The Gallery at Ryedale Folk Museum

Second Glance: Alternative Narratives on Peace and Conflict

2012-01-25T08:38:00.001Z

Second Glance

Alternative Narratives on Peace and Conflict

18 February – 18 March 2012

Second Glance: Alternative Narratives on Peace and Conflict is a response to the spirit of London 2012 and highlights the fact that sport has a long tradition of promoting peace. The exhibition showcases recently acquired works by The Peace Museum as well as loans from a private collection and Goldmark Gallery and includes internationally renowned artists such as Yinka Shonibare, Nils Burwitz, Salima Hashmi, Arpana Caur and the late Roderic Barrett. Second Glance also includes newly commissioned ceramics by Anna Lambert, Jessica Ball and Kyoko Takahashi as well as drawings by Asad Hayee and Will Dawson.

Second Glance demonstrates that artists’ perspectives, often at odds with the dominant narratives of our world, pose a powerful challenge to realpolitik ideology. Salima Hashmi’s Rain 1, inspired by the opening of a number of crossing points on the Line of Control between India and Pakistan after the horrific Kashmir earthquake in 2005, is also a comment on the fact that it took a cataclysmic natural disaster to bring the two countries, however briefly, together. Nils Burwitz’s Caustic Art is a response to the infamous practice of necklacing with burning tyres in South Africa and the ugliness and hatred spawned by an apartheid state. Yinka Shonibare’s Climate Shit Painting explores the conflict between the environment and us in the seemingly relentless march to “progress”.

Kyoko Takahashi and Anna Lambert’s ceramics reinforce the importance of our connections with the natural world, whereas Jessica Ball’s tongue in cheek Stirring the Pot is a reminder of how using sport to promote peace can often get sabotaged by the self-interest of the nations involved. Will Dawson and Asad Hayee’s miniature depictions of creatures of fable remind us that animals both mythical and real connect us in very powerful ways to the world of the imagination and are important to our sense of harmony and balance.

Andy Dalton, Gallery Manager, Ryedale Folk Museum says:

“We are delighted to be hosting Second Glance in association with The Peace Museum and Alchemy. Artists’ bring unexpected and important perspectives about the world in which we live. Considering the modest size of the exhibition, there is an astonishing wealth of themes and issues explored”.

The Rev. Clive Barrett, Chair of the Trustees of The Peace Museum says:

“The Peace Museum is very pleased that our newly acquired works of art will be seen in such a beautiful space. The exhibition encourages people to pause and reflect on the nature of peace and conflict in a year when we are hosting the Olympics. I would like to thank all of the artists involved for contributing to this discourse in such varied and imaginative ways. I would particularly like to thank the artists Arpana Caur and Salima Hashmi for their generous gifts of work to The Peace Museum”.

Nima Poovaya-Smith, Director, Alchemy and exhibition curator says:

“This was an exciting exhibition to curate. The wide-ranging nature of the exhibition theme gave us the freedom to bring together the works of very different artists, many of whom normally may not have been shown together. This has created a fascinating dynamic between the works”.

The exhibition has been conceived and curated by Alchemy

Second Glance will be showing at Bede’s World, Jarrow from 23^rd March – 8^th May 2012.

Second Glance is a partnership between Ryedale Folk Museum, The Peace Museum, Alchemy and Bede’s World, Jarrow.

Ryedale Folk Museum

2012-01-17T16:04:00.000Z

Ryedale Folk Museum re - opens on Sunday 22nd January.

If you require further information don't hesitate to get in contact.
Call - 01751 417367
Email - info@ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk

Exhibitions 2012

2012-01-10T10:54:00.005Z

Ian Mitchell, Filey Bay from the Brigg, copyright the artist.

Insight: Ryedale Folk Museum Volunteers
until 12th February

Second Glance: Alternative Narratives on Peace and Conflict
18th February - 18th March

Francis Nicholson
31st March - 20 May

Ian Mitchell
26th May - 8July

My Last Car
14th July - 2nd September

Shelley Hughes
8th September - 21st October

Dawn Brookes
26th October - 9th December

For more information about specific exhibitions and Gallery events during your visit check the Gallery calendar.

Sally Taylor - All Say The Same

2011-11-15T09:19:00.000Z

Images of the last exhibition All Say The Same and workshops by Sally Taylor with Refugee Youth.

Sally Taylor - All Say The Same

2011-08-25T10:37:00.000+01:00

Sally Taylor - All Say The Same
10th September - 23rd October

Poetry Week

2011-07-28T13:35:00.000+01:00

Sunday 14th to Saturday 20th August 2011

Join the museum for our family friendly poetry week celebrating the work of various local writers. There will be poetry workshops to inspire your own creations and a specially devised trail to explore the museum through poem. The week will also include a Poetry Picnic for groups to share their favourite readings while enjoying their favourite sandwiches!

Featuring special workshops and performances for families on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th August by Paul Cookson.

Poetry week supports our summer Art Gallery exhibition Herbert Read: Yorkshire Modern (9th July – 4th September).

Prices: Usual museum admission prices apply and the poetry activities are free of charge.

Booking Info: No need to book but please feel free to phone the museum for details of what is happening each day.

Contact Details:
Emma Colclough (Learning Manager)
01751 417367
science@ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk

Yorkshire Post 16 July 2011

2011-07-28T13:23:00.000+01:00

HERBERT READ: He was a self-made man of many qualities – a war hero, an anarchist, a writer, the shaper of British art and discoverer of the greatest poet of the century. Michael Hickling reports on a revival.

Andy Dalton holds fast to one end of a trolley that’s about to receive a large bronze sculpture. At the other end, two men are warily sliding the prize cargo, a few millimetres at a time, out of its road-going container. Half way across, the leading edge of the plinth catches the lip of the trolley and the sculpture lurches sideways and down. The hands of bystanders shoot out to arrest the momentum and haul everything back on an even keel. It’s a momentary blip. Minutes later, the sculpture is screwed into its armoured exhibition cabinet.

“It’s the most significant piece we’ve had – and the heaviest,” says Andy, the gallery manager at the Ryedale Folk Museum, in Hutton-le-Hole. What they have been so carefully manoeuvring is Spring, a work created in 1965 by Barbara Hepworth. Andy won’t say exactly how much it’s insured for. Six figures anyway.It has come here as the centrepiece of a new exhibition dedicated not to Hepworth but to a central figure in her artistic life, a man who lived just down the road from here, Herbert Read. This key figure in British art and letters in the first half of 20th century was close friends with Hepworth and Henry Moore and others whose work then embodied the shock of the new. Herbert Read’s writings formed the critical frame of reference into which they fitted.

It was a richly-textured life and when he died in the mid-Sixties, his name was world famous. Today, it’s not one that rings bells with the general public. From a distance, his reputation looks forbidding, built on a rock of abstract theorising. Close-to, it’s not like that at all. His best writing is earthy, passionate, precise. It bursts with love for the landscape of his heart, vividly depicting a vanished rural Ryedale and the characters who peopled it in a memoir called The Innocent Eye. Its directness and simplicity makes an instant connection with any reader of any age. It will surely make him a popular with a new audience now that part of the memoir has been newly published in an anthology of his work with a local flavour which has been brought out as part of the exhibition. It’s titled Between the Riccall and the Rye, the rivers bounding the farm where he was born the son of a tenant farmer. Both his father and mother were from families who had worked for generations on the Duncombe Park estate. Herbert recollects a way of life – the sights and smells, tastes and rhythms – which had in the main remained unchanged for centuries. These would be swept away with a few short years after his childhood ended.

Today, the family farmhouse, Muscoates Grange, still stands facing the southern flanks of the Hambleton Hills and nearby Nunnington where Herbert went to school. The Reads preferred to use the house’s north-facing door which opens onto the plain leading up to Kirkbymoorside. A few great families owned most of everything the eye could see. The Reads were not landowners but Herbert’s beginnings were not humble. An uncle was a miller, an aristocrat of the agricultural community. Another relative was a doctor. The family rode to hounds, they had a kitchen maid and nine farm hands. Photographs of young Herbert and his brothers show them kitted out in quality suits and boots.

He wrote about this more than 30 years later, long after he’d been ejected from his earthly paradise, as a means of explaining to his German-Scottish wife who he was. These adult responses to a remembered childhood have such clarity they seem to distil the smell of the bacon and the hams hanging from the ceiling, the reeking stackyard, the cow pasture, the orchard. The gypsy-like figure of the horse-breaker who arrives and unpacks his violin brings a whiff of the exotic to the farm.In these pages, the social and physical contours of his world are laid out as precisely as a map, and you can follow the young lad to places such as St Gregory’s Minster, where he went to church and is buried, and discover them unchanged from his day.

At the age of eight, his father died of rheumatic fever. The contents of the farm were sold. Before long, Herbert found himself on the moors just outside Halifax, at the Crossley and Porter Orphan Home and School with 300 other children whose education also relied on charity. He hated his five years there, although one of its legacies, the ability to concentrate and read amid racket and disorder, served him well in later life, especially in the trenches.

At 15, he was taken on as a clerk by a small Leeds savings bank. His mother, struggling to support her family by working in a Leeds laundry, urged her son to put away arty thoughts about going to university. Herbert, reserved and ambitious, had other ideas.

The family, living in Buckingham Mount in what is now the student quarter of Leeds, had no money. A Leeds tailor befriended the young idealist with leftish leanings, lent him books and encouraged him to follow his dream. Having won a place at Leeds University in 1912, Herbert made other significant friends, one the vice-chancellor who shared a passion for modern art. Herbert’s mother died in December 1914, the household broke up and Herbert joined the Green Howards. When his unit departed for the Western Front the following January, it was Herbert’s first time out of Yorkshire. His debut book of poetry was published the same year.

He served throughout the war and somehow found the time to start an arts journal – the first to publish the work of an unknown called TS Eliot. Herbert won the MC at the second battle of the Somme in 1917 and the DSO in 1918 and, amid all this, he kept on writing. His second book of poems came out the year after the war ended. On Armistice Day 66 years later, his name was one of 16 Great War poets commemorated on a stone unveiled in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Herbert was demobbed as a captain. Possibly, given his record of gallantry, the rank would have been higher had he not been, by temperament, a pacifist and, by conviction, an anarchist. In London, he worked in the Treasury and then at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Appointed as a professor of Fine Art in Edinburgh, he abandoned that city when he eloped with the woman who was to become his second wife.

Back in London, he became editor of the Burlington Magazine, knew anyone who was anyone in the visual arts, especially among the Barbara Hepworth-Henry Moore circle, and co-founded the Institute for Contemporary Art. He was equally at home among fellow writers and poets, including Eliot and George Orwell. It was for services to literature that he was knighted in 1952.

This eminent man of letters, and by now world-famous critic, moved back to his paradise lost in 1948. He purchased what had originally been the rectory in Stonegrave, just a ramble away from his old home at Muscoates Grange, dividing his time between here and London. It was not an entirely happy transition. Socially, this part of the world was still much as he had left it. Lloyd George’s radical plan for land reform, planned for 1916, had been stymied by the war and around here the people who had owned practically everything in the 1890s possessed it still.

There were not many fellow anarchist intellectuals to be found strolling these Hambleton Hills. Herbert’s wife did not find it easy moving here either and it’s suggested he accepted his knighthood in 1952 as a love token for her. The result for him of his elevation was painful ostracism from his anarchist comrades whose home was the Freedom Press in London. They had lost their most able and popular spokesman and, as a gesture of their outrage, the anarchists ceased sending him packets of fresh coffee from the King Bomba delicatessen in Soho. That’s not to be dismissed at a time when up North a decent cup of coffee was hard to find.

His fame has diminished since his death in 1968, but Dr Michael Paraskos thinks this will now revive through people connecting with his Yorkshire identity. Dr Paraskos, an authority on Herbert Read, has put together the new anthology of his work for the exhibition at Hutton-le-Hole. There’s also a rising groundswell of interest locally. John Dean, a resident of the area, now leads the Herbert Read of Ryedale group which began with organised walks taking in places of significance to the writer, such as the old mill near Kirkbymoorside, where young Herbert used to visit his uncle.

“There’s a bit of a myth that he didn’t mix with the community he was from,” says John Dean. “He was very reserved, but I know two farmers who said they got on well with him. Maybe he wasn’t going to hobnob with them every day. But he was deeply attached to this landscape.”

Michael Hickling
copyright Yorkshire Post.

Follow the link to read the full article with illustrations.
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/the-arts/art_of_reappraisal_for_ryedale_radical_1_3579627

Herbert Read Yorkshire Modern

2011-06-29T08:16:00.000+01:00

Featured work

Dame Barbara Hepworth

Spring

1965

Bronze and string

Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre London

Barbara Hepworth was one of the artists championed by Herbert Read in his quest to educate the British audience about Modernist art. Like Moore, Hepworth was born in Yorkshire, the eldest of 4 children. At the age of sixteen she won a scholarship to Leeds School of Art, where Henry Moore was also studying. After just one year at Leeds, she went on to study at the Royal College of Art in 1921 on a senior scholarship. In 1924 she was runner up to John Skeaping for the Prix de Rome but a grant from the West Riding enabled her to travel to Italy with Skeaping and they married in Florence. In Italy she developed an appreciation for light, landscape and a deep understanding of working with materials.

The ovoid form of Spring suggests Hepworth's long-standing concerns with the cycles of nature and the promise of rebirth. In 1946 she recognised in her early work the simple realistic oval forms of the human head or of a bird. Spring and other stringed ovoid works continued this passage from realism to abstract form. Hepworth cast ‘Spring,’ from an original elm carving made the previous year: In elm, the carving displays on its smooth outer surface the broad graining of the wood and reflects the tapering form of the original bole of wood. In bronze these organic features are retained though the process of patination and polishing as she exposes the inherent properties of the bronze. As well as expressing Hepworth's continuing exploration of notions of interior and exterior, the process of hollowing her wooden carvings reduced their risk of cracking.

Hepworth further exploited the properties of bronze in many of her large public commissions allowing some parts of these works to weather and develop the green-ish surface characteristic of bronze, while other aspects of the same work were waxed and protected from surface oxidisation. This subtle treatment of the surface of these works and their response to changing environmental conditions may reflect the ongoing popularity of her public pieces.

Herbert Read Yorkshire Modern

2011-06-27T14:00:00.000+01:00

Debbie Loane February - May

2011-05-18T17:30:00.000+01:00

Debbie Loane
February - May
28th May - 3rd July

" 'February to May' consists of a series of around 70 small panels worked in a variety of mixed media ranging from conventional artist's materials through to household paint, car body paint, colouring pens and any other accessible materials.The panels have been worked on in sequence, each documenting a 'moment' in time beginning in late January continuing through right until the moment of installation. I set myself the challenge of working to a specified size which was small and intimate. It had been a long held ambition to create a large scale work consisting of many small parts. Some of the resulting drawings are simple linear compositions describing a drive or a walk through a landscape while some are more complex and subjective. I am fascinated by how drawing in an immediate and primal sense can bring about an object that is at once an evocation of place and also a window into my own preoccupations.

As objects they are as much about my relationship with the materials and the moments in which they were created like a small ritual or dance, as they are about the specific places. All the panels have been executed in my studio and are, for the most part intuitive, small meditations on a particular point of departure. Working in this quick and immediate way has enabled me to produce objects entirely devoid of repetition, premeditation or 'empty topographical representation'. Instead I hope to be seeking an equivalent language to evoke a sense of the limitlessness of an 'other landscape' which perhaps occupies a place beyond physical reality and the limitless possibility of what contemplation can evoke. Whilst these pieces have been founded on my preoccupations about landscape, nature and the commodification of the natural world, the process of their coming into being is as much about what it means for me to be a creative person seeing my place in this world."

Debbie Loane February - May

2011-05-18T17:18:00.000+01:00

CASTLE - Lyn Wait

2011-04-24T15:04:00.000+01:00

Lyn Wait's exhibition, CASTLE, is inspired by the phenomenon of starlings storming during the autumn and winter.

CASTLE - Lyn Wait

2011-04-02T13:22:00.000+01:00

Dipole Residency Film

2011-03-12T11:32:00.000Z

Dipole by Flora Parrott from Tony O'Reilly - The Atom Film Co on Vimeo.

Flora Parrot Dipole Installation Shots

2011-03-01T14:35:00.000Z

Dipole

2011-01-10T15:32:00.000Z

[Dipole] - Rydale Folk Museum - Flora Parrott from Butch Auntie on Vimeo.

Exhibitions 2011

2011-01-05T10:58:00.000Z

16th January - 13th Feb 2010

Ebor Textiles - Ryedale Remembered

19th February – 27th March

Flora Parrott : Dipole

2nd April – 15th May

Lyn Wait: CASTLE

21st May – 3rd July

Debbie Loane February-May 2011

9th July – 4th September

Herbert Read: Yorkshire Modern

10th Sept – 23rd October

Sally Taylor All Say The Same

29th October – 11th December

Insight: Ryedale Folk Museum Volunteers

circuit

2010-11-09T06:58:00.001Z

system

2010-11-07T14:46:00.001Z

Today two of the volunteers, John and Gavin, bought in a chunk of jet that they had found on the moor sometime ago. they also told me about the Magnetic Mines in Rosedale which has excited me beyond belief!

The more time I spend working at the site and at the museum, the more information about the land and the ways in which it has been worked ad 'read' in the past, the more anxious I find myself becoming by the sheer overload of possibilities. It is of course ridiculous to imagine that you might even begin to scrape the surface of this kind of subject in such a short period of time. The irony of it that I had set myself the project to look at the site and use it as a focal point to gather information around. I was keen to look at what it is that is so compelling about the land and why people have felt they need to study it so intently...

In order to try to begin to understand the overwhelming landscape, I have decided to begin to make a set of rules and categories to help me to dissect it. A system. Regardless of whether the data I am looking at it geographical, historical or folklore I will put it under one of the follow:

Square, Rectangle, Spiral, Line, Circle, Triangle. I am going to make some dice (inspired by those of the witch Nan Skaife of Spaunton Moor), if I can't decide on a category, I'll through the dice.

By setting up the shape categories I can start to order and collate the information. It also helps me to understand the links and parallels between the way in which information and data is logged in the field, in the museum archive and also when data is processed to make 3d models - triangulation and pixelation.

Also see below a model of the gallery space for the exhibition next year - the paint marks the gradient of the site on Spaunton Moor.

Palimpest

2010-11-06T14:23:00.001Z

On Thursday I met Belinda Noda who is using the Museum for her own studies. She has an incredibly insightful approach and it was a pleasure to talk with her.

We discussed the ways in which threads and layers can relate to the powerful landscape in the area, as well as local history and the word idea of 'folk'. Threads of information and tales which are transferred and reinterpreted to retain meaning and relevance.

She told me to look up the word Palimpest - it has a fantastic relationship to ideas of excavation.
A Palimpest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book that has been scraped off and used again.

This also made me rethink what it is that I find so compelling about the way in which the Museum and people who work here look after the collection with such care and precision. In many cases I find the care with with the object has be logged, rewritten, preserved just as interesting than the thing itself.

A carefully transcribed version of the Diary of Bert Frank by one of the Museum Volunteers.

One of Raymond Hayes' maps, the detail and accuracy is absolutely beautiful and speaks volumes of his passion for the land and his work. They are now looked after by Madge Allison who worked with Hayes - the care with which she looks after them echos this sense of passion and attention to detail.

perimeter / visible & invisible lines

2010-11-04T11:24:00.000Z

A 50 cm by 50 cm frame - this represents the division of the space during the manual survey and so the size of the pixel in the grid created.

Flora Parrot Artists Talk Sun 14th Nov 11-2pm

2010-11-04T08:39:00.000Z

enclosures

2010-10-27T18:54:00.000+01:00

Today I was taken up to visit some sites around the Museum by one of the volunteers, John Paul. He has incredible local knowledge and was able to show me some of the landmarks from folklore as well as one of the John Foord water ways on Spaunton Moor. The water is stunning - iron rich reddish brown with a sort of milky turquoise sheen. The network of waterways (using the contours of the land to navigate water from the moor ) was one of the main inspirations for the project so it was wonderful to be shown one of them.

I was also taken to the Quaker Burial Ground at Lowna. It is so incredibly tranquil and sitting inside the neat, square, walled site made me think more about the boundaries on the moor, walled, fenced, divided by rivers. And the paths – both visible and invisible, that cross and reinforce the boundaries.

Earlier in the day I was helped by Barry who has been scanning the enormous photographic collection at the museum. He has found me copies of photographs of the walking of the bounds of Spaunton Moor as well as landmarks that rest on two parallel lines I have drawn on a map, one along side of the site I have marked out and one that runs through it.

The volume of information and local history is exciting and overwhelming. I find it interesting relating the sense of dizziness that it provokes to the dramatic and similarly overwhelming landscape.

manual survey

2010-10-25T22:00:00.000+01:00

My friend Ali Jardine came to help me to plot the site using manual survey. He set posts in each of the corners to create a level line, the site was then divided into a grid. Using a marks stick he measured down from the level grid to the ground. The points will be turned into a digital elevation model. In the mean time the measurements have helped me to establish the gradient of the slope on the site - and so in the gallery space.
We had an incredibly wet day yesterday and got half way through the measurements. The weather was fantastic today - we quickly finished the points and then headed to the Museum. I met with Madge Allinson, an incredibly interesting woman who helped Raymond Hayes with his field studies. I am trying to narrow down a series of questions to ask her about an incredibly broad and detailed life's work! Ali and I went for a walk across Spaunton Moor to locate some of the Cairns and Tumulus that are in line with the site.

point between lines

2010-10-24T21:52:00.001+01:00

I have been thinking about the forces of energy both visible and invisible on the site and how they can be measured, translated and how the forces relate to one another.
I have been taking advice and and trying to work out how to test the conductivity and magnetic fields on the site as well as the gradient and positioning.
I have been very much enjoying seeing the repetitions of pattern and form on the site and surrounding area - concentric circles, lines and spirals. These have an interesting relationship to mapping and to digital images and 3d digital models.
I have been trying to find ways t describe the space and the way in which 'circuits' conducting energy of various sorts are established and broken. A very basic (but fairly difficult for me to grasp!) geometry book describes a line as something that joins to points and yet has no physical width. I find this very difficult to understand, surely even if the line isn't visible, it has a presence. If it's joining point up, then it has a physicality of sorts, no matter how minute.

fields

2010-10-22T16:18:00.000+01:00

I have really begun to think about the fields and forces on the space today. The aim of the project has always been to use the site as a focus for a piece of work about energy fields and movement on the land and how we intercept and conduct them.
The breaking and reforming of energy flow.
I have been looking at documentation of nearby round barrows and cairns and have am going to start plotting the site according to the nearby leylines. I am also hoping to find a way to explore the ways in which the ground draws the water from the moor (joseph Foord collection in the archive) and conducts heat away from the body - a downward energy pull.

walk the bounds

2010-10-21T22:19:00.000+01:00

Today I spent some time in the archives with one of the Archivists, Helen. She helped me find some photographs of the Manor of Spaunton Moor Perimeter Walk.
We continued to experiment with dividing the 10 x 4 space. Mark, the museum & gallery apprentice, and I marked out the 1m x 2.5m (same ratio as the gallery and site) in the gallery. This will be the central the platform during the exhibition.

cross section

2010-10-20T13:56:00.000+01:00

We measured out the gallery space perimeter with black cord and took it up to the site to mark out the boundary of the site and check that it is exactly the same size as the gallery. I also ran a cord diagonally across the rectangle and marked out a rectangle a quarter of the size using a tarpaulin. Also left jars to collect rain and took some soil samples.

There is a glass plate of an aerial view of Spaunton Moor in the collection which I am going to scan in and compare with google earth imagery. the google earth reference for the site is:
54 18'24 97"N
0 55'06.83"W
elev 137

this is google maps

October Half Term

2010-10-19T13:54:00.000+01:00

We are holding a range of free art activities over the October half term.

Sat 23rd and Sunday 24th -
Flora Parrott Dipole
Exploring the North York Moors with our resident artist. Drop in workshop. Gallery

The Big Draw 25th-31st.
Giant drawing workshops in the Manor House. Drop in family activity.
11am-3pm.
Monday 25th - Serena Partridge
Tuesday 26th - Sally Taylor
Wednesday 27th - Lyn Wait
Thursday 28th - Sue Gough
Friday 29th - Catherine Scriven
Sunday 31st - Sue Slann
For more information contact 01751 417 367.
gallery@ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk

dipole: day 2

2010-10-19T13:33:00.000+01:00

We went down to the site as a group and collected any broken off samples of heather, mosses feathers. The space is set up as a base-camp / studio of sorts and already a picture of the space on the Moor is beginning to form.

pegging out the site

2010-10-17T14:14:00.000+01:00

Today I have been up to peg out the 10 x 4m site at Spaunton Moor. George Thompson, the game keeper of the Spaunton Estate helped me to find a place that suits the project and only ten minutes from the gallery.

Beginning

2010-10-10T09:28:00.000+01:00

During the residency I will be keeping a diary on the RFM Gallery blog as well as on my own blog. I'll scan in the sketches, photographs and notes that will be used to make the body of work to be exhibited in February.

In May this year I ran a workshop as a summary of a residency placement on the MA course at UCA Maidstone. The workshop and seminar aimed to dissect the reason for using a 3D scanner and attempt to replicate the way in which is reads information. We set ourselves a series of experiments which we had to carry out on various objects in order to gather as much information about them as possible.

You can download a copy of the publication produced here.

I have set myself a similar task for this residency. By carrying out as series of experiments I would like to find out as much as I can about a patch (the same size as the gallery 10 x 4m) on Spaunton Moor. The ambition being to relay this information in the space, replicating the feeling of being on the Moor - obviously not possible! But in attempting to do so I hope to make a body of work that goes some way to explaining the charged (which is why I have chosen the title Dipole) and often overwhelming sensation of being on the Moor as well as analysing why we (many of us anyway) have the need to dissect and understand the space around and underneath us.

Ryedale ArtFest 2010 Closing Event

2010-10-04T13:49:00.000+01:00

Ryedale ARTFEST 2010
Closing Event
Sunday 17th October
4pm-6pm

Come along and help us celebrate Ryedale ARTFEST 2010. This will be the last chance to see the exhibition at Ryedale Folk Museum featuring work by; Sue Gough, June Emerson, Sue Slann, Jackie Stonehouse and Maria Silmon. It will also be an opportunity for you to tell us what you thought of this years event, as we'd love to hear feedback from artists, galleries, and visitors.
How can we make Ryedale ARTFEST better in future?
Come along, have a glass of wine and tell us what you think.

For further information on this years ARTFEST visit http://www.ryedaleartfest.com/

Or contact artfest@live.co.uk

Ryedale ArtFest 2010

2010-09-07T11:25:00.000+01:00

24th September - 15th October 2010

Ryedale's professional creative community is coming together to celebrate its success.
Ryedale ArtFest is an exciting new showcase for Ryedale’s artistic talent. A host of artists, craftsmen, galleries and studios will be holding exhibitions and displays across the district over three weeks between 24th September and 15th October. Exhibitions will feature new work on show and for sale in the artists' own studios and at seven Ryedale galleries.

The project is a new initiative by the Ryedale Visual Arts Network to celebrate the region’s diverse, distinctive and high quality artistic talent. Led by Ryedale District Council’s Cultural Officer, Yvette Turnbull, the Visual Arts Network is aimed at raising the profile of the creative industries in the area and gives artists in a rural location a platform to develop and market their work as part of a large support network.

She says of the project, “We’ve been building up the Network over the past four years and this is the first time that the membership has come together to exhibit. I’m really proud of the range and quality of the work and it’s a sign of the strength and depth of Ryedale’s visual arts community that we can put on such a range of exhibitions.”

ArtFest will feature over twenty local artists exhibiting at seven galleries in Ryedale including; Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton le Hole, The Saltbox Gallery, Helmsley, Back o’ the Shop, Terrington, Talents Fine Art, Malton and the Yorkshire Wolds Gallery, Staxton and The Summit Bookshop, Kirkbymoorside. ArtFest will also feature a range of artists opening their studios during the festival giving visitors behind the scenes access to their studios.

Ryedale Folk Museum will be exhibiting the work of five women artists; Sue Gough, June Emerson, Sue Slann, Jackie Stonehouse and Maria Silmon. Curator, Andrew Dalton, says “The five artists showing at Ryedale Folk Museum highlight the breadth of art practice in the area. Works range from painting and digital photography through representation to abstraction. This exhibition and the festival is a great opportunity for visitors to get a real insight into the artists living and working in their region”.

Alongside the Gallery display textile artists Jackie Lunn and Jenny Pepper will be presenting a display and demonstrating their art at the Museum Resource Room on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd October.

An arts map leaflet will accompany the festival giving details exhibiting artists, galleries and studio times. Leaflets will be available through TICs and participating galleries and for download from the website.

For further information on dates and opening times visit http://www.ryedaleartfest.com/

Or contact artfest@live.co.uk

Andy Black: Forests

2010-08-11T15:39:00.000+01:00

Andy Black: Forests
14th August - 19th September

Andy Black, studied at the Royal College of Art and currently lives in Malton, explains: “My drawings use a limited and consistent number of elements – trees, in the main, sometimes with paths, clearings, mountains or the surface of the ground itself as secondary motifs. The drawings, which develop through small-scale studies to larger final works, navigate a territory between the constructed landscapes of Bru eghel and the formal aesthetics of Ellsworth Kelly, to Capability Brown’s controlled parkland.”Gallery Manager Andy Dalton comments:

“Landscape has provided the subject matter for a great tradition in British art and many of its greatest images have become icons of national identity. Beside the works of traditional artists, modern and contemporary artists such as Hepworth, Long and Goldsworthy have all used landscape as the subject, or object, of their work, and in recent years we have become more and more familiar with this approach to representations of ‘place’.”
“Andy Black’s recent drawings play with our familiarity with the images of landscape and present imaginary places which are the product of his research into the fundamental forms of the landscape. Black has identified a series of elements which he sees as being the building blocks of landscape and from these has produced an ongoing series of drawings which explore the permutations of these archetypal forms.”

A specially commissioned installation, featuring 2,000 model trees, which realises one of his images as a sculptural installation will be on show alongside a group of drawings from his ongoing series.

Current Exhibition

2010-07-19T16:17:00.000+01:00

Serena Partridge

2010-06-28T11:20:00.000+01:00

Installation shots of the current exhibition by Serena Partridge.

Serena Partridge

2010-06-15T15:30:00.000+01:00

Serena Partridge
26th June – 8th August

Serena Partridge makes fantastical miniature pieces of attire inspired by a passion for European costume, dating back some six hundred years. Her fantastical tiny pieces form an imagined collection will create a decadent foil to the rural exhibits of the Ryedale Folk Museum.

Malton based Serena mixes antique fabric and trimmings with frankly any material that will achieve the desired effect. Thus, kid gloves are reborn as elongated shoes and a fragmented wedding veil becomes the filling of a six-tier gateau; while heels are carved in wood and coiffures are fashioned from strands of fine silk.

Serena’s particular interest is for the flamboyant fashions paraded by the wealthy élite, such as sixteenth century Venetian platforms rising to heights of twenty inches or the superfluous coiffures supported by Marie Antoinette. Although her works contain strong references to the past, Serena is not concerned with producing historically accurate replicas and classes her art as ‘sculptural textiles’.

Gallery manager Andy Dalton says:

“Serena makes work that moves easily between high fashion and fine art. Her pieces are exquisitely beautiful but highlight the artificiality and impossibility of our concept of beauty and fashion. Her work addresses these subjects with a knowing humour and we are seduced by the stylised forms and sensuous materials in her work before realising that the clothing, shoes and accessories that feature in her work are physically unwearable and idealised. Fashion becomes Art.”

There are a number of artists in North Yorkshire who are using textiles, paper and other 'soft' materials to create sculpture and structured textiles, and this exhibition is one of three this year which looks at this current in local art practice.

For more information telephone 01751 417 367
email gallery@ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk

Serena Partridge: New Work will be on show at the Gallery at Ryedale Museum from Sat 26 June until Sun 8 August. Admission to the gallery is free, and daily opening times are 10am – 4.30pm. There is a special evening preview on Fri 25 June (7-9pm) which visitors are welcome to attend.

Sarah Venus Tactillia

2010-05-14T17:51:00.000+01:00

Sarah Venus Tactillia

2010-05-13T18:09:00.000+01:00

Sarah Venus

Tactillia
8th May – 20th June 2010
Sarah Venus' dedication to self expression through visual art has never been limited to any one medium. She feels that the various processes and materials involved in what is often disparagingly termed "craft" simply broadens her palette. She works with textiles, ceramics, painting and printmaking - in two and three dimensions.

Her inspiration springs from the exciting responses and relationships that form the margins where things meet; where elements interact, sea meets land, wind meets tree, hair meets skin, old meets new or nice meets nasty. The tension between good old fashioned craftsmanship and the need for a raw physicality of expression is also an ongoing concern in her work.

Her three dimensional felt forms are made from the fleeces of rare and minority indigenous sheep, often from the farm flock at her home near Scarborough. She says of her work, ‘Some of my pieces incorporate other materials such as rubber and bristles, hopefully creating a thought provoking and sometimes disturbing result’. Her work spans a range of media, including lino-print making, machine embroidery and felt. She also makes functional pieces, “Ecozies”, cosies for teapots.

Across all the various ways in which she works there is a common thread which is the inspiration she draws from natural forms, their interactions and tensions. Her use of rare and locally sourced fleeces give her work an organic quality which sits easily with our perceptions of the craft of felt making, but her incorporation of man-made elements such as rubber and plastic give her work a unique edge.

Her forms are considered and constructed in a way which has more in common with sculpture than traditional felt making and her work is often reminiscent of the organic forms of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore - unsurprising, as they are all inspired by the Yorkshire landscape.

Andrew Dalton, Gallery Manager.

Shared Horizons

2010-03-12T15:27:00.001Z

Until 31st April 2010
We open three new exhibitions in the Gallery and across the Museum for March and April. The three exhibitions offer differing aspects of life in the county.

Robert Parkin - The Land Remains features a new group of landscape reliefs which document the artists journey through the landscape. These works re-present the actual materials of the land as art, in a series of large scale reliefs.
Alan Clark - Life on a Ryedale FarmAlan Clark presents a selection of photographs from his ongoing documentation of the day-to-day life of a farms in the Ryedale area
.
Shared Horizons - A touring exhibition by Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Shared Horizon features work by fifteen young people from Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Senegal and Gambia. The exhibition showcases work from a photography project for 14–18 year old unaccompanied asylum seekers living in Wakefield, Barnsley and Kirklees.

Yorkshire Coast College Exhibition Open Day

2010-02-23T12:00:00.000Z

This month the museum and Gallery is hosting an exhibition of work from students at Yorkshire Coast college in Scarborough. The work is on display all round the museum and gallery. Work by students at the college was inspired by visits to the museum as part of their course. To get a taste of what's on display and to learn more about the project watch the video below:

C Gough

Yorkshire Coast College

2010-01-12T13:54:00.000Z

An exhibition of art and design work by the learners of Yorkshire Coast College, Scarborough.

In September 2009 learners from the Foundation Diploma in Art and Design and the second year of the National Diploma in Art in Design courses visited the museum to explore its collections, buildings and artefacts. The learners’ research informed their work throughout the autumn term in Fine Art, Graphic Design, 3D Design, Photography and Textiles. The work shown in the Gallery, the Manor House and in a variety of locations across the site demonstrates the individuality and creativity of their responses. The work is experimental, challenging and showcases the talent of a group of young artists and designers at the start of their careers.

Ryedale Folk Museum is a time capsule preserving the memories of what life was like during the Second World War, the Victorian era and even during the Iron Age. For the learners, the museum has been a rich, living repository of stories, objects, and ideas. The learners used the museum to reflect upon their own experiences and it provoked discussion around issues of gender, ethnicity, belief, politics, heritage, class and social conditions, even the nature of memory itself. The project has been an invaluable and exciting opportunity for the learners to respond to the stimulating environment of Ryedale Folk Museum and to begin to develop their own creative voices.

“This has been a really exciting project, the students have responded creatively and the Museum and Gallery have allowed us to put on a really ambitious show. We’re very proud of the students’ achievements” – Andy Black (lecturer in Fine Art – YCC)

Yorkshire Coast College offers a range of Further and Higher Education courses from Level 1 Introductory Certificate in Art & Design, Level 2 First Diploma Art & Design, Level 3 National Diploma Art & Design, Level 3+ Foundation Diploma Art & Design to degree courses in Costume, Fine Art and Applied Digital Media. If you would like further information about these courses please ring (01723) 361960.

The exhibition opens on January 18th and runs until Febuary 21st. Admission free.

On Wednesday January 27th there will be an open day for the exhibition. This will be an opportunity to meet the students and staff responsible for the exhibition and to talk about the courses available at YCC. Any schools or colleges wishing to arrange a visit with a guide from YCC on the 27th or another date during the exhibition can do this by calling Andy Black or Mike Ambler on 01723 361960.

This exhibition was curated BA (Hons) Fine Art students Cecily Rands, Carrie Jackson, Holly Major and Diane Malcomson.

David Stephenson

2009-10-16T18:26:00.000+01:00

David Stephenson
He vivido
17th October – 6th December 2009

The changing face of the North Yorkshire landscape throughout the year is the inspiration behind a master blacksmith’s new installation ‘He Vivido’ (I have lived)

David Stephenson has been producing exquisite metalwork from his forge in Lockton, North Yorkshire since 1999 and has earned a reputation as a master blacksmith and craftsman.

The show marks a new departure from his signature ironwork, and features twelve large copper repousse panels which capture his reflections on particular aspects of the landscape, with the twelve copper reliefs suggesting a calendar or cycle of nature.

Stephenson embarked on developing this new technique after he discovered a carved relief panel by the artist Eric Gill on the font at St Joseph’s Church in Pickering, he says, “The beautiful, gentle subtlety of Gill’s relief work opened to me the possibilities of repousse relief work in copper.” The process involves the drawing of a design onto the sheet of copper using small chisels made for the purpose.

The subject of Stephenson’s series of 12 repousse copper panels came about while sheltering from avalanche danger in a tiny mountain refuge, high in the Spanish Pyrenees. Scribed on the stone wall with a charcoal stick were the words:
Solo es feliz aquel que, Cada dia puede decir, ‘He vivido’

Only happy is he who, Each day can say, 'I have lived'.

Stephenson comments: “The subject of each panel represents what it is which, in some way, has allowed me to say: ‘Hoy, he vivido’ / (today, I have lived)”‘He Vivido’ is the final show in the Fired Arts season in the Gallery at Ryedale Folk Museum. The programme, developed by gallery manager Andy Dalton, runs from May through to December this year and has featured some of the best kiln and forge based artists working in North Yorkshire, including Gillies Jones Glass and Peter Humpherson. Over 20,000 visitors have enjoyed a range of works in glass, ceramic and metal celebrating the quality and strength of work by craftsmen from the region.

Press Coverage for Gillies Jones Blown Glass Vessels

2009-08-24T14:00:00.000+01:00

Stunning modern glass bowls created in the heart of the North York Moors are much sought after all over the world. Ruth Campbell speaks to the couple who create them.

STEPHEN Gillies and Kate Jones’s workshop may be tucked away in the quiet end of the remote village of Rosedale Abbey, hidden from view, but it is an easy place to find, particularly in winter. When everything else is blanketed in white, this is the only building that will not have a drop of snow. The huge puddle that surrounds it provides a clue as to what is happening inside.

This is where Stephen and Kate work in intense temperatures of up to 45C, a tropical paradise in winter, blisteringly hot on a summer’s day, to create their stunning, brightlypatterned glass bowls and vessels that are now sought after all over the world.

When the couple, who have two children, Ava, nine, and Finlay, five, moved here 15 years ago, they were struggling to establish themselves in the world of contemporary glass. But several years of hard work and travelling all over the world to exhibit their brightly-coloured, bold, modern designs at major shows and galleries has paid off. After the Victoria and Albert Museum commissioned them to create a piece in 2003, their popularity soared. Now, keen collectors travel from as far as the States to the pair’s studio in the heart of the North York Moors to snap up their latest designs. Buyers come from Holland and London on day trips just to add to their collections. And pieces are regularly shipped to Australia and New Zealand.

Their limited edition pieces cost from £70 for small bowls, to more than £800 for large spun plates and up to £3,500 for larger pieces. Actor Hugh Grant owns a large glass sculpture. Reporter Kate Adie is another fan. The actor Brian Blessed walked into the studio recently and bought three intensely bright coloured bowls.

Stephen and Kate have even been asked to create the trophies for a celebrity golf tournament, in aid of the leukaemia charity based at Hammersmith Hospital, where stars, including James Nesbitt and Philip Glenister, will all be competing for one of their prized glass creations.
Although they are in demand for exhibitions all over the world – their work can be seen in galleries in Germany, Holland and America – the couple are particularly proud to show their latest creations locally, in a new exhibition, Glass, at the Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton-le- Hole, until October 11.

Stephen, born in Halifax, and Kate, from east London, have lived and worked in Switzerland and Denmark and have spent months at a time in the States. They could have chosen anywhere in the world as a base for their glass business. But Stephen, 42, whose father is originally from Helmsley, has always loved North Yorkshire and enjoyed many wonderful childhood holidays there.

When his parents retired to Rosedale and discovered a derelict stone blacksmiths building in the village, close to where an old 16th Century glass furnace had been excavated in the 1960s, he and his partner knew they had found the perfect place for what they wanted to do – to breathe new life into this ancient craft.

The son of an ICI worker and a midwife, Stephen was the first person in his family to go to college and his parents are thrilled at what he has achieved. He describes where they live now as a type of Utopia: “It is a 21-mile round trip to the nearest town of Pickering. You really do feel the seasons here, sometimes all four of them in one day. Our children go to a wonderful village school with only 17 children, aged four to 11. “We are fortunate because what we do we could do anywhere. From here, we can be in London in twoand- a-half hours, it’s just amazing.
And we are spoilt for airports.” As well as providing the perfect place to bring up their two children, their beautiful surroundings also inspire Stephen and Kate’s art.

While he creates all the shapes in hot glass, Kate, a trained painter, hand carves each piece to create the patterns and colour contrasts and is inspired by everything from the stone walls and hedgerows to the detail within a horse chestnut seed.“Small things in nature are very big when you stop to wonder at them,” she says. “North Yorkshire is just paradise.
It is beautiful and so inspirational.”

She explains the attraction of working in glass: “It’s all about light, it is so seductive, beautiful and versatile. The work can be slow and meticulous, and so absorbing, you can get lost in the patterns. It takes me a week to finish a sculptural piece and there is no margin for error. But I like that discipline.” The daughter of a lorry driver who grew up on council estate west of London, she was the first in her family to follow a creative path: “My parents were worried I would never get a proper job. Mum is proud of me, but still doesn’t quite get it,” she laughs.
Reassuringly for her mum, both manage to make a living out of their art: “For craftspeople, that is unusual. Normally one of us would have to get a proper job.”

Current Exhibition

2009-07-16T14:45:00.001+01:00

Stephen Gillies
& Kate Jones

Blown Glass Vessels
8th August – 11th October 2009

Glass is the medium of reflection and light, literally and metaphorically. It is a medium of extreme contradiction, the medium of our time as unlike any other material it is animated by light.

The foundation of our work is process; it’s about crafting glass well, making fine beautiful work and expanding the function of the vessel beyond that of a physical container. Our vessels are containers for our ideas. They communicate our thoughts and interests within our chosen narrow technical path.

The challenge of making hot glass and controlling this magical material from liquid through to solid form, is Stephen Gillies life‘s work. Kate Jones has moved from paint through to printmaking and then to glass. The essence of her work is constant throughout each medium; it is the act of stopping to look and observe the details of nature.

This exhibition features a stunning group of new blown glass vessels by Kate Jones and Stephen Gillies highlighting new directions in their studio practice. The vessels will be shown in context with photographs and drawings that document their creative process. A full colour brochure will accompany the exhibtion, for details contact the Gallery.

images: Tony Barthlolomew & Pete Chambers

Press: Peter Humpherson

2009-07-15T12:36:00.000+01:00

Peter Humpherson Ceramics

2009-06-25T09:43:00.000+01:00

Peter Humpherson Ceramics

2009-06-20T16:09:00.000+01:00

27th June – 2nd August
Peter Humpherson: Ceramic

The exhibition features new work by Peter Humpherson and selected ceramics from York Museums Trust.

Inspired by the coastline of western Scotland Peter Humpherson has created a new group of ceramics which explore the textures, colours and shapes of the coastal landscape. His signature stoneware bowls highlight the impact of the landscape on his work. Unglazed stoneware in the body of his pots suggests the tone and texture of sand, while his use of aquatic blue-green glazes implies sea water or rockpools.

A new group of sculptural ceramics are based upon the forms of razor clam shells and offer a new direction in Humpherson’s previous practice, moving away from his predominantly horizontal functional pots towards vertical ceramic forms which are sculptural, reflective and formally innovative.

Humpherson’s ceramics will be complemented by a selection of twenty pots from York Museums Trust featuring works by David Lloyd-Jones, Jim Malone, Richard Batterham, Alex McErlain, Ray Finch Joanna Constantinidis and Mick Casson. This is the first time that York Museums have loaned work to the Gallery and it is a fantastic opportunity to see an important group of works by potters who have inspired Peter Humpherson during his career.

Peter Humpherson Ceramics

2009-06-18T13:37:00.000+01:00

Yorkshire Coast College Exhibition

2009-06-06T13:21:00.000+01:00

Artist : Lecturer : Designer : Teacher
15th-21st June

This exhibition features the work of individuals who have a double identity. As the title of the exhibition suggests the teachers and lecturers of Yorkshire Coast College are also artists and designers in their own right. The dual identities are in fact complimentary and vital to the vibrancy of the Visual Art Department at YCC.

The work shown in the exhibition demonstrates the breadth of expertise and approach of the teaching staff at the college. Between them they boast regional, national and international profiles. Within the team fine artists, illustrators, textile artists, photographers, graphic, 3D and costume designers work alongside each other, collaborate and share experiences.

To be an active artist or designer shows commitment to teaching and to the learners of YCC. To be involved in the current debates within your professional field involves the learners too. The professional world comes into the classroom, studio and workshop and the classroom in turn becomes part of the professional world. This dynamic environment gives the learners a very real experience and inspires them as they go on to work or higher study.

To be a practitioner is to be good teacher. To encourage learning you have to keep learning yourself. To practice what you preach is essential.

Wednesday 17th June 11am –4pm
Andy Black (Lecturer In Fine Art at YCC) will be at the Gallery to talk about the work on display and offer advice and guidance to potential students thinking about studying art and design. Fellow teachers or career guidance officers wanting to know more about YCC are also welcome. Any schools wanting to book a slot can do so by contacting Andy Black on 01723 361960 or at ank@ycoastco.ac.uk.

Showcase evening Friday 19th June 7-9pm
Meet some of the staff. All Welcome.

Yorkshire Coast College offers a range of Further and Higher Education art design courses from Introductory Diplomas, through First Diploma, National Diploma, Foundation Course to degree level study in Interactive Media, Fine Art and Costume. Whatever your age, whether you’re at school, leaving school, have left school, whether you’re planning to go to university or are ready for further study, or want to pursue a career in art and design there’s an exciting course for you at Yorkshire Coast College.

Ryedale Artists and Makers 2009

2009-05-04T10:33:00.000+01:00

Installation shots from the current exhibition Ryedale Artists and Makers, celebrating the best designer makers from North Yorkshire. Featuring Wendy Greenwood, David Stephenson, Elizabeth Bailey, Sophie Hamilton, Rachel Gretton, John Egerton and Peter Humpherson.

Current Exhibition

2009-03-27T13:53:00.000Z

Ryedale Artists & Makers 2009

The fourth annual exhibition celebrating the best artists and makers from Ryedale and North Yorkshire. This year we feature kiln and forge based artists and designers working in a range of media, from exquisitely crafted glass and ceramic through to contemporary forged metalwork.

Artists featured:

Wendy Greenwood Glass

David Stephenson Metalwork

Rachel Gretton Glass

Sophie Hamilton Ceramic

Elizabeth Bailey Ceramic

John Egerton Ceramic

Janet Hayton Ceramic

Peter Humpherson Ceramic

All works are available for sale through the Museum Shop.

Blacksmithing Masterclass with David Stephenson

2009-03-16T13:36:00.000Z

Between May and December 2009 The Gallery at Ryedale Folk Museum will present Fired Arts, a programme of exhibitions promoting the work of kiln-based local designer makers working in metal, glass and ceramic.

There is a long tradition of fired arts and crafts in Ryedale and North Yorkshire, with glass furnaces and potteries dating back to the 16th century in Rosedale and Hutton and numerous blacksmiths forges and potteries scattered across the district since the middle ages. In recent years a number of high quality artisan workshops and designer makers have established studios in the area, and continue to maintain these important and distinctive rural crafts while producing exquisite contemporary jewellery, pottery, glassware and forged metal.

The intention of the Masterclasses is to place teaching proffessionals alongside local designer-makers as a means of promoting the creative industries as a career choices for pupils. The workshops will include two studio based study days with a proffessional maker introducing primary skills in each craft: glass making, ceramics, and forged metal. The focus of the sessions will be to offer teachers an insight into the studio of a practicing proffessional maker as a vehicle for inspiring others to consider a role in the creative industry of the district. The study days are intended to produce advocates for the arts as well as possible practitioners. Teachers who undertake the masterclasses will be invited to contribute, along with their students, to a follow-up exhibiton at the Gallery as a vehicle for encouraging ongoing craft practice in the demonstrated areas.

If you would like to be involved with the workshops please email gallery@ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk

Previous Exhibition

2009-02-25T15:20:00.000Z

William Leng: Picturing the Past

14th March – 26th April

William Leng was a self taught painter, agricultural worker and special constable. He painted scenes of rural life in Ryedale remembered from his life and childhood during the late 19th and early 20th century. Leng is a relatively unknown figure outside of Ryedale but should be considered part of a tradition of naïve painting in British art.

The exhibition will include animated responses to Leng’s paintings made by local children during a summer school in 2008.

William Leng: Picturing the Past

2009-02-25T11:07:00.000Z

Ryedale Folk Museum Summer School 2008

This film was made as part of the William Leng Summer School which was held at the Museum during july 2008. A group of Ryedale children produced a suite of related films exploring different aspects of Leng's images. The films will be showing at the museum during the William Leng exhibition Picturing the Past 14th March – 26th April.

The films and workshops were delivered by Promenade Productions.

Exhibitions 2009

2009-01-20T12:21:00.000Z

Exhibitions 2009
This year's programme offers an exciting mix of contemporary and heritage exhibitions. Between March and May the Gallery explores Ryedale's heritage with exhibitions featuring the Harrison Collection and the work of self-taught painter William Leng.

From May to December the Gallery will have a series of exhibitions that celebrate the Fired Arts in North Yorkshire, featuring a selection of the region's designer-makers who work in ceramic, metal and glass.

19th January – 8th March The Harrison Collection

14th March – 26th April Picturing the Past: William Leng

2nd May – 14th June Ryedale Artists and Makers: Fired

15th June – 23rd June Scarborough College

27th June – 2nd August Fired: Ceramic

22nd August – 11th October Fired: Glass

17th October – 18th December Fired: Metal

The Harrison Collection Exhibition

2009-01-18T11:58:00.000Z

The Harrison Collection
until 8th March 2009

10am – 4.30pm (last admission 3.30pm)

The Harrison collection consists of over 10 thousand pieces, some of them unique, and its creation has been the lifetime’s work of the Harrison brothers who began collecting at the age of five. Edward has become an authority on collectables and their social history and has advised the BBC on various programs. It is this passion and knowledge combined with the collection that makes it so exciting.

Edward and Richard, who have lived in Ryedale all of their lives, want the collection to stay in North Yorkshire in a rural location for public benefit. It is a truly eclectic, eccentric collection and very much in the spirit and tradition of the early collectors whose collections are the basis of our major museums today.

Having grown up on an isolated farm on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors, where they both live, Edward and his brother Richard have put together a breathtaking collection that encompasses all manner of subjects that illustrate the social history of many a bygone age.
It was all jaw dropping stuff made all the more enjoyable by the brothers' unquenchable enthusiasm for the treasure they have managed to cram into their 18th century farmhouse located in the middle of nowhere.

Now the good news for all of us is that both Edward and Richard have decided to up sticks and as a consequence have offered to donate their lifetime achievement to the Ryedale Folk Museum situated in nearby Huttonle-Hole. The museum's only problem will be in finding the funds to erect a building large enough to house the collection.

Eric Knowles, Antiques Roadshow from his blog at
www.ericknowles.co.uk

There are around 800 or 900 objects that are of major national significance, many unique, and the rest one of only a handful of known examples.

The collection will have a major impact on the museum as a whole. It compares with and can stand alongside any major national museum collection…in terms of its unique nature and the rarity of the objects it will eclipse the existing collection.

Martin Watts, York Museums Trust

Tel 01751 417 367

Info@ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk
www.ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk
www.ryedalefolkmuseum.blogspot.com

The Harrison Development

2009-01-14T12:38:00.000Z

Anne Thalheim New Work

2008-10-18T14:09:00.000+01:00

Anne Thalheim New Work
25th October - 30th November

I favour assemblage over the traditional methods of sculpture (carving, moulding and casting) because it enables me to explore form rapidly and freely. I sometimes borrow from techniques used in sewing, needlework or basketry, but used with materials or products destined for the building trade.
I often work with the material itself rather than sketches or drawings. The challenge is to keep a certain looseness in the approach and be ready to radically change what was intended if need be. This way of working often engenders variations or new ideas.
For an exhibition, a limitation in colour and types of material will bring unity. Colour for instance may take a certain meaning that is carried through.
Though imbued with uneasiness, or a sombre quality, I hope my work may still carry a strange beauty.

Anne Thalheim

Biography
1962 Born Quebec, Canada
1986 BA - University Laval, Quebec
1989 Lives and works in UK

Exhibitions
2006 Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne Group Show
2006 Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton-le-Hole Group Show
2008 Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton-le-Hole Solo Show
2009 Crescent Arts, Scarborough Solo Show

Anne Thalheim New Work

2008-10-14T14:05:00.000+01:00

Anne Thalheim works in a wide range of media often combining accepted sculptural processes such as casting, carving and moulding with non-traditional materials such as plastic and textile. This exhibition features domestic and industrial materials, found objects and sculpted forms to create mysterious, humorous, and often disturbing sculptures which explore issues of sexuality and power.

Thalheim’s work often deals with difficult, emotionally charged or contentious subjects reflecting on themes of sexuality, violence and perceptions of gender. In her recent assemblage works she has started to approach these often conflicting narratives by transforming a range of everyday objects and materials into ambiguous anthropomorphic forms.

Many of her creations suggest the shapes and structures of organic life forms. Antennae, limbs, ribs, eyes and spines proliferate within the hybridised structures that she creates from utilitarian materials such as, cable ties, mono-filament, fabric, rubber, nuts, bolts and washers. Strangely, the inorganic elements of her work transform through their assembly into perverse multi-cellular creatures which hint at the hidden narratives of their constituent materials. Forms that might conventionally be gendered as female are subverted through Thalheim’s use of industrial components. Likewise, masculine forms composed of black rubber cable are rendered ambiguous through Thaheim’s use techniques such as basket weaving.

Thalheim’s approach to form, content and materials - the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur - align her interests with those of Surrealism. Her approach deliberately combines seriousness and humour to highlight the conventional nature of our relationship to objects, materials and each other, and to explore the boundaries of these conventions.

Andrew Dalton
Gallery Manager

Cheryl-ann Taylor Artist in Residence

2008-08-20T11:36:00.000+01:00

Dress

Cheryl-ann Taylor
23rd August – 19th October 2008

Dress is the second artist residency at the Ryedale Folk Museum. It is intended to promote and celebrate the work of exceptional designer-makers from North Yorkshire. The exhibition, publication, workshops and commission have all been made possible through the support of the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and the Arts Council of England.

My current work explores the concept of ‘vintage proportion’, my main focus is to create garments which are beautiful but only fit the forms of old, where possessing an hour glass figure was so important. The scale of the dresses will be of vintage proportion, the dresses will be whole but only the front of the garment will be ‘dressed’ ‘adorned’ – This reflects what I do with my samples as I only make the fronts.

Throughout the residency Cheryl-ann will create seven dresses, using elegant dress silhouettes and concentrating on developing a section of each – from cuff, to hemline and fastening. Throughout the residency people will be able to both view her work and find out more about how the sample fashion industry operates.

Meet the Artist

Each Wednesday 11am-3pm 27th August - 15th October

A chance to talk to Cheryl-ann about her work and the residency at the Museum.

or visit -

http://www.knitwitdesign.co.uk/

http://www.janeredfern.co.uk/client-info/rfm-ctrelease.html

Evening Event

2008-08-18T15:12:00.000+01:00

Thurs 9th Oct 7-9pm

An evening talk with Fashion and Textile Designer Cheryl-ann Taylor
and Meriel Watson, Collection Volunteer Ryedale Folk Museum

A chance to talk to Cheryl about the exquisite dresses that she has made and exhibited at the museum during her residency.

Meriel Watson will be presenting a choice selection of dresses from the collection to complement Cheryl's garments.

Admission Free

RSVP Andrew Dalton
The Gallery at Ryedale Folk Museum
Hutton le Hole York YO62 UA
01751417367

Unit 5 Sculpture from the Arts Council Collection

2008-08-11T11:06:00.000+01:00

Unit 5 Sculpture from the Arts Council Collection
5th July - 17th August

Willy
(2000)
Sarah Lucas

Curated by Students from Malton School, Unit 5 reflects the issues and concerns of a group of young people living in North Yorkshire. Their selection of works from the Arts Council Collection highlights the visual sophistication of the students and challenges our preconceptions about the interests and concerns of young adults.

The exhibition features five works by six contemporary artists; Sarah Lucas, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, Elizabeth Wright, Edward Lipski and Cathy De Monchaux. These artists are pushing the boundaries of innocence through everyday objects.

Our aim was to try to open the publics mind about drugs, fags, tats, sex, and pizza - a normal Friday night for a group of youths? All the sculptures relate to everyday objects that may be seen as rebelling and forbidden. No teenager can be seen as a goody-to shoes, right?

Curators: Ellie Brown, Jack Wilford, Rebecca Simpson, Chloe Hill, Anna Soltysik

For more Information on the Arts Council Collection visit http://www.artscouncilcollection.org.uk/main.html

Supported by:
Arts Council England
Arts Council Collection at the Southbank Centre

all images copyright the artist

Unit 5 project and installation shots

2008-08-10T14:40:00.000+01:00

Sculpture Study Day

2008-07-19T13:49:00.000+01:00

Sculpture Study Day

Saturday 9th August 10.30am - 3pm
Admission £2

A chance to take a closer look at the current exhibition featuring five works by six leading contemporary artists; Sarah Lucas, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, Elizabeth Wright, Edward Lipski and Cathy De Monchaux. We’ll also be looking at ways in which artists working in a rural context can develop approaches to professional practice.

The day features an introduction to the exhibition and the Arts Council Collection by Lizzie Docherty, Curator Arts Council Collection, a discussion on the state of current sculptural practice and a pracitcal session led by artist Flora Parrott.

Places are limited so please book in advance.

contact Andrew Dalton
E gallery@ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk
T 01751 417 367
or follow the links from the blog.

Sculpture Study Day video playlist

2008-07-08T09:18:00.000+01:00

These videos do not represent the works on display but are contextual material for the study day.

Ryedale School Exhibition

2008-06-12T10:48:00.000+01:00

Ryedale School

21st - 29th June 2008

A selection of work by GCSE students from Ryedale School.

The exhibition includes works developed during a week long project at Ryedale Folk Museum as part of The Big Draw 2007. A small group of Year 10 GCSE students and Year 9 Art students took part in two saturday workshops and five Tuesday Twighlight workshops. Their aim was to produce a painting based on the objects and architecture around the Museum grounds. As their work progressed, their paintings became more and more abstract, allowing the characteristics of the paint to influence their creative decisions.

The whole experience was unique, allowing students to work on a large scale with local professional artist, John Creighton, who offered invaluable support and advice.

Exhibition Preview
Saturday 21st June 6 - 8pm
all welcome

Evening Event 23rd May 2008

2008-05-10T11:37:00.000+01:00

You are cordially invited to an evening viewing of

Ryedale Artists and Makers
on Friday 23rd May 7-9pm

The third annual exhibition celebrating the best artists and makers from Ryedale and North Yorkshire. This year we feature artists and designers working in a range of media from exquisitely crafted jewellery and limited edition photographs, through to contemporary ceramics and hand-made felt inspired by the landscape of the North York Moors.

Artists featured
Lynne Glazzard Jewellery
David Baumforth Painting
John Potter Photography
Andrea Bailey Felt
Judith Davies Ceramics

RSVP Andrew Dalton

The Gallery at Ryedale Folk Museum Hutton le Hole York YO62 UA
01751417367
gallery@ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk
http://www.ryedalefolkmuseum.blogspot.com/

Ryedale Artists and Makers 3rd May - 15th June 2008

2008-04-19T16:28:00.000+01:00

Ryedale Artists and Makers
3rd May - 15th June

The third annual exhibition celebrating the best artists and makers from Ryedale and North Yorkshire. This year we feature artists and designers working in a range of media from exquisitely crafted jewellery and limited edition photographs, through to contemporary ceramics and hand-made felt inspired by the landscape of the North York Moors.

Artists featured:

Lynne Glazzard Jewellery
David Baumforth Painting
John Potter Photography
Andrea Bailey Felt
Judith Davies Ceramics

All works are available for sale through the Museum Shop.

Open Season 15th March - 27th April 2008

2008-04-19T14:40:00.000+01:00

Open Season

15th March – 27th April 2008

Artists in Residence
Lyn Wait
Colin Pearsall
Sue Slack
Maria Silmon

Open Season is a new initiative offering artists an opportunity to develop new, innovative and challenging work. The selected artists have an open-ended remit to challenge themselves and our audiences by making new or experimental work in public. The artists selected; Lyn Wait, Sue Slack, Colin Pearsall and Maria Silmon will present work featuring video, mixed media painting and sound installation.

The six week period of the project will be split into 3 two-week slots and offers visitors the chance to meet the artists, talk about their work, and join in the making of new works.

15th March – 29th March
Lyn Wait Sound Installation
Wait intends to continue her engagement with notions of language, meaning and travel. She will develop a sound piece using fragments of audio recorded by residents of Ryedale for whom English is not their first language. Her work is intended to explore our responses to the impact of migration by inviting the audience to add to the soundscape in their own language. Experimenting with audio equipment Wait intends to explore ways in which she can create an environment which is sonically, spatially and physically dynamic.

The following link incldes an interview with the artist.
http://www.gazetteherald.co.uk/news/videonews/index.var.23243.b.0.php

30th March – 12th April
Colin Pearsall Trellis Works
Pearsall intends to produce a number of large scale collaborative mixed media works in which the artists will paint across an extendable lattice construction. These works extend the scale, scope and ambition of Pearsall’s earlier small scale paintings and can be manipulated to extend, distort and deconstruct the traditional picture surface.

Sue Slack: Hole of Horcum
Slack is a painter whose main preoccupation is the landscape. Her work takes a familiar location as the motif for a series of paintings which explore different aspects of the artist’s response to a particular place. Slack’s images explore her emotional responses to the landscape and during the residency she will be working on a series of large scale canvases based on the Hole of Horcum in the North York Moors.

13th April – 27th April
Maria Silmon Four Elements
Based in the North York Moors, digital artist, Maria Silmon intends to develop a multi-screen video installation exploring the presence of elements Earth, Air, Fire and Water in the changing seasons and aspects of the landscape around her home. Silmon has exhibited her digital images at various festivals in the UK in the last three years but this will be the first time she has presented her video work in a gallery context.

Supported by Arts Council England

Exhibitions 2008

2008-04-18T10:02:00.000+01:00

15 March-27 April Open Season

3 May-15 June Ryedale Artists and Makers

21-29 June Ryedale School

5 July-17 Aug Unit 5: Sculpture from the Arts Council Collection

23 Aug-19 Oct Cheryl Taylor: Artist in Residence

25 Oct-30 Nov Anne Thalheim: New Work

from 6 December The Harrison Collection