Roydon, Parndon Mill and the Gibberd Gardens

Essex is celebrating its fourth Summer of Art this year. Artists are exhibiting their work on art trails and open studios in the county's rural, coastal and urban settings, showcasing the county's artistic talent. This weekend it is the Parndon Mill and Roydon Open Studios.

I began by visiting the studios of Alan Burgess and Angela Godfrey at Roydon. Alan Burgess spoke about his increased admiration for trees which has resulted in a recent major painting project "Great British Trees." Angela Godfrey works in an organic style with natural materials and environmental themes and has undertaken numerous significant church commissions. Angela showed me designs, models and photographs from several of these commissions. Her work can also be seen at St Peter-ad-Vincula Roydon where both the altar and a carved memorial are her work and feature in the Barking Episcopal Area Art Trail.

Work by Burgess and Godfrey also features in Structure, the current exhibition in the Gallery at Parndon Mill. Structure demonstrates how artists can be inspired by structure, how they depict it and how they work with designers, architects and engineers to create constructions. Angela had already spoken of her collaborations with craftspeople as had occurred with the model Dove exhibited here which had been created in stainless steel for Carryduff Catholic church in Belfast. Inspired by natural structures, Godfrey has also displayed a stunning sculpture based on a tiny piece of animal skull.

Among the artists whose work I particularly enjoyed in the Structure and Project Space exhibitions and their open studios were Anthony de Jong Cleyndert and Liz Boast. Churches and crosses feature among the vibrant semi-abstract expressionism of Cleyndert's paintings. Last year he created a new specially commissioned glass panel for the Windhill Churches Centre in Bishops Stortford. Liz Boast showed me work based on confessional boxes which also double as Punch and Judy booths. There is a clear dialectic element to Boast's often surrealistic work - "a dialogue with ... lifes idiosyncracies." She spoke about the sense of evil within each of us that is expressed through Mr Punch and which needs some form of safe expression.

Finally, I visited the Gibberd Garden created by Sir Frederick Gibberd, the planner of Harlow New Town, who designed the garden and filled the grounds with sculptures, ceramic pots and architectural salvage from 1972 till his death in 1984.  In Sir Frederick's own words: 'Garden design is an art of space, like architecture and town design. The space, to be a recognisable design, must be contained and the plants and walls containing it then become parts of adjacent spaces. The garden has thus become a series of rooms, each with its own character, from small intimate spaces to large enclosed prospects.' Unlike the choices made for Harlow New Town where the quality and quantity of work have led to the designation of Sculpture Town, the sculptures in the Gibberd Garden seem predominantly minor work.

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Deacon Blue - Your Town.

Angela Godfrey: Open Studio

"Angela Godfrey is an Associate of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. Shortly after graduating from King's College, Newcastle upon Tyne she was asked by the architect George Mathers to make a large altar for his new church in St Albans. This was the first of many commissions from him and from other architects, in particular, the Dublin architect Richard Hurley. A large number of these commissions have been for churches.
However, more recently she has received commissions for sculptures in countryside locations and in these she has been developing ideas relating to her interest in integrating text and natural forms with the sculptural form. This has led her to give more time to working on sculptures that have not been commissioned and so she is now able to offer carvings in wood and stone for sale and exhibition.

The many commissions she has undertaken demonstrate her experience in working closely with architects and other clients, making sculpture that is site-specific and giving careful consideration to location, materials used, scale and context."

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King Crimson - I Talk To the Wind.

Climate Changes: The Gallery at Parndon Mill

Today I visited Parndon Mill, in its delightful riverside setting, which provides workspace for artists, craftspeople, designers and architects. The Gallery at Pardon Mill, which is open five days a week, has become a focus for the artists who have studios there, and for those who work further afield.

The Gallery presents a series of exhibitions each lasting about six weeks which display a wide variety of paintings, original prints, sculpture and skilled craftwork, including an annual exhibition of works of art in glass by some of the best artists in this popular medium. In Summer the exhibition space can extend onto the "island" outside. Sculpture is even sited in the river! At all times there is a selection of original prints, paintings and crafts available for sale at The Gallery, and a wide variety of artworks can be viewed within a visual image data-base.


Climate Changes is the current exhibition (from 7th April until 15th May); a show of works which reflect humanity's effect on the world and its climate. Especially featured in this exhibition are paintings by Ian Welsh who uses multi-layered lacquers to evoke the melting ice of glaciers and the sea. Welsh has always been fascinated by the poignant beauty of decay, and has been totally seduced by the majestic collapse of our 'frozen' world but paradoxically views it with a profound sense of dread.

Also featured are a series of thought provoking prints by Anne Daniels. Anne states "The differences in the artistic and the scientific approach to nature fascinate me. I spent ten of my youthful educational years learning about applied mathematics and modelling fluid flows, then recently eleven years studying art at the University of East London." At present she is studying for a doctorate using climate change as a chosen subject. Her prints use the analogy of the world as a sliced red cabbage with telephone masts, wind farms, oil rigs and overcrowded buildings on the surface and oil wells and mines in the interior. Although her prints are concerned with this serious theme, they are very decorative and not without humour.

Textile hangings by Jill Leech depict strata through the earth exposed by the excavation of minerals and coal. She uses recycled dust bin bags to represent coal so effectively that one has to touch to be sure, and real coal is also imbedded in the fabric.

The exhibition also includes Alan Burgess's paintings of local flooding and his wife the sculptor Angela Godfrey's drawings of trees in Epping Forest affected by drought. Paintings and prints by Gillian McKenna, Corrina Dunlea, Fiona Zobole and Julie Cooper are also being shown.

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The Jesus and Mary Chain - April Skies.