Please note we will be open 7 days a week from now until Christmas.

We are pleased that Anthony Scullion has new work with us for the festive season. So too Beth Carter. Visitors can enjoy a visit to the Georgian labyrinth of Toppings Bookshop while they are in York Street – you never know who might be browsing…..

 

Beth Carter Reading minotaur V,  Bronze Ed 4 of 15  53 x 40 x 29 cm. £12,800

 

 

At nine months old, Asterios still cannot lift his heavy head

on its sten-like neck;

lie him on his stomach and you must turn his face

to stop him being smothered.

I massage him with almond oil each day,

sweep across the soft skin

of his belly and chest, his slender arms,

then along his skinny legs

still drawn up like a frog’s, press the soles of his feet

to make him push back

and guard against the talipes; uncurl each finger,

knead in his palms.

I talk to him about his perfect, shining limbs,

his glowing skin, his wondrous face.

I bind his skull.

When I move, his eyes follow me about the room,

but it is maternal Ariadne

who makes him smile and gurgle,

singing the songs

I sang when she was a baby girl,

or sniffing 

at his napkinned bottom and wafting at her nose

and making silly sounds,

or hiding behind a goatskin rug to emerge

– you’d think from nowhere –

the way his face blazes in surprise.
‘Pasiphae on the Infant Asterios’ from Fiona Benson’s ‘Ephemeron’

Meanwhile this Ruth Brownlee painting from her latest collection sums up the weather right outside the window of the gallery….

 

 

There are beautiful ceramics to see by the ever-brilliant Chris Keenan.  His work looks impressive displayed in groups, with consistent yet varying forms and glaze patterns on every individual piece in any given exhibition he has had with us.

 

 

The title of this piece reminds me of an unforgettable book by a great writer….

Travelling: the dank oily days after Christmas. The motorway, its wastes looping London: the margin’s scrub-grass flaring orange in the lights, and the leaves of the poisoned shrubs striped yellow-green like a cantaloupe melon. Four o’clock: light sinking over the orbital road. Teatime in Enfield, night falling in Potter’s Bar.…

– from Hilary Mantel ‘Beyond Black’

And so, from a dank M25 to the arctic, where Nick Mackman has recently paid a visit….

 

 

And finally…
All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden
I mean that for more than thirty years she had not
whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was
in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and
she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and
cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds war-
bled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.

Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she
said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can
still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled
through the house, whistling.

I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and an-
kle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too.
And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin
to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with
for thirty years?

This clear, dark, lovely whistler?

-The Whistler, by Mary Oliver

 

New work now online and all work is for sale.
Click on the images for links to further pieces.
Please contact the gallery for details.
Regards,
Aidan Quinn.