Jan Vanriet: The Music Boy

Photograph, photograph, photograph, photograph. Jan Vanriet, like Gerhard Richter and Marlene Dumas, among others, often uses photographs as source material for his paintings. The Music Boy is a quadripytch based on a photograph of Vanriet's Grandmother and Uncle prior to the Second World War. Vanriet paints the same innocent image - a mother and child, folk music in a family setting - four times in varying degrees of detail and focus, as well as different colour combinations. These different renditions of the same image serve to engender a variety of emotional responses to an autobiographical image which is in some sense universalized through its varied repetition.

Repetition of the image also brings an element of uncertainty to a seemingly innocent image laden with a multiplicity of artistic and literary associations. Use of different degrees of focus and detail - the image fading in and out of focus - raise questions of memory in family and oral histories together with issues of endurance both personally - Vanriet's Uncle died of tuberculosis developed in Dachau - and in terms of the media we use to tell our stories and retain our images - in this cases images based on a photograph (a medium with built-in fade and frailty).

Vanriet repeats the trick in The Contract, a polyptych of the artist’s parents together on the dance floor having survived a concentration camp. He draws out the combination of happiness and hope with suffering and grief which is contained in this image and its history through the variation in his treatment of it. Focusing on particular details, changing backgrounds and colours, using silhouettes and patterns, he evokes nuances and perspectives of memory and consequence. Mauthausen, the concentration camp in Austria where his parents first met, is referenced by a panel where the couple’s feet are superimposed on a red triangle, the badge worn by political prisoners in the camps. The combined effect of the eleven panels is to evoke and explore the nature of the contract entered into by this traumatized yet freed couple.

Vanriet is “a pivotal figure in the world of contemporary narrative painting” (Jan Vanriet, The Music Boy Press Release - http://www.thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk/info/press/press-releases). Narrative, however, has been a major 'no, no' in much modern art. As a reaction against historical, mythical and religious painting, the literary and the linear were anathematized. As a painter who is also a poet and who collaborates with his novelist wife, Simone Lenaerts, Vanriet is clearly a counter-reaction to this anathematization of narrative in modern art. However, in his art, this not primarily expressed in terms of the linear and literary.

Modernist narratives are multi-layered with contradictory voices creating polyphony. That phrase from a musical concept is relevant to the diversity of voices found in many modernist novels and to the multiple panels of works like The Music Boy and The Contract. Simultaneity, contradiction, polyphonic fragmentation, paradox; these are modernist techniques revealing transcendental negativity; that is, what cannot be spoken and the existence of worlds beyond limits. This world of contemporary narrative painting, inhabited by Vanriet, Richter, Dumas and Luc Tuymans, among others, is one in which “events and ideas are not expressed explicitly, but implied through subtle hints and allusions, creating an ambiguous collage of disconnected fragments and details” (http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/luc-tuymans); a world of modernist narratives visualised.

Vanriet’s contribution to this world is an art which makes significant reference to autobiography, history and memory as they feature in the mythical, political and religious stories we tell. Lenaerts is also closely involved and both create using Vanriet’s family history including that of the Uncle who was arrested in Antwerp and transported to Dachau; a “descent into hell which he, once back home, wrote down with his last remaining strength as his life flickered out silently on the flowered sofa, in his mother's arms.” (S. Lenaerts, ‘A Scrap of Time’ in De Morgan, July 2012 - http://www.citybooks.eu/en/cities/citybooks/p/detail/a-scrap-of-time)

Martin Herbert writes that Vanriet’s work reveals “a world that glimmers with significance” but, in which, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, we cannot “connect signifier and signified.” We can’t “hold onto the past for lessons,” as we are fragile, “as fragile and fallible as our memories” (M. Herbert, ‘Hide and Seek’ in Jan Vanriet: The Music Boy, The New Art Gallery Walsall, 2016).

This sense is, perhaps, most clear in Vanriet’s Horse series. These paintings update The Contract by featuring a husband and wife - Vanriet and Lenaerts - together in a shared activity; in this case, that of playing a pantomime horse. However, Vanriet removes the costume that would make comic sense of their shared activity leaving just the awkwardness of their unusual posture in settings which reference Edvard Munch’s Moonlight or Piero della Francesca’s Madonna del Parto. Vanriet and Lenaerts play out their shared activity in a role and settings which no longer make sense.

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James Horner - Remembrance, Remembrance.

Grappling with the differences between what we hear and what we see

It is interesting to compare the response to Soundscapes at the National Gallery with reviews of the Richter/Pärt collaboration at the Manchester international festival.

Laura Cumming thinks that, in Soundscapes, 'sound ... is working against art' and Jonathan Jones says that 'great paintings do not need the emotional prompt of music and sounds to make them come alive' but, by contrast, Stephen Pritchard thinks that Richter's paintings 'don’t truly come into their own until you hear Pärt’s response to them.'

Cumming writes: 'Soundscapes is the worst idea the National Gallery has come up with in almost 200 years. It is feeble, pusillanimous, apologetic and, even in its resolute wrong-headedness, lacks all ambition. Invite a sound artist to compose a work in response to a masterpiece from the collection and you might expect something original, given all the precedents in music alone, from Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition to Philip Glass’s piano portrait of Chuck Close. But instead this show feels more like the ambient soundtrack on a pair of National Trust headphones ...

Anyone can (many people do) walk around the National Gallery listening to their own private music. I can imagine how it might focus the mind or block out the buzz of other lives. But paintings create their own soundscapes, which may arrive in the form of wordless thoughts.

Sound here is working against art. Instead of seducing people into staying longer with a painting, concentrating harder, noticing more, it is limiting our free response by filling the gallery with sounds that one has to make an effort to ignore. And this does no favours to the living or the dead.'

By contrast Pritchard writes that Richter's paintings 'are wonderful creations; the deeply subtle Double Grey reflecting the streaked reds, greys, greens and blues of the Birkenau set. And yet they don’t truly come into their own until you hear Pärt’s response to them.

His piece, entitled Drei Hirtenkinder aus Fatima, is sung at intervals throughout the day. On preview afternoon last week there was no warning of its start; the singers of the Estonian choir Vox Clamantis mingled with the crowd and simply sang where they stood – an electrifying moment. It’s vintage Pärt; at first it could be a gentle, lilting folk-song as old as time but it unfolds into a multi-layered, densely harmonised acclamation of alleluia, which both triumphs over the horrors of Birkenau and bestows a profound nobility on the victims of that terrible place.'

Why is one art/music collaboration perceived to succeed when another does not? Adrian Searle suggests that the difference lies in the grappling, which goes on in the Richter/Pärt collaboration, between the differences between what we hear and what we see, what we are told and what we experience with our senses, what is mediated and what hits us directly':

'Pärt’s singers repeat the same song, seven times in succession. Every time it sounds different. Richter’s four grey diptychs, hanging opposite the Birkenau panels, play a further formal game of similarity and difference (the paint hidden from us on the reverse of glass sheets). The grey, paired panels are alike one another, but no two greys are the same, though each pair of panels has one lighter, one darker sheet. Comparisons between the different pairs are difficult to make, and shift according to where we stand, the ambient lighting and time of day. They are filled with murky reflections. Similarly, listening to Pärt’s music, we sense differences in the rendition, even though exact comparisons are difficult.'

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Arvo Pärt - Drei Hirtenkinder aus Fatima.

The Society of Women Artists 154th Annual Exhibition

Founded in 1855, the Society of Women Artists has had a unique history dedicated to promoting art by women. The Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries, showcases an eclectic mix of artwork in all media. The Society encourages variety and versatility and features some of the finest contemporary women artists from all over the world, thus sustaining a reputation for excellence.

Among the many artists included, I found the following of particular interest:

Bethany Milam is a Hampshire based Interdisciplinary Fine Artist, engaging with a broad range of media. Permeating through her diverse practice is an interest in the subconscious mind, fantasies and daydreams which are combined with a keen observation of everyday life. Included in the show is Milam's latest Graphite drawing, depicting a family friend in Salvation Army uniform selling the War Cry, is entitled 'Heart and Soul'. Milam has previously exhibited drawings of Street Pastors, including a portrait of her mother in her Street Pastor's uniform and a street scene which now features on the Street Pastors website. Of the latter she writes: 'While working on this drawing I had the story of the Good Samaritan running through my mind especially the passage: “Then Jesus said ‘which one of these three men do you think was a neighbour to the man who was attacked by the robbers?’ The expert on the law answered, ‘The one who showed him Mercy’ Jesus said to him then go and do what he did.”'

Sheila Vaughan, who is showing 'Angel' and 'Carer', is another to have painted a Salvationist previously. Vaughan says she loves 'working with faces and figures both realistically rendered and more abstractly rendered and oil pastel lends itself wonderfully to this end.' She quotes Gerhard Richter approvingly: "One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically painting is total idiocy".

Amanda Palmer asks whether the way we perceive the world is simply a case of what we see, or whether there is some other force at work? This question forms the starting point for her work and her own uncertainty about what the world really is and what it means. Her 'Deposition' features dolls and puppets. She explains that: 'Both toys and nature remind me of my childhood - a time of everyday magic, when each pencil, tin soldier, flower, or snail for that matter, seemed to have a magical aura about it. When the world was understood through religious beliefs and when anything seemed possible. Part of me longs to rekindle that sense of faith and wonder, and yearns for the paradisiacal, the beautiful and the magical. However, in the adult world of materialism, filled with war reports and media images of terror and devastation, how does one make sense of the world now? As instruments of many childhood games and make-believe stories, my old toys, along with natural forms, birds, insects and animals, have become the focus of my work as objects within a still life. I am interested in how, in an adult context, these can be used as vehicles for personification, interpretation, and as a catalyst for narrative. I often assemble the still lifes with reference to fairy stories, nursery rhymes, or religious artwork and draw from these as a way to try and resolve a cognitive dissonance between science and religion. '

Jessica Watson's work 'seeks to highlight the aspects of our lives we tend to sweep under the carpet, those grey areas we keep hidden for fear of ridicule.' She is 'interested in the personality traits we edit out, the ones which make us unique and our lives richer.' More than ever, she suggests, 'we are presented with a technological, polished version of life to aspire to by the media, and we have new opportunities to create our own presentation.' Watson's I'm not here just to catch you when you fall. Its my job to help you find the courage to jump is a personal response to her role as a parent; the 'constant conflict that exists between wanting to 'protect' and allowing the freedom to learn from experience.'

Narrative, contemporary artist Angela Brittain's 'colourful and exuberant paintings are full of movement and sometimes a little wit.' 'This year her work has started with a new series of wood panels about people and nature.' 'Inspired by life around her and the simple pleasure of seeing, feeling and responding - resisting labelling and simply painting from within, these paintings are alive with energy that is passed on.' 'A chance encounter of a man-made or natural set of colours working together has the ability to spark happiness or awe but only if the mind is receptive.' A strong influence on Brittain's work are 'the artists of the 1920's and 1930's such as Stanley Spencer and Edward Burra although recently she has been enjoying studying the neo-futurists like Daniel Schinasi.'

Christine Southworth takes 'an experimental approach to her print making.' Every picture she creates 'tells a story; often a sad one.' The theme for the etchings exhibited here is to 'show the plight of children who are caught up in war zones all over the world and to illustrate a need to protect the innocents.'

Congratulations to Zi Ling on winning the Rosemary & Company Art Prize for her watercolour of 'Steve'. Ling is a visual artist and theatre director. She has established herself as a painter, as well as creating numerous short films and visual installations.

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Zi Ling - Normal Love.

Artistic heritage: St Martin-in-the-Fields and St Stephen Walbrook

One of many exciting aspects to the role of Priest for Partnership Development that I have recently begun is the opportunity to connect with the way in which both churches have engaged with the visual arts.

St Stephen Walbrook is an Anglican Parish Church rich in heritage but one which remains actively involved in the City of London. The current church was built by Sir Christopher Wren 1672-80 and accommodates a major and controversial reordering centred around Henry Moore's circular altar.

After the bombing of World War Two St Stephen Walbrook was restored and the interior was redesigned to express contemporary worship. Most of the fittings had been burnt or destroyed and it meant that seating and altar arrangements could be thought out again. Thus it was that Henry Moore was persuaded to design and carve a central altar using travertine marble from the quarry near Rome used by Michelangelo. Commissioned by Lord Palumbo, the altar was carved in 1972.

The Ven. Peter Delaney has written that by carving a round altar table with forms cut into the circular sides Moore suggested that the centre of the church reflected the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem commemorating the sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac as a prefiguring of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and the place for the offering of the Eucharist at the heart of Christian worship. This place was designed for people to gather as a community around the altar where God could be found at the centre. The axis of the church is now under the dome designed by Sir Christopher Wren and no longer has an east west orientation. This speaks of this new century where we see God at the centre of all life as the Moore altar is at the centre of this church and this church is at the centre of this city.

The restoration cost £1. 3 million. The altar measuring 8ft across and weighing several tons was at the centre of a controversy and court case as a result of objections and eventually was resolved by going to the highest ecclesiastical court of the land, the Court of Ecclesiastical Cases Reserved where the judges ruled that the Moore altar was acceptable as an altar for the Church of England!

Moore’s altar is complemented by colourful abstract kneelers designed by Patrick Heron and candlesticks designed and made by Hans Coper. The building was finally rededicated in 1987.

Trafalgar Square is well known as the location for the world famous art collections in the National Portrait Gallery and National Gallery. But in the Crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields there is also a special space for art lovers, as the Gallery in the Crypt’s dramatic 18th Century architecture makes a stunning backdrop to display modern art and photography.

St Martin-in-the-Fields is also home to several commissions and permanent installations by contemporary artists. Nicholas Holtham has written that, as an adjunct to the main renewal project at St Martin's, "an Arts Advisory Panel was formed and a series of commissions have helped to complete the transformation of the building." These include:

Processional Cross, 2013, by Brian Catling: Catling’s exquisite design references a ‘cross of poverty’: not an ornate object, but one crafted from basic materials by someone with the simple desire to fashion the powerful symbol of the Cross. The starting point is two pieces of wood humbly tied together by a length of string; a third piece of wood hanging from the centre provides an allusion to St Martin tearing his cloak in two and giving half to a beggar. Through casting the cross in a strong yet lightweight aluminium and gilding it in white gold, Catling’s original idea is transformed into an extraordinary emblem of the church. Throughout the process the cross has been worked on by hand, creating an original and conceptually complex work.

East Window, 2008, by Shirazeh Houshiary and Pip Horne: The East Window was commissioned as part of the Renewal of St Martin-in-the-Fields, our major £36m building project from 2005-2008. Light was a key theme of the project and the East Window was designed to let in as much light as possible while creating a work of art that is uplifting and inspirational. The artist was given a brief suggesting a minimal, possibly monochromatic design would be appropriate and that a potential starting point or subject was that of ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, a story which has had a continuous thread of resonance for St Martin’s.

Altar, 2011, by Shirazeh Houshiary & Pip Horne: The Altar is designed by Shirazeh Houshiary and Pip Horne, creators of our East Window, and was dedicated at the Patronal Festival in celebration of our patron saint, St Martin of Tours on 13 November 2011. The Altar is at the symbolic and spiritual heart of our church. It is the place where we gather together in communion with one another and with God, and where broken bread and shared wine become the signs of God’s everlasting love for us. It is a sacred space, the place of transformation, the altar upon which we remember the death of Christ and the suffering of the world, but also the place of resurrection and hope. Designed to complement the East Window, the Altar is made from a single block of Travertine Stone that appears to float on a plinth of dark stained oak. These materials have been selected to harmonise with the colours used in the interior of the church. It is gently illuminated by LED lights placed within the hollowed out stone.

The Saint John’s Bible, Heritage edition, presented to St Martin-in-the-Fields in 2009: Created by the monks of Saint John’s Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota under the creative direction of Donald Jackson, the Saint John’s Bible is a union of an ancient Benedictine tradition with the technology and vision of today, illuminating the Word of God for a new millennium of multiple cultures and multiple faiths. St Martin-in-the-Fields has been given a Heritage Edition of the Saint John’s Bible. It was a gift from Saint John’s Abbey made possible by the generosity of Dan and Katherine Whalen. Created in a series of seven volumes, the bible is used in services in Church and some of the volumes are on permanent display in the Foyer. The Saint John’s Bible was commissioned in 1998 by the Roman Catholic Benedictine Monks of Saint John’s Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota. It was created by a team of scribes, artists and craftspeople in a scriptorium in Monmouthshire under the artistic direction of Donald Jackson, one of the world’s foremost calligraphers and the scribe to HM Queen Elizabeth ll’s Crown Office and the House of Lords. Measuring more than two feet by three feet, the bible parallels that of its medieval predecessors, written on vellum, using quills, natural handmade inks, hand-ground pigments and gold leaf while incorporating modern themes, images and technology of the 21st century.

In the Beginning by Mike Chapman, presented to St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1999: Mike Chapman’s beautiful sculpture In the Beginning was commissioned to mark the new millennium and was part of the 1999 Trafalgar Square Christmas celebrations. Carved in a 4.5 tonne block of Portland Stone, this work is now permanently on display at the entrance to the church. In The beginning is well-loved by thousands of visitors to St Martin’s every year and as the artist said “It seemed to me that a tiny life-size baby craved from stone in such an enormous environment would be the best way to remind us all of just whose birthday we are celebrating.”

Shadow No 66 (triptych) 1996 by Brad Lochore: This oil on canvas by Brad Lochore explores the fleeting essence of an object using the effects of light mediated via cinema and photography. Lochore’s paintings poetically underline the impermanence and fragility of our lives, and remind us that although we may recognize real things in such artworks, they are after all illusory. Shadow No 66 (triptych) is on permanent display in the Crypt. Brad Lochore says, “On a metaphorical level shadows are a sign of absence – they indicate the ‘not being there’ of the thing they depict – and that is a very persuasive way to talk about the problem of the picture. For instance, an apple in a painting, no matter how beautifully painted, is not there. It seems to me that a critical part of being a painter is not just to make pretty pictures – it’s to address the problem of pictures. And for me, painting shadows, which is predominantly what I do, is a way I can remorselessly address that dilemma. The dilemma is that the human senses have never been assaulted by so much imagery as now, and I think we forget that. Every minute we encounter a world mediated by pictures, so the ‘real’ is mainly conveyed through images now. And that is not to mourn the passing of a better time, it’s just to recognise how the world is. It seems to me that one of the primary tasks of art is to foreground that problem”

Tapestry by Gerhard Richter: In the Dick Sheppard Chapel, a tapestry by Gerhard Richter has been lent by a generous donor. Rev. Richard Carter writes that the tapestry fills this small chapel with light and energy, warmth and imagination. It is like hanging resurrection on the wall. Sit and gaze at the colours; the cross that leads you through layers into the beyond.

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Nickel Creek - Reasons Why.

Thinking something that goes beyond this senseless existence

Emma Crichton Miller has an interesting piece on art and spirituality at aeon magazine. She suggests that "we continue to seek in art ... a correspondence with [our] oceanic feelings" and "a soothing of our hunger for transcendence" but the salvation art offers is now "without substance or destination."

The miracle found in art, she suggests on the basis of a statement by Mark Rothko, is creative resolution while there is perhaps "no more to be said about painting’s seductive offering than [Gerhard] Richter’s tentative statement to the American curator and critic, Robert Storr: ‘A painting can help us think something that goes beyond this senseless existence’.

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Jon Foreman - Broken From The Start.

Martin, Richter, Sasnal, Krokatsis and McElheny

John Martin is one of those artists who have enjoyed huge popularity combined with critical opprobrium, both in his own day where he was derided as a 'people's painter' and later where few other artists have been subject to such posthumous extremes of critical fortune, and yet, despite the critical drubbing, have been hugely influential:

'Martin's paintings anticipate biblical epics and disaster, movies and CinemaScope; sci-fi illustrations, concept albums and heavy metal graphics; Spider Man and the avatars of video games. Film directors have acknowledged the immense debt, from DW Griffith to Cecil B DeMille and Roland Emmerich' - The Observer, 25 September 2011

Artists like Martin and, in particular William Blake, must surely be inspirations to all those artists whose creative vision is not fully understood or appreciated within their lifetime.

Gerhard Richter and Wilhelm Sasnal stand in the opposite space as current critical favourites but no less vital for all that. It seems appropriate that both have had major exhibitions which have overlapped in London as, in a visual culture flooded by photographic images, the work of both attests to the continuous spellbinding power of painting. In their work painting is addressed to historical crisis while their use of readymade images explores the nature of appearance and the capacities of vision.

Richter is also fascinated by reflection, both in plain glass and in mirrors. He showed his first Mirror in 1981 but this was a continuation of his work with glass begun with the 4 Panes of Glass in 1967. Richter treats both glass and mirrors as a source of uncertainty and unpredictable visual effects. These are works which are concerned with chance because the images presented change all the time. According to Richter, they 'show something that isn’t there at all, at least not where we see it.'

Playing with reflection is currently a popular activity. Henry Krokatsis’ works are composed solely of the bevelled, faintly ornamental mirrors that were mass-produced and ubiquitous to British suburban interiors between the 1920s and the 1960s. These relics have been reconfigured and expanded to reference the high-status interiors of Europe’s grandest Rococo houses, with their cabinets de glaces and pier mirrors. These works reference minimalism via their geometry, austerity and lack of gesture yet they simultaneously embrace arbitrariness, material history and the narrative reward of subject matter.

Josiah McElheny's The Past Was A Mirage I Had Left Far Behind has transformed Gallery 2 at the Whitechapel Gallery into a hall of mirrors through the use of seven large-scale, mirrored sculptures arranged as multiple reflective screens for displaying reconfigured abstract films. The sculptures refract the projections and reflect the viewer within the work, saturating the gallery in images and light.

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Arcade Fire - Black Mirror.

Exhibitions: Tate Modern and Wellcome Collection

Today I've seen Tacita Dean's photogenic FILM in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern together with the Gerhard Richter retrospective before going to the Wellcome Collection for their Miracles and Charms exhibitions.

"FILM is an eleven-minute silent 35mm looped film projected onto a monolith standing 13 metres tall at the end of a darkened Turbine Hall ... FILM ... takes the appearance of a filmstrip with sprocket holes exposed onto the emulsion. The layering of imagery also conjures the transparency of a strip of celluloid, giving the appearance of being able to see through the screen itself to the wall of the Turbine Hall behind it. Playing with the distinctive architectural character of the east wall, FILM has the rhythm and metre of a visual poem. Images, some familiar from Dean’s previous works, such as lightning, trees and seascapes, juxtapose with panels of colour and interact with the grid structure of the wall. The resulting piece is a montage of black and white, colour and hand tinted images, including allusions to surrealist art, a Mondrian painting, and the mountains of René Daumal’s novel Mount Analogue and the Paramount Studio logo."

"Gerhard Richter: Panorama is a major retrospective exhibition that groups together significant moments of his remarkable career. Since the 1960s, Gerhard Richter has immersed himself in a rich and varied exploration of painting. Gerhard Richter: Panorama highlights the full extent of the artist's work, which has encompassed a diverse range of techniques and ideas. It includes realist paintings based on photographs, colourful gestural abstractions such as the squeegee paintings, portraits, subtle landscapes and history paintings."

"Wellcome Collection's autumn exhibition programme explores the extraordinary in the everyday with two shows: Infinitas Gracias: Mexican miracle paintings, the first major display of Mexican votive paintings outside Mexico; and Felicity Powell: Charmed Life, an exhibition of unseen London amulets from Henry Wellcome's collection, selected and arranged by the artist Felicity Powell. Drawing lines between faith, mortality and healing, Miracles and Charms offers a poignant insight into the tribulations of daily life and human responses to chance and suffering."

"Infinitas Gracias features over 100 votive paintings drawn from five collections held by museums in and around Mexico City and two sanctuaries located in mining communities in the Bajío region to the north: the city of Guanajuato and the distant mountain town of Real de Catorce. Together with images, news reports, photographs, devotional artefacts, film and interviews, the exhibition illustrates the depth of the votive tradition in Mexico."

"Charmed Life features some 400 amulets, selected by Felicity Powell from Henry Wellcome's vast collection, which will be exhibited encircled by ten works by the artist. The amulets, ranging from simple coins to meticulously carved shells and from dead animals to elaborately fashioned notes, are from a collection within a collection, amassed by the banker and obsessive folklorist Edward Lovett."

"Felicity Powell works in white wax in low relief on the backs of mirrors. Her figurative imagery is full of subtle and macabre humour. The heads she has modelled are always in the process of change, each is infused with metamorphic potential: growing antlers, extruding tentacles or coiffed with spaghetti; as though the known phyla have been infiltrated by subversive and impish genes. The images have the wonder and strangeness of exhibits from a cabinet of curiosities."

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Robert Plant & The Band Of Joy - Silver Rider.