Not Glastonbury

Currently showing:  New Ceramic Sculptures by Nicholas Lees, New work for the summer by selected artists including Jo Barrett, Alex Callaway, Beth Carter, Andrew Crocker, Stewart Edmondson, Mark Entwisle, Linda Felcey, Amelia Humber, Christopher Marvell, Alice McMurrough, Morwenna Morrison, Jenny Pockley, Fletcher Sibthorp, Helen Simmonds, Sarah Spackman

It is a baking hot day here in not-Glastonbury. But we have a loo close at hand and a shower within a short commute so life is good. Last week's newsletter included a couple of poems on the subject of fathers, and there was one that was rattling around in my mind somewhere but which didn't show itself until earlier today.... 

‘Those Winter Sundays’ by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?” 

Brilliant how the last line of Robert Hayden's poem makes you think of love that was selflessly given to you, if you were lucky enough.  Helen SImmonds' father worked in Holland and the delft tile in her paintings is a memento of that....

 

Helen Simmonds  Solstice  Oil on Board 27 x 19.5 cm. £1,400

Beth Carter's father, a physically imposing figure, is someone she talks about in the short film we made about her DC ('during covid') . If people ask 'why the minotaurs?'  I will point them here.  Though possibly intimidating, all Beth's hybrid sculptures are also of a non-threatening, possibly gentle disposition

 

Beth Carter  Standing Minotaur II  Ed. 15, Iron Resin  185 x 64 x 61cm.  £12,000

And on the subject of 'austere and lonely offices' a blast from the past....

Bobbie Russon  Daddy's Eyes  Oil on Canvas  70 x 60 cm. (SOLD)

Nice to see people coming to the gallery to see the Nicholas Lees ceramic sculptures.  When I refer to Nicholas using 'a combination of throwing and then carving, turning the forms on a lathe to arrive at the finished form' - it doesn't do justice to the sheer brilliance and precarity of the process, what with throwing porcelain so thick, then after some drying putting it on a lathe, and then having the glaze absorb then migrate on to the edges, that is 'fins' of the finished form- behaving exactly as if they were fins cooling a radiator. and for the pieces to be so rivetting to look at, in all their op-art glory. They are masterful.
And it is little wonder that Nick has won several awards, including the Cersaie Prize at the Premio Faenza (Italy) in 2015, the National Sculpture Award at the Bluecoat Display Centre in Liverpool in 2010 and the Desmond Preston Prize for Excellence in Drawing at the RCA in 2012.  Nick  works as a visiting lecturer on postgraduate courses at the RCA, UCA Farnham and Bath Spa University.

 Nicholas Lees  25.22 Small White Orbit Form    Parian porcelain 13 x 13 cm.  £1,800 
25.28 Small Blue Orbit Form Parian porcelain and soluble cobalt  13 x 13 cm.  SOLD

Nicholas Lees  Orbit 25.18 and 25.17   Parian porcelain, soluble cobalt and soluble gold  13 x 13 cm.  £1,850  and 17.7 x 17 cm.  £2,450

This langur, looking out on to York street as I type, is an accidental guru. His enigmatic expression suits the weather, suits the mood, though I think at any moment he may spring out of his reverie and steal someone's chocolate sprinkled ice-cream.  So watch out (more dangerous than your common or garden minotaur) !

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nichola Theakston Sacred Langur II  Bronze, Ed. 15  27 x 16 x 19 cm.  £3,500

Nichola Theakston is so good at capturing an animal's essence.  As if her rendering of each creature is as an ancient archetype..

' Ragged Claws' by A E Stallings

In mountains, it was geologic time
That addled us, like altitude - how we
Were hiking sea beds of prehistory,
Light-headed as the clouds - that’s the sublime! -
How, as we kicked the rocks along a trail
We pondered brevity and length -. the test
Of aeons, how the earth herself has pressed
Her archetypes in pages of grey shale.

Now at sea level, on the beach, the hulls
Of horseshoe crabs shipwrecked in last night’s storms
Cast up from the abyss by the tide’s pulse
Give me some pause - how far their ancient forms,
Predate all simile and metaphor.

 

 

Nichola Theakston Tesem  Bronze, Ed. 12  Bronze, 49 x 61 x W 29 cm.  £9,650

Alongside Nicholas Lees' ceramic sculptures, we also have on display other ceramics which have an 'op-art' quality.

 

 Sarah Moorhouse 26. Medium Angular Saturn Form Stoneware 9 x 18 cm. £595

 

 

Lara Scobie  26  Oval Vessel with Deep Orange Interior Stoneware  20 x 14 cm. £650

And finally,

'The List of Us' by Nancy Roman

In my father's wallet
we found
one small sheet
torn from a notebook
folded and re-folded
sliced through in the crease
and in my father's careful hand
were all his children's names
and birthdates
and  our spouses names
and their birthdates
and the grandchildren
and their spouses
and in shakier letters
the great grand-children.
The conspiracy of years
schemes against us
but my father
refused to forget
and carried with him
the names and numbers of his immortality.

 

Click on the images above to take you to the relevant webpages. Work can be viewed and purchased on our website. Collection/delivery can be arranged with the gallery where necessary.

Payment can be made by phone, transfer, and directly from the website.  We ship worldwide.

 

Thank you as always for reading.
Aidan

 

June 27, 2025