Friends of Kettle’s Yard
/ Yorkshire Art Trail / Wednesday 4th July
The Friends of Kettle’s Yard hit the Yorkshire arts trail
From Gaudier Brzeska’s sketch of Ezra Pound nestling between the superb Old Masters at
Harewood House
near Leeds to the ebullience of Miro’s late 3D works at
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
, via Fiona Rae’s dazzling show at the
Leeds Art Gallery,
the David Hockney collection at
Salts Mill
and of course the great new
Hepworth Wakefield
….48 Friends lapped up the Yorkshire arts scene over a packed 3 day weekend in late June. We all came away believing there must be something special in the Yorkshire air that gave life to such giants as Moore, Hepworth, Hockney and now of course, Hirst. This lively yet relaxed trip was typical of the great programme of events that Friends of Kettle’s Yard can enjoy.
- Martin Thompson
Click
here
if you’re interested in joining the
Friends of Kettle’s Yard
, which would allow you to take part in their outings, holidays, talks and parties.
Matthew Darbyshire and curator Lizzie Fisher in studio
Matthew Darbyshire
/ Studio Visit / Monday 2nd July
Guy and I headed to Kent to visit
Matthew Darbyshire
in his studio on a wet April morning.
Preparations were underway for an exhibition in Paris. Matt is a
sculptor who is interested in the objects we surround ourselves with,
especially the things we can buy, what they mean to us and where that
meaning comes from. His critical eye for a kind of contemporary
vernacular forces us to think about how we shape our world and how that
shapes us. Looking forward to some interesting conversations when Matt
comes to
Kettle’s Yard
.
Matthew Darbyshire – Untitled: Shelves No.5, 2008, Various glass and plastic components, 110 x 140 x 30 cm,
Herald St. Gallery
Not many people know this, but a colleague recently told me that Jim had a couple of trays in bright pink plastic and yellow perspex in the 60s. So tea with Jim would have been lapsang souchong in a broken china cup held together with staples on a yellow perspex tray.
Curator’s blog
/ studio visit with Lorna Macintyre / Friday 29th June
After 2 weeks on a Clore programme in Northumberland I flew up to Glasgow to catch the last day of
Matthew Darbyshire’s
show at Tramway, and visited
Lorna Macintyre
in her studio. It was Matt’s largest public exhibition to date – and the product of a number of intense collaborations. I learnt a new phrase: ‘developers vernacular’.
I had a cold so Lorna made me tea and we talked about the work she’s making for Glasgow International, the jars containing strange crystalline growths hiding under tables and on windowledges, Virginia Woolf and the view.
Matthew and Lorna, along with
Jeremy Millar
and
Matei Bejenaru
, are working with Kettle’s Yard over the next year as Associate Artists, and we have invited them to engage, make work and intervene creatively with us onsite, offsite & online. They start work in earnest later this month, and the first opportunity to get to know them and their work will be around a display in the gallery this summer, when they will select works from the collection and show works of their own alongside.
Curator’s blog
/ Kettle's Yard House / Tuesday 29th May
The man from Istanbul brought our rug back today. (Literally, he flew over with it under his arm). He’s been restoring it for a whole year and it looks amazing. He uses vintage yarn to preserve the antique colours and works with traditional weavers from Anatolia to help us keep our rugs in the best condition to resist the daily wear and tear of visitors’ feet.
Next time you visit, don’t forget to look at what’s under your feet. And tread carefully!
Alfred Wallis, Steamboat with two sailors, lighthouse and rocks, n.d, reserve collection
Andrew Nairne
/ Director's Blog / Monday 14th May
Hello and welcome to our development blog site – we want this to be an active online space where you can find out about the ‘behind the scenes’ stuff, especially at this time of great development for Kettle’s Yard (for details about the new Education Centre that we are building, read more
here
).
All the formal information about what’s on and what’s open can still be found on our main
website
. This site is a more informal space where we’ll invite comments from artists, educators and audiences who we are working with to contribute.
There will be opportunities to find out more about our four Associate Artists who will be working with us during 2012 /13: Mate Bejanru, Matthew Darbyshire, Lorna Macintyre and Jeremy Millar.
Over time this website will grow and a bigger and richer picture of all the activity that Kettle’s Yard is involved with during the building works will emerge.
This is new for us so please do give us feedback and let us know what’s working or not and what you would like to see more of.
To illustrate my first post I’ve chosen one of my favourite paintings from the current
Alfred Wallis exhibition in the gallery
here, a different version of which will go on tour from July.
