5-28 May 2018 ARTISTS’ OPEN STUDIOS AND EXHIBITIONS ACROSS OXFORDSHIRE www.artweeks.org FREE FESTIVAL GUIDE & ART DIRECTORY ‘Tucked away in Summertown, The North Wall is one of the best Oxford venues to find new and exciting work touring nationally.’ Angie Johnson, The Oxford Times Harriet and Rob Fraser: The Long View Photography, poetry and installations inspired by slow time with trees 5 - 26 May 2018 St Edward’s is the principal sponsor of The North Wall’s innovative, nationally- recognised public programme. The North Wall, South Parade, Oxford OX2 7JN www.stedwardsoxford.org St Edward’s is the principal sponsor of The North www.thenorthwall.com Wall’s innovative public programme of theatre, music, exhibitions, dance and talks. 2 Oxfordshire Artweeks www.artweeks.org 1 WELCOME ART ART ART Oxfordshire Artweeks 2018 Hidden Oxford: Welcome to the 36th Oxfordshire Artweeks festival during A Journey to the Far East with a Paintbrush Architecture ESTHER LAFFERTY since and I still find it fascinating. There’s such an ambition of mine to visit, and three years ago I There’s such amazing variety of different cultures, colour and finally spent a few days in Bagan. The temple in After six years at the helm of the board of the Oxfordshire Artweeks festival, exotica, and it’s incredibly visually stimulating.” one of the paintings shows a site of archaeological an amazing which you can see, for free, amazing art in hundreds of Charlbury’s David Pollock is presenting ‘Journeys’, a retrospective exhibition of Sri Lanka is one of David’s favourite destinations significance that rivals Angkor Wat or Machu and one of the pictures is developed from a detail Picchu but it’s far less visited. Its name means The variety of paintings in Oxford University’s Wolfson College which roams from farming in of a sketch he made in 1996 of a ruined temple in Donation of the Umbrellas and refers to the shape different Laos to noodle bars in Vietnam, and brings the travels and temples, hopes and the centre of the island. “I remember in particular of the roof. the heat and the guardian, in a yellow sarong, “My father thrilled me as a kid with stories cultures, history, and the bikes and boats of another continent, to a gallery here in Oxford. explaining the details to us before slumping back of India during the war; and I was particularly colour and to sleep! The flowers were white frangipani, but fascinated by his photographs of the Himalayas exotica, and when I was in the studio, scarlet seemed good and taken from Darjeeling and the amazing narrow and Aquatints I think perhaps the figures are my two children, as gauge Himalayan Railway that runs up the middle it’s incredibly they were at the time. of the street there. One painting is of the train y dad was an architectural sketchbooks with beautiful heavy paper pages “Another spot that I found completely driver and his wonderful steam locomotive and it visually wonderful places, in artists’ homes and studios, along technician with a very adept and at that moment I decided to use quality unforgettable as a spiritual experience and reminds me of the magic of my Pa’s stories. stimulating pen,” smiles David, “and my sketchbooks myself from that day forth. It made absolutely compelling as a painter,” he continues, “For some years Laos was my main destination; mother was an enthusiastic such a difference!” And having stayed true to his “were the Ghats – or steps leading down into the I collected and promoted tribal weaving from “Mwatercolourist, so I remember always drawing resolution, a selection of these sketchbooks makes Ganges – in Varanasi in North India. They are the the country and lectured on it at Asia House in ESTHER LAFFERTY as a child, and I took art at A-level. Although I up part of this exhibition, which records his travels most irresistibly colourful celebration of life and London. We went to some pretty wild places up didn’t follow that up with any formal training, I over the past thirty five years. death imaginable. I sketched a holy man with a around the Golden Triangle: I remember being carried on sketching and painting into adulthood. “We used to go on family holidays when my rather fierce expression, and for the final painting woken up at 3am by the sound of hoofs and Artweeks 2018 Oxfordshire In my twenties I drew in any old sketchbook in children were small,” continues David, “in the of him, I needed to refer to my photos of him to seeing a cavalcade of ponies and mules – seemingly ink and watercolour, and the pages would crinkle. UK and Europe, and to the US too, and then capture his look.” hundreds – with full pack saddles heading south Then on a train journey one day, by chance I sat one year we went to Malaysia and that was it – I “Because my father spent time in Burma under a heavily armed guard. Like mosquitos and with some architects who had these wonderful was hooked on Asia! I’ve been back many times during the Second World War, it was a long-held pigeons, they moved too fast to sketch! village trails and city streets, in galleries and gardens Evelyn Waugh famously described Oxford as ‘a city of aquatint’, 44 | OX MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2017 OCTOBER 2017 | OX MAGAZINE | 45 an evocative phrase that captures the city’s gentle loveliness. across the county. It is your chance, whether a seasoned ISSN: 2046-6781 art enthusiast or an interested newcomer, to enjoy art in a relaxed way, to meet the makers and see their creative MAGAZINE talent in action. OXFORDSHIRE’S FINEST Our cover image this year is a painting by Rebecca OXFORDSHIRE’S FINEST OXFORDSHIRE’S Kingsley-Bates, exhibiting in Holcombe Barn in Deddington (venue 146). Rebecca enjoys experimenting in various media including charcoal, graphite, oil and clay. St Catherines College augh waxed lyrical about spacious Waugh’s novel ‘Brideshead Revisited’ was set in the Quad, Watercolour and Acrylic yet quiet street vistas that appear Oxford and includes many references to Oxford © Cathy Read as if painted in watercolour or landmarks, churches, pubs and university colleges, Photographed by washed in a soft ink palette: “Her particularly Christ Church, a college which has Her subject matter largely includes - but is not exclusive Virtual Archive autumnalW mists, her grey springtime, and the rare an often undiscovered picture gallery (hosting an glory of her summer days when the chestnut was exhibition on caricature and satire in the first half in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over of the month – Scraps of laughter, until 11th – her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of and Drawing in Rome from the 18th). to - landscapes and portraits. centuries of youth.” For a display focused on Waugh himself, head This is the month to explore these streets and to the vast Weston Hall in the newest part of the DALISO CHAPONDA enjoy the hidden spaces through arches, behind Bodleian Library on historic Broad Street. It has A LOT TO TALK ABOUT gates and beyond the golden stone. Over 150 been cleverly designed by architectural practice Esther Lafferty, spaces welcome you on in as part of Oxford Open WilkinsonEyre to showcase the original building XXXX ART Festival Director of Doors on 9th and 10th September, for the UK’s within an amazing airy atrium. It’s the absolute Oxfordshire Art CATHOLIC ACTION BREAKING THE GLASGOW BUBBLE Oxfordshire Artweeks biggest Heritage Open Day event. opposite of what you’d expect from an old book Browse the listings and the accompanying website e Exotic and the ART ART JANUARY 2018 Beautiful Everyday NICOLAS PARTY £2.99 Where sold hrough a variety of papercuts, most of all and I love working from life rather A STRONG, DIRECT CONNECTION woodblock prints and lithographs than photos, but sometimes when I don’t have any spanning several centuries, you can sitters, I will paint just something from the fridge!” 44|OX MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER 2017 meet adventurous and mischievous printmaker, Debbie Sutcli e, who was once a 01 Tmonkeys which span Asia, from Iran to Japan. e Meanwhile, Cotswold artist Mary Knowland is exhibition highlights two of the mythical monkey currently producing drawings and paintings with gures best known outside Asia – the Hindu an ‘unseeing’ technique, creating art without medical illustrator for Oxford University Press, monkey warrior Hanuman and the Monkey King looking at it. Mary tells us more: where you’ll find hundreds of examples of artists’ work, in scenes from ‘Journey to the West’, one of the “It seems counterintuitive, but the ‘unseeing’ Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature process requires full focus on the subject matter, now reduces the human form FIJIto simple shapes, (widely-known as Waley’s abridged translation and creates a greater connection with what you’re 9 772046 678000 ‘Monkey’), and probably the most popular book observing - whether it’s a group of objects, a gure in the history of the Far East, dating back to the or a place. capturing in a perfect line the THEarch of ENCHANTED a back or ISLES sixteenth century and latter half of the Ming “Brain-hand-eye-coordination takes over the Celebrating the Dynasty. making process and the essence of the subject e exhibition shows us not only monkeys emerges as a drawing or painting. I love working breast in a reclining position, or a dance or other as gods but as creatures in the wild too, as can this way and adding the paint after the drawn be seen in a 1900 print of the native Japanese ink lines which, to my amazement, always lands macaque by proli c Japanese printmaker Ohara roughly where it needs to be!” movement.