The catalogue for the current Studio 3 Gallery exhibition Marcus Rees Roberts – Winter Journey is now available. Beautifully produced by Pratt Contemporary, with full colour reproductions throughout, it has an introduction by Edward Winters and an essay by Ben Thomas. The catalogue costs £5 (discounted to £2.50 for students).
The Private View for Marcus Rees Roberts’ ‘Winter Journey’ is on Monday 3 February 2014 in Studio 3 Gallery from 6pm – 8pm. All Welcome!
MARCUS REES ROBERTS – WINTER JOURNEY
Monday 20 January – Friday 11 April 2014
There is an expression in French to describe dusk: ‘entre chien et loup’. At the end of the day, in the dying of the light, it is hard to distinguish ‘between dog and wolf’ and objects take on an indeterminate menace in this state of perceptual ambiguity. This is the moment inhabited by the art of Marcus Rees Roberts.
Working together with Pratt Contemporary, Studio 3 Gallery presents an exhibition of the darkly poetic work of Marcus Rees Roberts. The focus of the exhibition will be recent short films from The Winter Journey cycle, and related work in diverse media including By the Black Window (2013) – a work consisting of 24 drawings conceived for Studio 3 Gallery – and paintings from the Echo Song series (2012-13). Also exhibited are the book works Ash to Dark Water (2005), The Sad Sea (2009) and Night of Four Moons (2009), and the sets of prints Between Dog and Wolf (2008), Memory’s Wound (2010) and Echo Song (2012).
In his current work Rees Roberts has taken inspiration from the poetry and writings of Miklós Radnóti, Federico Garciá Lorca, Paul Celan and Walter Benjamin: all of whom were victims of fascist persecution. Underlying his concern with modernist stylistic experimentation is the insistent political question of how the artist should bear witness to the atrocities of our times. Rich in poetic connotations and thematic leitmotifs, it is uncertain whether the Winter Journey envisaged by Rees Roberts is Radnóti’s forced march, Schubert’s Winterreise, or Odysseus’s voyage to Hades’ ‘dark shore’.
Marcus Rees Roberts studied English at Cambridge, before moving to the Slade School of Art where he studied Film Theory and Printmaking, and was awarded the Slade Prize in 1977. He lectured on printmaking at Edinburgh College of Art from 1980 until 1995 when he moved to London. He is currently a Visiting Lecturer at West Dean College in Sussex. His work is represented in leading collections throughout the UK including the British Museum, the V&A, UCL Art Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, Scottish Arts Council and Pallant House Gallery.
Marcus Rees Roberts – Winter Journey is on display at the Studio 3 gallery from Monday 20 January – Friday 11 April 2014. The gallery is located on the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus, within the School of Arts’ Jarman Building, Canterbury CT2 7UG. The gallery is open to the public, Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm.
Website:
Alfred Drury and the New Sculpture will close in Studio 3 Gallery on Friday 20 December at 5pm. After that it will move to The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds where the exhibition will reopen on 15 January 2014.
Here are some of the comments left by visitors to the exhibition so far:
Very Good
Beautiful –definitely worth repeat visits
Very beautiful works – fascinating sculpture
Simply stunning. Extremely impressive work and a joy to view in this space.
Superb!
Beautifully arranged and lit.
Absolutely astounding exhibition!
Wonderful! So pleased to be here.
Great exhibition!
What an achievement. So many different mediums…
Fantastic work. Quite inspiring!
I love how elegant and dignified Alfred Drury is!
What a treat! Thanks. Drury & Rodin to boot.
Always nice to look around these exhibitions. Personally I preferred his paintings to the sculpture.
Truly a wonderful experience.
A lot of interesting things to look at not just the sculptures but the use of other materials as well. Really enjoyed the attention to detail. Like the fireplace.
Wonderful! The most inspiring and professional show on in Canterbury!
A really impressive fulfillment of a long maturing project!
Well done – another fantastic and inspiring exhibitions. They just get better.
Positively inspiring: Drury really is due for a reassessment!
Excellent!
Inspiring – love the recreation of the studio.
Captivated by Head of a Young Man by Dalou…
Very refreshing and interesting exhibition as part of the Festival week.
A really engaging and eye-catching hang. Great selection of works. Really enjoyable exhibition…
Worth revisiting many times.
Beautiful and inspiring.
Really interesting.
Illuminating!
Excellent exhibition – good to have something like this on campus.
So enlightening. I wish there were more to see…
A wonderful exhibition. Stunning.
Most impressive.
Fantastic exhibition of an underrated artist.
Learnt a lot!
ALFRED DRURY AND THE NEW SCULPTURE
Studio 3 Gallery, School of Arts, University of Kent:
30 September – 20 December 2013
The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds:
15 January – 13 April 2014
Studio 3 Gallery is delighted to announce a major new exhibition dedicated to the art of one of the leading sculptors of the late Victorian and Edwardian period: Alfred Drury. The exhibition will show Drury’s most important sculptural works on a smaller scale – including his most characteristic masterpieces Griselda, The Age of Innocence and Lilith – thanks to generous loans from private collections. The exhibition, which will move on in the New Year to The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery in Leeds, is supported by grants from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Henry Moore Foundation and the Leeds Art Fund.
A fully illustrated catalogue with contributions by Benedict Read, Jolyon Drury, Brian Landy, Jane Winfrey and the exhibition curator Ben Thomas will be published to accompany the exhibition, and which presents new research on the artist. The catalogue is published thanks to the generosity of the Leeds Art Fund – Susan Beattie Memorial.
A display of drawings by Alfred Stevens – ‘England’s Michelangelo’ – from Drury’s collection will accompany this exhibition at The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury from 21 September to 1 December 2013:
A related exhibition on Alfred Drury is currently running at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds until 20 October 2013, The Age of Innocence: Replicating the Ideal Portrait in the New Sculpture Movement:
http://www.henry-moore.org/hmi/exhibitions/the-age-of-innocence
The aim of the exhibition Alfred Drury and the New Sculpture is to review the art and life of Alfred Drury (1856-1944), the formative influences on his sculptural practice, and his role in the New Sculpture movement of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. Drury is due a reappraisal. Recent writing on the New Sculpture has tended to follow the lead of Edmund Gosse’s influential articles in the Art Journal of 1894, which saw Frederick Leighton and George Frederic Watts as initiating a reform of British sculpture that reached its zenith in the work of Alfred Gilbert and William Hamo Thornycroft. Gosse barely mentioned Drury, dismissing him as ‘a mannered Kensington student, somewhat under the influence of Dalou’.
Arguably, however, Drury was one of the central figures in the New Sculpture movement because he combined in his art the realism of the great French sculptor Aimé-Jules Dalou (1838-1902), with whom he had a long professional relationship, and the Michelangelo-esque vision of Alfred Stevens (1818-75), whose art he revered and whose drawings he collected. Dalou and Stevens were seen as the key influences in the reform of British sculpture by a slightly later generation of critics to Gosse, including Marion H. Spielmann and Kineton Parkes. Drury was recognised by Spielmann as ‘one of the most distinguished’ of the group of British artists taught by the exiled communard Dalou, and according to Parkes, Drury’s ‘adherence to Stevens has never wavered’ so that ‘in his work he is a direct descendant of the great sculptor-painter-designer, and is therefore in the direct line of English sculptural development’. The neglect of Drury’s art may also have been partly due to its languorous beauty, eschewing muscular heroics and decorative excesses. By contrast with Leighton and Thornycroft, Drury ‘cares little for vigour, passion or anatomical display’, argued Spielmann, but instead ‘seeks the graceful, the placid, and the harmonious’.
Alongside sculptural works by Alfred Drury, the exhibition will display paintings and medals by the artist, and also documents and photographs from the period. The exhibition will also include works by Aimé Jules Dalou, Auguste Rodin, Lord Leighton, and Alfred Stevens.
The Q&A with Paul Coldwell held in Studio 3 Gallery is now available online at:
Many thanks to Heather Green and Ben Thompson for their work on this film.
Kent Print Collection 5th Exhibition
28 May – 14 June 2013
Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm
What is a celebrity? A ‘human pseudo-event’ overshadowing genuine heroes? ‘The spectacular representation of a living human being’ in a society defined by spectacle where social relations are mediated by images? A readily available ‘dream that money can buy’ in the photographic brothel? Or is a celebrity a ‘mythical concept’ where myth is understood to be a system of communication, where the material of the message has already been worked on to enhance its suitability for communication, and where the mythical concept’s fundamental property is to be appropriated?
[From the catalogue essay by Ben Thomas]
Artists exhibited: Banksy; Sir Peter Blake; Blek le Rat; Jason Brooks; D*Face; John Dove and Molly White; Gary Hume; GSG; Alan Kitching; Gerald Laing; Pure Evil; Marc Quinn; John Stezaker; Joe Tilson; Gavin Turk; Stella Vine; Andy Warhol; Jonathan Yeo; Russell Young
Studio 3 Gallery will be open on Saturday 18 May from 9am to 2pm to provide one last opportunity to see Resilience & Light: Contemporary Palestinian Art.
Visitor comments so far include:
Amazing! Absolutely Amazing!
A wonderful selection of art!!
Arresting and eclectic. I love some of the Laila Shawa, and the Zurob is very clever. Well done!
Best exhibition for some time. Vibrant colour trapped in dark times.
Wonderful – a relevant selection of art. Very inspiring.
Wonderfully conceived and executed.
Inspirational and thought-provoking.
Challenging and inspiring.
Interesting and original! The piece ‘The Arab Spring is not finished yet’ is well thought out and cleverly executed!
Vibrant and captivating. Brilliant exhibition!
Inspiring, heartbreaking and hopeful.
A brilliant showcase of Palestinian artists and their work…
Another very moving exhibition. Thank you.
Thank you! Truly amazing and powerful work.
This is the best exhibition here so far. It feels really current and is strongly inspired.
Inspired and inspiring!
Running from 24 May – 14 June 2013, Two-Faced Fame: Celebrity in Print 1962-2013, a new exhibition held at the University of Kent’s Studio 3 gallery on the Canterbury campus, brings together a diverse range of prints by well-known artists, including Sir Peter Blake, Jason Brooks, Banksy, Gerald Laing, Marc Quinn, John Stezaker, Joe Tilson, Gavin Turk, Stella Vine and Jonathan Yeo.
The exhibition focuses on the ways in which artists over the last 50 years have represented fame and how the various approaches they have taken portray the phenomenon of celebrity mass-culture. The exhibition will also highlight the progression from Pop Art, to postmodern practice and the work of street artists.
From Andy Warhol’s iconic Marilyn Monroe silkscreen prints to John Stezaker’s spliced celebrity photo-portraits, and Banksy’s appropriated honesty, attitudes towards fame have varied tremendously over the last 50 years. The exhibition will provide a visual narrative of how and why artists have chosen to present recognizable figures within their work.
Luke Carver, curator and co-author of Two Faced Fame, commented: “We wanted a subject that would warrant serious exploration but which would also be accessible to everyone and include art that would cater for all tastes. Our aim is to hold an exhibition that explores the different attitudes artists have had towards their subjects, some of which have been critical, some complicit, and some which obscure the boundaries between these two camps. Ultimately, we want to invite a reflection on how and why artistic representations of fame and celebrity have been so varied.”
Ben Thomas, Curator of Studio 3 Gallery, said: “Once again Kent students are rising to the challenge of coming up with an original exhibition concept and meeting professional standards of curating. I am very grateful to all those who have supported the students putting on Two-Faced Fame without whom this exhibition could not have taken place.”
The exhibition will be the fifth organised under the auspices of The Kent Print Collection and the University of Kent. Established in 2005, the award-winning curating programme aims to provide undergraduate students with the unique opportunity to collect art on behalf of the School of Arts, and to put on museum-standard exhibitions drawing on this resource.
Two-Faced Fame will be open to the public from 27th May until 14th June 2013 at the University of Kent’s Studio 3 Gallery. The gallery is open to the public from 9am – 5pm Monday to Friday.
