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OWEN LEGG'S ADDRESS TO FPS AGM 2009

Owen is retiring as FPS secretary, this is his address to the FPS agm which took place on 30/11/2009. “ I have been a member of FPS since 1968 and had my early exhibitions with them at the Loggia Gallery, Buckingham gate. I used to help with the annual open show Trends at the Mall Gallery. But, going back to full time General Practice in 1979 there was much less time available for involvement with the group. Prior to retirement in 1998, I volunteered to go onto the committee and was given the job of Publicity Officer. To this I brought no aptitude and was transferred to the Secretaryship within a year. After a decade I feel that it is time for someone else to replace me. We have had much heartache over these years. Dwindling and aging membership is the biggest problem. Then our host organisation SPANA needed to expand their premises. The only way for them was to move to John St. So we lost our gallery, but they kindly continued to provide a meeting room and storage facilities. We hav

Pallent House Gallery, Chichester

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Review by Phillip Worth In the UK one tends to associate significant modern art collections with our major cities. Indeed an additional attraction of these centres is that, as well as their fine permanent collections, they all run periodic one person exhibitions of leading artists, both past and present, as well as other temporary shows. Examples abound: in London alone Tate Modern has featured Wassily Kandinsky, the Royal Academy The Scottish Colourists, the National Gallery Picasso (‘Challenging the Past’), to mention but a very few. These special exhibitions are hugely expensive to put on – way beyond, one imagines, the means even of substantial provincial galleries. How exciting, therefore, to come across an exception to that rule. The Pallent House Art Gallery in Chichester is home to one of the finest and most important collections of modern British art in the country. Housed in a listed Queen Anne building in the centre of this lovely cathedral city, the nucleus of its collectio

Review of Boxfield Gallery exhibition ‘The Four Elements’and Big Draw workshop

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By Penelope MacEwen Boxfield gallery is situated quite near the train station in the Leisure Centre. A lovely red carpet makes it a welcoming place, contrasting with the colours of the work on the walls. When walking in Andy Fullalove’s ‘Approaching the Future’ sang out immediately. The use of red in the picture seemed like a bird spreading its wings over an open landscape and with the contrast of red and orange over layers of green and blue, the texture of the palette and brush revealed the process of making. It made striking viewing and I felt uplifted, optimistic. The cleanness of the vermillion complimented with ochre and orange while flecks of cadmium yellow lead the eye upwards. Another artist whose works really dominated was Philip Worth’s powerful series on the theme of Mussorgsky’s music: ‘Pictures in an exhibition’. Four of these works were included in the present show although seven exist in all. Worth’s ‘The Market Place at Limoges’ possessed an evident zest for life with t
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Boxfield Photos by Vivien Lodge

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Sculpture Exhibition St. Pancras Church Crypt Gallery 7-25 July 2009

A review by Phillip Worth with Carol Calver's own note on her work. Life can be hard for sculptors. The materials they work with are challenging and often physically demanding, and much hard work and special skill are required before they can begin to realize their vision. And that is not the end of the story; once work is completed outlets for display have to be found, no easy matter considering the space required – and that’s not to mention difficulties of transportation. Together these are reasons enough why Owen Legg’s initiative in negotiating this particular venue is warmly welcome. It provides an opportunity for some of our most skilled artists to display their work in the mystical atmosphere of an ancient church crypt. And a splendid and imaginative show it is – all credit to our committee under the leadership of its dynamic young chairperson. Now a brief word about each exhibiting artist: CORAL BOWER: Passionate about the human form in all its miraculous beauty, whether s

Can anyone contact Nenne van Dijk?

From: Ann Carton Email: ascart@comcast.net ------------- Message ------------ I have two bronze statues by Nenne van Dijk in my garden in Lake Forest, IL USA purchased in 1991. My garden is being included in the Smithsonian Museum ( Washington DC National museum of AmercanHistory and sciences and the arts) as a great garden of America. . I need permission from the living artist to submit photographs of her sculptures in my garden--please help me contact her. Thank you Ann S. Carton

Review of “Picasso Challenging The Past” at the National Gallery till 7th June by Phillip Worth

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What more can be said or written about Pablo Picasso, easily the dominant figure of 20th century art? Apart from specialist galleries devoted to his art in, for example, Paris and Barcelona, a comprehensive retrospective of his huge output would be unthinkable unless, as a phantasy, you contemplated using all the space of the main London Galleries at the same time – and probably the Parisian as well. And so, historically, Picasso exhibitions have tended to focus on particular aspects of his work, e.g. the nude, Cubism, Sur-realism, figuration, ceramics, still life, or phases of his artistic development, such as the “Blue” or “Rose” periods, war-time, post-war and so on. Thus the exhibition currently showing at the National Gallery until June 7th this year turns the spotlight on the artist’s debt to the great masters of the past, especially in the European tradition. In this context it would be doing him a grave injustice to suggest that Picasso was a mere copyist (although he assid

RODCHENKO AND POPOVA – DEFINING CONSTRUCTIVISM by Phillip Worth

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Tatlin - Monument to the Third International Constructivism We can derive stimulus and pleasure from visual art in a multitude of forms and styles, although personal subjective taste will of course determine what is the strongest “turn on” for any individual. Landscape, still life, city scenes, portraiture, life studies, to mention but a very few approaches, all have their addicts, but I would, for the purpose of this review, like to make a special plea for hard edged, geometric abstraction. There is something profoundly satisfying about the purity of geometric forms – straight lines, curves, circles, ovals, squares, triangles and whatnot strike a chord in many, if not all of us, and this satisfaction is intensified if the forms are the context for vibrant, dynamically juxtaposed pure colour. Many movements in modern art have sought expression in this way, e.g. de Stijl, Cubism, Futurism, Orphism – one could multiply the “-isms”. But not least among these schools of expression were the