RA Summer Exhibition follow up
This year the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition proved to be a great success for many of our members. Many were selected and sales were high. Here are some examples of members’ work that did so well.
Chitra Merchant’s popular Silkscreen prints, entitled Bell Jar VII and Bell Jar X.
‘Bell Jar’ is an ongoing series of prints and drawings that use the image of a bell jar as a metaphor to suggest a state of vacuum that forces its contents into a state of perpetual stasis. Much of Chitra’s work draws on her Indian upbringing and seeks to examine the roles and expectations that are ascribed to women in India as well as in the Western World.
Warsop’s work can be described as abstract landscape, each piece of work showing a variety of interpretations of aerial landscapes. She attempts to bring the colours and structures of the landscape to life, using the experimental printmaking technique of collagraph, and the building up of layers and textures of painting using acrylic and oils on canvas.
Ros Ford’s large scale print, entitled Parcel Force, Bristol is a 2 plate etching that is 60 x 90 cm, edition of 25.
Ford’s recent work is mainly about St Philips, Bristol close to her home and studio. She is inspired by juxtapositions of the river Avon, overgrown vegetation, graffiti, warehouses, security wires and fences alongside the evidence of its working past. It’s a hidden world, seemingly by-passed by road or rail from above. The large etchings are from imagined, elevated viewpoints. The work continues the tradition of British artists who work on location and were and are inspired by the unordered, the overlooked and the side shows of life.
Her work is inspired by buried relics from archaeological finds, with a contemporary twist. It is the idea of discovery of surviving traces and remains of lost, decayed, buried artefacts from archaeological explorations that continually influences her. Her inspiration is also drawn from a love of timeless shapes and forms and the decorative qualities of their pattern and ornament.
