My painting Red Dust Cloud IV has been selected for the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition 2022. Please go to their website
www.royalacademy.org.uk to purchase tickets for this event.

In these difficult times, with ever changing restrictions, I thought it might be nice to remember how artists have faced the challenge.

In many ways, we artists and writers, and I include several friends in this description, have been comparatively lucky. We can continue to work in our studios and at our desks, whereas the performing arts, actors, dancers, musicians, have only recently been given the means of reaching out to a live audience. Apart from minor delays in getting hold of artists’ materials, painters have been able to continue to work without many of the usual distractions of everyday life.

For an abstract artist, such as myself, the enforced solitude was no barrier to imagination. In fact, the lack of disruption meant that I was able to experiment with previously untried methods of applying paint to canvas. The only question….when would I ever be able to show these new works, especially as three exhibitions I was participating in had been cancelled.

By mid-Summer some major galleries and museums were creating online exhibitions and virtual tours. After much discussion with fellow artists, I decided that a real exhibition in our garden was the answer. I found three artists prepared to risk wind and weather, and we put on a joint show in July.

Lisa Ghiggini offered her ceramics, while Jane Frederick, Ruth Philo and I exhibited a selection of recent paintings. Paintings were displayed in unusual ways, hanging from garden swings and along hedges and trellises. A Cloudscape installation, small cloud paintings hanging along the silver birch walk, enchanted many of our visitors. Strolling through the woodland area, visitors often came across an unexpected sight - Lisa’s beautiful pots grouped under oak and maple trees.

We were delighted by the response from all those of you, who came to support us.
Sunshine, Prosecco and live music from Fifi La Mer and her saxophonist, certainly helped to banish some of the Covid blues!

The cloud garden

Your invitation to: The London Ultra @ Bargehouse, OxoTower Wharf,
Bargehouse St, Bankside SE1 9PH

31st October – 10th November 2019 | Open daily 11am - 6pm

The Free Painters and Sculptors Collective are delighted to invite you to the London Ultra 2019

Back for its second year, The London Ultra is a unique exhibition format that brings together artists and performers from a multitude of disciplines in an art extravaganza at London's iconic Bargehouse.

Visitors are invited to discover a multi-sensory spectacular of over one hundred artists, showcasing styles ranging from traditional to eccentric, conceptual to accidental and from minimalist compositions to opulent installations and intriguing abstractions. Providing a take home piece to suit every visitor.

Paintings, sculpture, installations and photography are carefully grouped in curated sections, including The Artist's Garden, Gaia’s Room and The Luminism Room, deliberately breaking conventional definitions and themes.

Highlights include the return of Michael Hempstead, the winner of last years London Ultra Award, who will present a room of invisible white paintings. We will be screening Gideon Mendel's film The Drowning World:The Water Chapters and Senara Hodges-Wilson's beautiful documentation of The Red Rebels: The Sea Is Rising And So Are We. Bob Spriggs has created ‘Community,' a five metre tall scintillating and hypnotic installation of magnetised floating glass flasks. Kevin Vincenzo presents Pop Surrealism an eye watering series of Popcorn sculptures! Erin Ross’s ‘Lower Anthropocene’ is a breath taking and poignant installation depicting a desolate and burnt out landscape with singed taxidermy. We are also delighted to be working with Output Arts' installation of Sky - an immersive interactive piece, together with Nest and Flow evoking a volcanic eruption nearby.

Designer, dancer and computational artist Clémence Debaig will be presenting ‘BOTHER’ and ‘Join Me Inside’ two interactive installations inviting the audience to directly influence the destiny of the artworks. Not to mention Uriya Urik'swalk in Extended Mind and finally, we would like to highlight ‘Illuminations of the Soul’, a meditative and immersive AV piece by Mehrak Davoudi.

Live immersive performances are scheduled throughout the Preview Party on Thursday evening, kicking off at 6pm with movement production company StreamMovement, a multidisciplinary platform of movers and artists, directed by Adrian Del Arroyo. During the opening, a life size hologram will be projected onto the front entrance, presented by Cadelle, who is joining us all the way from South Africa. This will guide you into the main entrance where you will find ‘Ultra’ and 'The best of ....." two huge 2.5 by 2.5 metre interactive virtual reality tableaux.

The London Ultra @ The Bargehouse is presented by FPS, The Free Painters and Sculptors, an artist-led organisation dedicated to creating the necessary networks for artistic exchange, exposure, sales opportunities, and ultimately sustainability. Three cash prizes will be awarded to the most imaginative, skilled and original entries.

If you would like more information and/or more images etc please contact the curator Sally Buchanan at info@freepaintersandsculptors.co.uk

Bargehouse, OxoTower Wharf, Bargehouse St, Bankside, SE1 9PH
Nearest tubes Southwark, Waterloo and Blackfriars.