Welcome to art @ plush 5 - the fifth annual exhibition of contemporary work at Millers Barn, Plush, running from November 29th - December 14th.
This year's exhibition showcases work from Dorset artists Harriet Barber and John Hinchcliffe, Zurich based artist Tim Grosvenor and the Independent’s political cartoonist Dave Brown, alongside New Forest jewellery designer maker Hanne Ashmead. Click on the images above for more about them.
With grateful thanks to our sponsors
15% of every work sold will support
private view: 29 November 2008 2 - 6 pm
open: 29 November - 14 December
weekends 12 - 6 pm weekdays 1 - 5 pm
venue: Millers Barn Plush Dorset DT2 7RJ
art @ plush has become so much more than an annual exhibition – we continue links with gallery artists and now art @ plush collections offers private clients, business and organisations to host work by leading artists in their own homes, offices and business premises. You choose what you want to show and when you want to show it - and we do the rest.
Click here to pass on details about art @ plush to a friend or colleague
This year's exhibition showcases work from Dorset artists Harriet Barber and John Hinchcliffe, Zurich based artist Tim Grosvenor and the Independent’s political cartoonist Dave Brown, alongside New Forest jewellery designer maker Hanne Ashmead. Click on the images above for more about them.
With grateful thanks to our sponsors
- Pasfield & Park Interiors www.pasfieldandpark.co.uk
- Sabins Deli & Catering, Hound Street Sherborne 01935 816037
15% of every work sold will support
- The Winchester Cancer Research Trust – funding new ‘gene probe’ analysis equipment
- West Dorset Breast Cancer Support Group – supporting Macmillan Breast Care Specialist Nurses
private view: 29 November 2008 2 - 6 pm
open: 29 November - 14 December
weekends 12 - 6 pm weekdays 1 - 5 pm
venue: Millers Barn Plush Dorset DT2 7RJ
art @ plush has become so much more than an annual exhibition – we continue links with gallery artists and now art @ plush collections offers private clients, business and organisations to host work by leading artists in their own homes, offices and business premises. You choose what you want to show and when you want to show it - and we do the rest.
Click here to pass on details about art @ plush to a friend or colleague
Hanne Ashmead
Hanne's jewellery design career began many years ago with a spot of sisterly envy...
She recalls: "On a visit home to Germany I noticed a lovely bracelet my sister was wearing and wanted one too. It came from a lady she knew, who had collected the beads and re-strung them.Perhaps I could make my own ?
Visiting charity shops and markets I built up a stock of glass, wooden and ceramic beads. Sometimes I even discovered semi-precious stones or pearls. I strung them in combinations of material, colour and texture and suddenly friends called me “creative” and “artistic” and commissioned me to design and make bracelets for them, often to complement a particular outfit. That is how it started. I have since looked for and taught myself new techniques to string on coated wire using silver findings and clasps to create heavier necklaces.
My favourite ones now often contain semi-precious stones and pearls I have found on travels with my husband or have been given by friends to re-work. So my necklaces are not only unique “one-offs” but they also remind me of places visited and friendships I have made.”
Born in Northern Germany and still holding German nationality, Hanne grew up with a very creative mother designing and making beautiful clothes and her sisters artistically crafting desirable objects. She became a teacher hoping that one day she too might discover a creative talent and now designs, creates and makes in her studio in the New Forest.
She recalls: "On a visit home to Germany I noticed a lovely bracelet my sister was wearing and wanted one too. It came from a lady she knew, who had collected the beads and re-strung them.Perhaps I could make my own ?
Visiting charity shops and markets I built up a stock of glass, wooden and ceramic beads. Sometimes I even discovered semi-precious stones or pearls. I strung them in combinations of material, colour and texture and suddenly friends called me “creative” and “artistic” and commissioned me to design and make bracelets for them, often to complement a particular outfit. That is how it started. I have since looked for and taught myself new techniques to string on coated wire using silver findings and clasps to create heavier necklaces.
My favourite ones now often contain semi-precious stones and pearls I have found on travels with my husband or have been given by friends to re-work. So my necklaces are not only unique “one-offs” but they also remind me of places visited and friendships I have made.”
Harriet Barber
“My most recent paintings have been completed whilst I have been undergoing chemotherapy for the breast cancer with which I was diagnosed in May this year. The effects of this course of treatment have included fatigue, dizziness, numbness and tingling in my fingertips, aches and cramps, and a dry mouth. To be honest this is pretty much how I feel anyway when I’m painting on a freezing, windy beach in December! So while having chemotherapy, and the forthcoming radiotherapy, I made a decision to work in the much kinder environment of my studio rather than battling with the elements. In doing so I find myself returning to the conscious rigour of my Slade training, working from life - and never from photographs. I believe the paintings I have produced combine strength of execution, with subtlety of light and form.
I grew up in rural Dorset, in an artistic family with a strong work ethic, my nascent talents encouraged by my family. For my degree in Manchester I found myself in an institution encouraging a completely independent approach, with an almost total lack of formal tuition. During this time I painted intuitively, spending as much time out of the studio as in it - I swam against the tide of convention; taking my sketchbook and canvases outside and working wherever my subject happened to be, no matter how challenging or uncomfortable. I learned to look, rather than learning to paint and it was the strength of the pictures I produced at Manchester that earned me a place at the Slade. for my postgraduate degree.
The Slade’s Figurative Studio where I spent the next three years working from the model, was a complete contrast, here tuition was intense, rigorous and academic. No moment was spared. I was taken 'back to basics'. My paints and brushes were scornfully binned. I was sent by my tutor Euan Uglow to buy sable brushes, lead primer, linen canvas to stretch, a plumb-line, and 'artist quality' paint.
Since that time I have held firmly to my commitment to working from life, in situ, despite the pressures to abandon such an exacting approach. I believe that this gives my work sincerity and strength. What I produce is 'contemporary' by simple virtue of the fact that I paint it in the here and now. This is particularly conspicuous in my cold winter seascapes: the experience of the bitter winds, damp sand, and numb fingers is somehow translated into the images, and this makes for truly convincing paintings.
I accept the sand that blows onto my canvas and mingles with the palette. The tough approach of blocking in colour and scraping and scratching into the layered paint makes the work initially appear abstract; but given distance when viewed, the pictures surprise, and one is rewarded by clarity and depth of information.”
I grew up in rural Dorset, in an artistic family with a strong work ethic, my nascent talents encouraged by my family. For my degree in Manchester I found myself in an institution encouraging a completely independent approach, with an almost total lack of formal tuition. During this time I painted intuitively, spending as much time out of the studio as in it - I swam against the tide of convention; taking my sketchbook and canvases outside and working wherever my subject happened to be, no matter how challenging or uncomfortable. I learned to look, rather than learning to paint and it was the strength of the pictures I produced at Manchester that earned me a place at the Slade. for my postgraduate degree.
Since that time I have held firmly to my commitment to working from life, in situ, despite the pressures to abandon such an exacting approach. I believe that this gives my work sincerity and strength. What I produce is 'contemporary' by simple virtue of the fact that I paint it in the here and now. This is particularly conspicuous in my cold winter seascapes: the experience of the bitter winds, damp sand, and numb fingers is somehow translated into the images, and this makes for truly convincing paintings.
I accept the sand that blows onto my canvas and mingles with the palette. The tough approach of blocking in colour and scraping and scratching into the layered paint makes the work initially appear abstract; but given distance when viewed, the pictures surprise, and one is rewarded by clarity and depth of information.”
Dave Brown
“I'm a visual journalist providing a personal view of a news story, just like the other writers on The Independent's comment pages. But, whereas an 800-word article is easy to put to one side and think, maybe I'll read that later, the thing about a cartoon is that you can read it in seconds. That's the cartoonist's strength – I can make a point very rapidly.
Hopefully, of course, you can go back and get a bit more from the cartoon later - perhaps once you've finished reading the rest of the day's paper. Generally, the people I most enjoy drawing are the ones I dislike the most. You can just put so much more bile and invective into the caricature. Occasionally I get to draw somebody I respect or broadly agree with, but there haven't been that many of them.
If a politician complains to a cartoonist, you know you've hit a nerve, so you just carry on doing it… There are some who boast that they're not bothered by it, that they have a thick skin and like to have the cartoons…… There used to be a tradition of old-fashioned Tory grandees getting the original cartoons from the cartoonist in exchange for a crate of wine. Cartooning is much more hard-hitting today. It did get a bit too gentlemanly and civilised, but now we are getting back to the scabrous, rumbustious, 18th-century tradition of James Gillray, where cartooning started.We're back now to a much more irreverent and robust sort of satire.
How long does a cartoon take? You could have an idea within half an hour and have the rest of the day to draw it. Then, if you want to paint an elaborate watercolour background, you have plenty of time. Alternatively, you can spend five hours banging your head against the drawing board with nothing coming, and end up with an hour or so to draw it. Sometimes I have an idea and start work, then halfway through the day a better idea strikes me, so I rip it up and start again.”
At school, Dave made up comic strips, sitting at the back when bored in lessons, looking as if he was working. He wasn't making notes but caricaturing the teacher, safer than staring out of the window. He went to art college wanting to be a painter, taught for a while, then tried painting full-time which was too expensive, the studio bulldozed to build a Tesco, couldn't afford anywhere else in London and was living in a bedsit, painting enormous great panels that wouldn't fit in the room so thought "I have to find a smaller art form." He won a The Sunday Times competition securing his first job on the back of it, so then elected to take cartooning a bit more seriously !
Tim Grosvenor
Order & Chaos is not a title for a specific series of paintings but an overarching phrase that accounts for Tim’s work over the past several years regardless of specific content or image. The phrase describes the space in which this artist works, not the physical space but the mental and emotional space. This polarity also represents the line that the artist treads between the worlds of figuration and abstraction.
“I want to create spaces that are new to people and yet strangely familiar. It strikes me that everything lies in this state of organised chaos.If the balance swings too far in either direction there is a loss of harmony.” The struggle for many artists is to find a language that is their own, a style or an image. These new paintings have evolved through a long term exploration of form. The work has its origins in a series of figurative paintings of some brightly coloured plates lying in a store room. “For some reason I was drawn to this pile of plates, like the fairy tale of the Princess and the Pea. Some of the paintings are stable whilst others are almost collapsing. To me this is just like life.” The work has now become detached from the real world although there is always a sense that we are looking at something we recognise but it has become something else.
Born in Madagascar, returned with his family to England in 1966 attending Winchester’s Peter Symmonds Grammar School where under John Morgan, he became passionate about painting, sculpture and drawing. Studied Fine Art at the University of Reading under tutors Sir Terry Frost, Rita Donagh and Richard Wilson, awarded the Owen Ridley Prize. After exhibitions at venues including the Hexagon, Reading, Wapping Galleries and Seven Dials Gallery in London he followed a career in social sciences regarded as one of the leading experts on human behaviour and transport. In 1998 he returned to the art world and set up a small gallery in South West of France to show his own and other local and international artists work and concentrated on regaining a maturity of subject matter and style. Moved with his family to Switzerland in 2007 where he continues to develop his work; is a member of the Artischock, an assocaition of artists based in Kustnacht.
In early 2007 Tim had the honour of a solo exhibition in the Flemish Parliament in Brussels, and continues to exhibit his work in public and private galleries in the UK, France and Germany. His work is in private collections throughout Europe and the United States and for the past five years he has been the artistic director for “Fete du N‘ouef” St Antonin Noble Val – a major event attracting artists from a wide area and involving artists from across Europe.
Exhibitions
2008 Galerie im Hochluus, Kusnacht, Switzerland; Seminar and Kulturzentrum; Erlenbach, Switzerland 2007, 2008 Gallery Four, Montcuq, France
2007 The Flemish Parliament, Brussels, Belgium; Private Space, Wandsworth, London, UK
2006 Studio 35, St Antonin Noble Val, France
2005 Centre culturel, Verdun-sur Garonne, France
2003, 2004, 2005 & 2007 Salon D`ete St Antonin Noble Val
“I want to create spaces that are new to people and yet strangely familiar. It strikes me that everything lies in this state of organised chaos.If the balance swings too far in either direction there is a loss of harmony.” The struggle for many artists is to find a language that is their own, a style or an image. These new paintings have evolved through a long term exploration of form. The work has its origins in a series of figurative paintings of some brightly coloured plates lying in a store room. “For some reason I was drawn to this pile of plates, like the fairy tale of the Princess and the Pea. Some of the paintings are stable whilst others are almost collapsing. To me this is just like life.” The work has now become detached from the real world although there is always a sense that we are looking at something we recognise but it has become something else.
Born in Madagascar, returned with his family to England in 1966 attending Winchester’s Peter Symmonds Grammar School where under John Morgan, he became passionate about painting, sculpture and drawing. Studied Fine Art at the University of Reading under tutors Sir Terry Frost, Rita Donagh and Richard Wilson, awarded the Owen Ridley Prize. After exhibitions at venues including the Hexagon, Reading, Wapping Galleries and Seven Dials Gallery in London he followed a career in social sciences regarded as one of the leading experts on human behaviour and transport. In 1998 he returned to the art world and set up a small gallery in South West of France to show his own and other local and international artists work and concentrated on regaining a maturity of subject matter and style. Moved with his family to Switzerland in 2007 where he continues to develop his work; is a member of the Artischock, an assocaition of artists based in Kustnacht.
In early 2007 Tim had the honour of a solo exhibition in the Flemish Parliament in Brussels, and continues to exhibit his work in public and private galleries in the UK, France and Germany. His work is in private collections throughout Europe and the United States and for the past five years he has been the artistic director for “Fete du N‘ouef” St Antonin Noble Val – a major event attracting artists from a wide area and involving artists from across Europe.
Exhibitions
2008 Galerie im Hochluus, Kusnacht, Switzerland; Seminar and Kulturzentrum; Erlenbach, Switzerland 2007, 2008 Gallery Four, Montcuq, France
2007 The Flemish Parliament, Brussels, Belgium; Private Space, Wandsworth, London, UK
2006 Studio 35, St Antonin Noble Val, France
2005 Centre culturel, Verdun-sur Garonne, France
2003, 2004, 2005 & 2007 Salon D`ete St Antonin Noble Val
John Hinchcliffe
“My work has developed and changed over the last thirty years or so and reflects how I have responded to rapidly changing circumstances and fashions. The interest in crafts and construction, together with a love of decoration and colour, have led my work into many different areas, taking me through a series of disciplines that includes woven and printed textiles and ceramics. My recent work uses much of the knowledge that I have gained from all these areas for it is true that one has to know the rules in order to break them.”
John’s career has seen success as a designer and maker of studio and commercial ceramics as well as printed textiles, painting and linocuts. He continues to set a groundbreaking example in British crafts and has emerged as the experimental maker still fascinated by colour and texture in surface decoration.
Trained at West Sussex College of Art & Design, Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts and the Royal College of Art. Following an MA in 1973, appointed visiting lecturer in printed and woven textiles at West Sussex College of Art and Camberwell School of Arts with lecture tours to Australia and USA. Moving to Dorset in the early 80s, he began to research and develop ceramics, and in 1986 set up Hinchcliffe & Barber, a textiles and ceramics design studio at Sixpenny Handley producing studio ware and supplying a range of retailers including Harvey Nichols, Harrods, General Trading Company, John Lewis Partnership as well as well as outlets in Tokyo, Paris, New York and Australia.
Moved to Normandy, France in the early 90s setting up a studio, shop and gallery while continuing links with the Wedgewood Group, Saville Pottery and lecturing and exhibiting widely. Returning to live in Dorset and in 2002 a permanent teaching appointment to develop Milton Abbey’s fine art, print making, ceramics and textile programme. Teaching has been integral to his career and the Milton Abbey post is an extension of the desire to explain the crafts and motivate new efforts in craft process that has been the core of his belief as a practitioner. He maintains a studio and continues to evolve, explore and create new dimensions.
Work included in public collections
V & A, Crafts Council, Southern Arts Association, Shipley Art Gallery, American Craft Council, Ulster Museum, Salisbury Museum, Portsmouth Museum, Romsey Abbey, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum.
John’s career has seen success as a designer and maker of studio and commercial ceramics as well as printed textiles, painting and linocuts. He continues to set a groundbreaking example in British crafts and has emerged as the experimental maker still fascinated by colour and texture in surface decoration.
Trained at West Sussex College of Art & Design, Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts and the Royal College of Art. Following an MA in 1973, appointed visiting lecturer in printed and woven textiles at West Sussex College of Art and Camberwell School of Arts with lecture tours to Australia and USA. Moving to Dorset in the early 80s, he began to research and develop ceramics, and in 1986 set up Hinchcliffe & Barber, a textiles and ceramics design studio at Sixpenny Handley producing studio ware and supplying a range of retailers including Harvey Nichols, Harrods, General Trading Company, John Lewis Partnership as well as well as outlets in Tokyo, Paris, New York and Australia.
Moved to Normandy, France in the early 90s setting up a studio, shop and gallery while continuing links with the Wedgewood Group, Saville Pottery and lecturing and exhibiting widely. Returning to live in Dorset and in 2002 a permanent teaching appointment to develop Milton Abbey’s fine art, print making, ceramics and textile programme. Teaching has been integral to his career and the Milton Abbey post is an extension of the desire to explain the crafts and motivate new efforts in craft process that has been the core of his belief as a practitioner. He maintains a studio and continues to evolve, explore and create new dimensions.
Work included in public collections
V & A, Crafts Council, Southern Arts Association, Shipley Art Gallery, American Craft Council, Ulster Museum, Salisbury Museum, Portsmouth Museum, Romsey Abbey, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum.
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