Press Release KETTLE's YARD in NEW PLACES and SPACES

Press Release

celebrating the 50th anniversary of this gift through KETTLE’S YARD IN NEW displays and events around Cambridge. While Kettle’s Yard is closed for a major building project we have a rare PLACES AND SPACES opportunity to take works from the collection elsewhere. Visitors can see pieces by over 30 artists including Christopher Wood, Winifred Nicholson, LS Lowry and Exhibitions and Events in Alfred Wallis in sites across Cambridge. Each exhibition has a different theme. At the Heong Cambridge Gallery in ‘Portraits of Place’, artists from the collection are joined by Richard Long in an exhibition exploring October 2016-March 2017 how artists are inspired by the place in which they live and work. This setting is particularly apt as the architects Celebrating 50 years as for the Heong were inspired by Kettle’s Yard.

part of the University of At the University Library the emphasis is on abstract works from the 1960s to the 1980s with collages and Cambridge 1966-2016 paintings on display. In the Old Divinity School we explore the history of exhibitions at Kettle’s Yard through a display of posters from our archive. Delicate 10 Venues around Cambridge: Alison Richard Building, landscape and figure drawings by Cambridge based artist Arbury Community Centre, Brown’s Field Community Elisabeth Vellacott can be seen at Murray Edwards Centre, Cambridge University Library, Fitzwilliam College where works from Kettle’s Yard are joined by Museum, Heong Gallery (Downing College), Museum of loans from the Arts Council Collection. The city is the Cambridge, New Hall Art Collection (Murray Edwards theme for the works on display at Wolfson College which College), Old Divinity School (St John’s College), includes drawings and watercolours by Christopher Wolfson College Wood, Mario Sironi and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

Over 30 artists: John Blackburn, William Congdon, John Constable, Merlyn Oliver Evans, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Helen Frankenthaler, Stanley William Hayter, Barbara Hepworth, Roger Hilton, David Jones, Jiří Kolář, Richard Long, LS Lowry, Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, John Piper, Lucie Rie, Dieter Roth, Bevis Sale, William Scott, Mario Sironi, Lucy Steggals, Alfred Stieglitz, Italo Valenti, Elisabeth Vellacott, Alfred Wallis, Mary Webb, Jesse Wine, Christopher Wood and Arbury Community Centre Users and Pupils from the Grove Primary School.

New installations by contemporary artists Jesse Wine, at the Museum of Cambridge and Lucy Steggals at Arbury Community Centre.

There should be a Kettle’s Yard in every university Kettle’s Yard creator, Jim Ede, 1970

About the exhibitions Jim Ede, a writer and former curator at the Tate Gallery created Kettle’s Yard in 1957. It was his home and where he displayed his art collection. From the beginning he welcomed visitors. In November 1966 Jim Ede formally gave Kettle’s Yard to the University of Cambridge. We are Being Modern at the Fitzwilliam Museum, photo: Paul Allitt

For further information and images Kettle’s Yard +44 (0)1223 748 100 Please contact Susie Biller or Freya Jewitt University of Cambridge [email protected] [email protected] Castle Street, kettlesyard.co.uk T. +44 (0)1223 748 100 Cambridge CB3 0AQ F. +44 (0)1223 324 377 Press Release

To continue our work with contemporary artists, Jesse IN SEARCH OF NEW FORMS Wine and Lucy Steggals have created installations at the At Cambridge University Library Museum of Cambridge and Arbury Community Centre. 15 October 2016–8 January 2017 Wine is taking inspiration from the history of fenland Monday–Friday 9am–7.15pm, folklore to create works that will be displayed around Saturday 9am–5pm (extended hours in term time) the Museum of Cambridge in ‘Sludgy Portrait of Entrance Hall, Cambridge University Library, West Himself’. Steggals is working with Grove Primary School Road, CB3 9DR and people in the north Cambridge community to create http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/search-new-forms/ a one day installation centred around Ben Nicholson’s This exhibition draws on Kettle’s Yard’s extensive Apples and Pears from the Kettle’s Yard Collection. collection holdings of abstract painting, collages and prints that date from the 1960s to the 1980s. Artists We hope new people will discover works from Kettle’s who have variously used abstract forms, colours, Yard in new places around Cambridge and join us to symbols and words in their works such as British celebrate Jim Ede’s extraordinary gift of Kettle’s Yard to painter Roger Hilton, Italian painter and collagist Italo the University. Valenti, and Czech-born artist and poet Jiří Kolář are included in the exhibition. The latest dated work on Editors Notes display is a quickly executed vibrant painting by Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) who was one of the defining Date of gift of Kettle’s Yard to the University of artists of American Abstract Expressionism in the late Cambridge: 28 November 1966 1940s and 1950s.

Exhibitions and events and short descriptions A PLACE TO SEE ART From the Archive: Exhibitions at Kettle’s Yard BEING MODERN 1970–2015 Kettle’s Yard at the Fitzwilliam Museum 17–30 October 2016 Until 31 March 2017 Daily 10am–6pm Tuesday–Saturday 10am–5pm Sundays 12–5pm Old Divinity School, St John’s College, All Saints Glaisher Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum, Trumpington Passage, CB2 1TP Street, CB2 1RB http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/place-see-art/ http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/modern- fitzwilliam-museum-cambridge/ This display of posters and material from the Kettle’s Yard archives celebrates the history and diversity of Works by artists who sought to make a new art exhibitions that have taken place at Kettle’s Yard since responding to the modern world are brought together. the opening of the temporary gallery space in 1970. In The display unites prints, paintings and sculptures by keeping with the Cambridge Festival of Ideas ethos, pioneering modern artists who are represented in both past Kettle’s Yard curators have been asked to choose collections, including Lucie Rie, William Scott, Barbara an exhibition to be included in the display and provide Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Roger Hilton. insights into the inception of the exhibitions and the curatorial processes that followed. CIRCUIT GIFTING Pop-up art event for 15-25 year olds Part of the Festival of Ideas Saturday 8 October 2016, 2–6pm Brown’s Field Community Centre, 31A Green End Road, CB4 1RU ANNIVERSARY LECTURE Celebrating 50 Years as part of the University of Our young peoples’ group, Circuit, have organised a Cambridge one-day pop up art event to celebrate Jim and Helen By Andrew Nairne, Director of Kettle’s Yard Ede’s gift of Kettle’s Yard to the University of Thursday 27 October 2016, 6.30pm Cambridge. Old Divinity School, St John’s College, All Saints Passage, CB2 1TP Young people will be sharing skills to help others to Free, but booking essential, see kettlesyard.co.uk/fifty create artworks. Come along to make art, watch performances, relax in a creative place and eat free Part of the Festival of Ideas food! There will be graffiti, dance and we’ll be decorating a pavilion on the day.

SLUDGY PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF exhibition contains an example of the glassware that Jesse Wine at the Museum of Cambridge Jim Ede collected that is usually displayed in the 29 October 2016–5 February 2017 Kettle’s Yard House. This provides an imaginative Tuesday–Saturday 10.30am–5pm Sundays 12–4pm interpretation of the city through the eyes of Ede, after £4, concessions £2, under 12s free he described it as appearing to him to be like ‘a golden Museum of Cambridge, 2/3 Castle Street, CB3 0AQ city’. http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/sludgy-portrait-of- himself/ ELISABETH VELLACOTT Figures in the Landscape This project, devised by artist Jesse Wine, will weave 2 November 2016–15 January 2017 together objects, light and sound into an abstract Daily 10am–5pm narrative that draws inspiration from the rich history of New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, folklore in Cambridgeshire’s watery fenland landscape. Huntingdon Road, CB3 0DF New work by Wine, along with objects selected by him http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/elisabeth-vellacott- from the collections of both the Museum of Cambridge figures-landscape/ and Kettle’s Yard will become part of the eclectic displays throughout the Museum of Cambridge’s Murray Edwards College is the home of New Hall Art seventeenth century buildings. Visitors will be guided Collection, a significant collection of contemporary art through the spaces by a new sound work by London by women artists. This display draws together rarely based musician Daniel Woodhouse, that takes the form seen drawings and paintings by Vellacott from Kettle’s of a museum audio tour. Yard’s Collection and loans from the Arts Council Collection. The exhibition is the first to focus on Jesse Wine is a British artist who often works with Vellacott’s imaginative portrayal of the figure in her ceramics. He is based in New York. Wine graduated landscapes. from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Fine Art in 2010 and his work has been exhibited Kettle’s Yard’s Collection includes twenty-six works on internationally. In 2013-14 Wine was the recipient of paper by Elisabeth Vellacott. Vellacott was a founder the Camden Arts Ceramics fellowship and his work has member of the Cambridge Society of Painters and recently been included in the British Art Show 8, Sculptors in 1954. She met Jim Ede, the creator of Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery. He is Kettle’s Yard in the late 1950s and, soon after, he began represented by Mary Mary, Glasgow, who will stage a to acquire her work. Vellacott exhibited her delicately solo show of his works in November 2016. executed drawings and paintings regularly in London during her lifetime. Two retrospective exhibitions were REIMAGINING THE CITY held at Kettle’s Yard in 1981 and 1995. 29 October 2016–8 January 2017 Saturdays and Sundays 2.30–5pm A newly commissioned text by William Simmons, a The Combination Room, Wolfson College, Barton PhD candidate at The City University of New York, Road, CB3 9BB will accompany the display. http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/reimagining-the- city/ PORTRAITS OF PLACE Works from Kettle’s Yard and Richard Long Reimagining the City brings together works from the 5 November 2016–15 January 2017 Kettles Yard Collection that capture artists’ Wednesdays 10am–8pm, Weekends and Bank Holidays interpretations of city life. It includes paintings, prints 10am–6pm and drawings depicting both real and imaginary cities Heong Gallery, Downing College, Regent Street, CB2 that span several decades. Works include two 1DQ sketchbooks by French-born artist Henri Gaudier- http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/portraits-of-place/ Brzeska (1891-1915) that document his visits to Paris and Nuremberg in the early 1900s. Also included are This exhibition brings together paintings, sculptures, four prints from Swiss-born artist Dieter Roth’s collages and works on paper by leading twentieth and (1930-1998) German Cities series, which are derived twenty-first century artists who have been inspired to from the vast number of post cards that Roth collected make artworks that respond to the places in which they of cities in Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s. have lived and worked. The exhibition includes an array of intimate depictions of British landscapes from the As well as artworks by other modern British artists Kettle’s Yard Collection, ranging from early paintings such as Christopher Wood and Ben Nicholson, the of Cumberland and Cornwall by Ben Nicholson and

Alfred Wallis, to evocative textual and material DISCOVERY THROUGH DISPLAY compositions that engage with ‘place’ by Ian Hamilton Kettle’s Yard at the Alison Richard Building Finlay. Selected collages, paintings and photographs 23 January–10 March 2017 responding to rural and urban sites by non-British Monday–Friday 10am–6pm artists such as Italo Valenti and Helen Frankenthaler Curated by History of Art student Josephine Waugh are also on display. Art at the Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, CB3 9DT The Kettle’s Yard Collection particularly highlights http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/discovery-through- how artists have drawn on the emotional, visual and display/ physical sensations of their engagement with ‘place’. Reflecting the continuity of artists’ engagement with Displays that take inspiration from the juxtaposition of this subject today, Portraits of Place also includes art works and objects in the Kettle’s Yard House, will works by British artist Richard Long (b. 1945), lent by occupy the Alison Richard Building. When Jim Ede the artist. By gathering together and using materials created Kettle’s Yard in 1957, he arranged artworks, such as natural forms, images, words, and employing found objects and furniture in ways that simultaneously and recording his own physical gestures, Long responded to, and influenced, the viewer’s movement continues to respond to the feelings, scale and textures around the spaces – challenging conventional of places and journeys. experiences of viewing art in galleries. These conventions will be further tested by installing DAPPLE artworks and objects from the Kettle’s Yard Collection North Cambridge, Lucy Steggals and Ben within the dynamic, multifunctional spaces of the Nicholson Alison Richard Building. A one-day installation Saturday 5 November 2016, 11am–4pm A selection of images can be downloaded at: Arbury Community Centre, Campkin Road, CB4 2LD kettlesyard.co.uk/downloads http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/dapple/ Password: Wallis

Dapple ‘There is an underwater orchard that currently lives somewhere along the River Cam. From time to time during Autumn its dapples escape and appear on the surface of the water.’

Lucy Steggals & The Saturday Museum is collaborating with The Grove Primary School and residents of North Cambridge to create a display at Arbury Community Centre inspired by apples. The display will include work by Steggals created in collaboration with the community and two works by Ben Nicholson from the Kettle’s Yard Collection.

In a series of workshops leading up to the display, participants have been learning about ‘dapples’ (described above), collecting and sharing folk and fairy stories, and developing new artworks in response to the local area as well as the collections and archive at Kettle’s Yard.

Jesse Wine, boyfriend’s classics II 2014, Glazed ceramic