweel Tither barn by John Piper which I rather liked.

Also here's Edward Bawden's 'Cairo- The Citadel'

 and lastly a photo of James Russell during the talk

Thank you James Russell for a fabulous talk, it was a sell out, and very much enjoyed by all who attended, by clicking here, you can read about James Russell's talk on Ravilious, and the next post is about our trip to the Dulwich Picture Gallery when traffic was brought to a standstill in London due to tube strikes.