I wandered lonely as a cloud. Or not.

I wandered lonely as a cloud.
or not, as I was with my sister
when I first espied those dancing or golden daffodils.
I wandered lonely, therefore, in imagination
or in conflation of two separate occasions.
Whatever, in the retelling, the poeticising,
something changed and some things remained.
There was a trigger event I recalled
two years after, when re-reading my sister's journal.
The event was real but mediated through memory,
imagery, mastery of descriptive language,
becoming magnified with meaning
to live and breathe beyond the page
as re-enacted sacrament in which you now accompany me
on hills, no longer lonely,
for you are with me
as you imaginatively recreate
this speech-act-event, this poem.

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William Wordsworth - I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud.

Dove Cottage & St Oswald's Grasmere

Today I made the obligatory Lake District memorial visit to Dove Cottage in Grasmere and the grave of William Wordsworth at St Oswald's, although I'm really more of a Coleridge fan.

I particularly liked the inscription in the church to Wordsworth as Poet Laureate:

'To the memory of William Wordsworth, a true philosopher and poet, who, by the special gift and calling of almighty God, whether he discoursed on man or nature, failed not to lift up the heart to holy things, tired not of maintaining the cause of the poor and simple; and so, in perilous times, was raised up to be a chief minister, not only of noblest poesy, but of high and sacred truth.'

I also liked the fact that Wordsworth, not really wanting to become Poet Laureate, made it a condition that he only write as Laureate when inspired to do so and, as a result, became the only Poet Laureate not to write any verse in the role of Laureate.

It was particularly sad to see the grave of Hartley Coleridge. Martyn Hallsall writes that: "The child had proved to be the father of the man, his academic brilliance overshadowed by immorality and disorganisation ... Samuel Taylor Coleridge, separated from his family, lived latterly in Hampstead, thinking, writing and above all talking against a background of opium addiction; ‘an archangel, a little damaged’ as Lamb remarked. Hartley Coleridge remained to his father, Richard Holmes reminds us, ‘a reproachful ghost of his own lost youth’. He failed as a schoolmaster, abandoned journalism, and remained unmarried, living off a bequest. After many years of silence his father, the year before he died in 1834, received from Hartley a copy of his poems. It was dedicated to him, and the opening sonnet quoted half a line from ‘Frost at Midnight’."

St Oswald's church also has a fine 'Madonna and Child' by Ophelia Gordon Bell. I also saw the 'Virgin and Child' by Josefina de Vasconcellos at St Mary's Ambleside.

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William Wordsworth - To H C Six Years Old.

Josefina de Vasconcellos: Kendal Parish Church & Cartmel Priory

Josefina de Vasconcellos was active as a sculptor from the early 1920s. As an artist she followed her own individual path, always believing that sculpture had a role to play as an inspirational force in society. In her extraordinary life she faced many challenges and disappointments, yet, sustained by her sincere Christian beliefs, managed to continue working into great old age. Versions of her best-known work Reconciliation now stand outside Coventry Cathedral, in the Hiroshima Peace Park, at the site of the Berlin Wall and in the grounds of Stormont Castle, Belfast. Many of her other works are in churches, cathedrals and private homes throughout the UK and overseas. More information about her extraordinary life and art can be found in Josefina de Vasconcellos, Her Life and Art.

De Vasconcellos had a lengthy association with Cumbria following her marriage to the artist Delmar Banner. They adopted two boys, and the family settled in a farmhouse at The Bield in Little Langdale at the heart of the Lakes.She carved in an outhouse at the farm while Delmar painted dramatic landscapes from the summits of the Lakeland fells. 

Banner was also an Anglican lay priest, and he led her to be baptised into the Anglican church, a faith that has run through much of her artistic work. Among her works outside Cumbria are ‘Reconciliation’ at Coventry Cathedral and Bradford University, ‘Holy Family’ at Liverpool Cathedral and Gloucester Cathedral, ‘Mary and Child’ at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, ‘Nativity’ (at Christmas) at St Martin-in-the-Fields Church in Trafalgar Square, London (now destroyed), and many more.

In Cumbria she received commissions for 13 different locations, many of which were churches. I have recently seen sculptures by de Vasconcellos at Kendal Parish Church and Cartmel Priory. 

The Family of Man is in the South Aisle at Kendal Parish Church. The setting for this sculpture is a contemporary Refugee Camp in the Middle East. Huddled together, under an old blanket are Mary, Jesus and three children representing the African, European and Oriental peoples of the world. Although it has the appearance of stone the sculpture, like much of de Vasconcellos' work, is made of fibreglass. As a result, it is sometimes moved elsewhere in the church.

At Cartmel Priory, on entering the charming little chapel known as the town choir, de Vasconcellos' sculpture of St Michael the Archangel battling his way through the jaws of the dragon is powerfully evident. In the sedilla in the wall opposite is 'The True Vine' depicting the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. 'The Young Martyr' in the North Transept commemorates the four canons and ten laymen executed in 1537 for resisting the closure of Cartmel Priory during the dissolution of the monasteries, and for all martyrs who have died for their faith. On one of the sides the names of the Martyrs of Cartmel from 1537 are carved into the stone. Within the base of a solid stone plinth is a lighted candle in a red glass holder. Topping the sculpture is a head behind solid bars. 'They fled by night – Mary and Joseph and the Holy Child' is a very tactile statue being only a few feet high and made of solid resin bronze so, as many before you have done, you can pass your hands over the work easily without risk of damage. De Vasconcellos has captured a moment when the holy family rested in the desert on their flight into Egypt. St Michael 

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Norman Nicholson - Silecroft Shore.

Abbott Hall Art Gallery: Painting Pop & A Rake's Progress

Abbott Hall is Kendal’s finest historic house and an award winning art gallery which opened in 1962. Exhibitions at Abbott Hall showcase a variety of works by a wealth of international artists. The Georgian period rooms allow glimpses of what life was like in another time and provide views of the River Kent and Kendal Castle.

The collection at Abbot Hall Art Gallery consists predominantly of 18th and 20th century British paintings, due to the nature of the Georgian building and the history of the collection, which began in the 1960s. There is also a significant collection of 19th century watercolours by artists such as J R Cozens, David Cox, Peter De Wint, JMW Turner, John Sell Cotman, John Varley and Edward Lear.

On the ground floor, there are original period rooms, which act as an opulent backdrop to the fine and decorative art collection. On the first floor modern galleries can be found, showcasing a range of exhibitions from the permanent collection, and on loan from other organisations and private collections.

The Gallery possesses a significant collection of works by George Romney, as well as having one of the most comprehensive collections of John Ruskin's drawings and watercolours in the country. There is good representation from the St Ives School with works by Ben Nicholson (one is currently on display), Peter Lanyon, Terry Frost, Roger Hilton and Patrick Heron. Abbot Hall also has a significant group of Lake District works by the German refugee artist Kurt Schwitters, and still life paintings by Winifred Nicholson and the Scottish Colourist, S J Peploe. There is currently a display of works by Kurt Schwitters on the ground floor of the Gallery.

Modern landscape paintings and works on paper are displayed on the first floor by artists such as John Piper, Paul Nash, Bridget Riley and Hughie O’Donoughue. In recent years Abbot Hall Art Gallery has been active in adding contemporary British works to its collection, including Frank Auerbach, Paula Rego, Tony Bevan, and Celia Paul. There is also a growing collection of artist’s prints, including etchings by David Hockney and Lucian Freud, lithographs by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Henry Moore and aquatints by Sean Scully. A work by Barbara Hepworth is on display in the Oval outside Abbot Hall Art Gallery.

The summer exhibition celebrates British Pop Art from the early 1960s, including work by Sir Peter Blake, Pauline Boty, Patrick Caulfield (Christ at Emmaus), Richard Hamilton, David Hockney and Allen Jones borrowed from major collections such as Tate, National Portrait Gallery and Government Art Collection.

The exhibition focuses on the period around 1962, a pivotal year for Pop Art in Britain, presenting works by leading artists in British Pop Art who have made a significant contribution to the development of twentieth century and contemporary art practice. The show presents loans from the Tate collection by Allen Jones and David Hockney. Significant loans are also borrowed from the National Portrait Gallery, Arts Council Collection, and the Royal College of Art – a crucible for Pop painting during this time, as many of the artists in the exhibition met whilst studying there. Another RCA graduate included in the show is Pauline Boty, a largely forgotten artist, represented by her painting Colour Her Gone. This portrait of Marilyn Monroe is shown alongside other important works from public and private collections.

For many people, Pop Art means Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns, this bold, witty and thought-provoking show proves that painting in Britain in the 1960s could be just as inspirational and iconic as that of the Americans.

Also on show is A Rake’s Progress which was made following David Hockney’s first trip to New York in 1961, a visit that marked a transformation in Hockney’s personal and professional life. Hockney’s prints revisit themes in English artist William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, an eighteen-century moral tale presented in a series of 8 engravings.

A Rake’s Progress was Hockney’s first major group of etchings. Since then he has created more than 500 prints. Accomplished in drawing, Hockney developed a natural talent for depiction in line on etching plates. This series of 16 skillfully executed etching and aquatint prints draw on his experience as a visitor to New York in their narrative, featuring a semi-autobiographical character.

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The Beatles - A Day In The Life.

Modern Art Oxford: Rose Finn-Kelcey

Last week I visited Modern Art Oxford to see Life, Belief and Beyond, the first posthumous exhibition of works by the highly acclaimed and influential artist Rose Finn-Kelcey (1945–2014). 'Life, Belief and Beyond focuses on Finn-Kelcey’s explorations of power, performance, political commentary, and perceptions of the self, belief and spirituality.

The exhibition presents works from the early 1970s to 2014, including Divided Self (Speaker’s Corner), 1974; The Restless Image: a discrepancy between the seen position and the felt position, 1975; Glory, 1983; Bureau de Change, 1987; and It Pays to Pray, 1999. These examples of Finn-Kelcey’s diverse and exacting practice are presented alongside photographs, collage, performance documentation, sketches in progress and preparatory material – never before exhibited.

Finn-Kelcey’s work is conceptually powerful, profound and is characterised by a dry wit that belies the formidable intelligence and deep humanity that drove her practice. A central figure in the performance and feminist art scene in Britain for over four decades, her work is intimately concerned with social dialogue, populism, activism, and how these tools of communication intersect with complex systems of power.

Finn-Kelcey’s far-reaching influence on conceptual art in the 1970s and ‘80s extended locally, to the generation of YBAs (Young British Artists) in the ’90s as she began to realise large-scale and technically complex installations.

Avant-garde in her ideas both in art and politics, Finn-Kelcey’s endlessly inventive practice demonstrates the artist’s interest in creating socio-political statements with a visually arresting quality, often object-based, frequently combining her creative investigations with contemporary technologies.'

'Since her death, Finn-Kelcey’s work has been the subject of increasing attention, as the themes she was concerned with have re-entered the public consciousness: feminism, spirituality, commodity culture and individual empowerment, to name a few.'

'Life, Belief and Beyond is a celebration of Finn-Kelcey’s work and pays tribute to her extraordinary practice and influence.'

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Squeeze - Labelled With Love.

Phil Evens and The Barton Project

Teresa Smith, Kate Coxon and George Smith have written a comprehensive report on The Barton Project which was set up by my father, Phil Evens, in 1974. The Barton Neighbourhood Community Project: Barton, Oxford City and Oxfordshire is published by Oxford Social Research Ltd and the introduction to the report outlines its scope:

'The Barton Neighbourhood Community Project was first established on the Barton estate, Oxford in 1974. The initiative for the project came from a lecturer, Phil Evens, in the University of Oxford’s Department of Social and Administrative Studies (known as ‘Barnett House’) which had a long history of local research and local involvement, and was in the late 1960s and early 1970s closely involved in major national government programmes targeted at disadvantaged areas in the UK. Evens persuaded his Department that they should also support a local initiative and selected the Barton estate as an area that had been neglected (A ‘Forgotten Community’ was the title of his 1976 book). Barton is a small social housing estate on the eastern edge of Oxford city, outside the main city ring road, that cut it off from the rest of the city.

It can be argued that in one form or other the Barton Project has existed ever since, though the University passed on the direct link in the 1990s to Ruskin College when the project’s community work student training unit was transferred; the project’s welfare rights work, Oxfordshire Welfare Rights, is now funded and managed by a local community work agency.

While this report focuses on the community work on Barton now and the current social and economic conditions on the Barton estate, the study also covers some of the changes and developments that have occurred both in the area and in the way community work has operated in disadvantaged areas like the Barton estate.

In the opening section we cover some of the wider background to the development of neighbourhood community work in the UK and analyse the social and economic conditions in the Barton area in comparison to Oxford, Oxfordshire and England as a whole. The second section focuses on the Barton Neighbourhood Project in terms of its development over time and its current programme of work. Further case studies of particular schemes are also covered. Finally we ask whether the Barton Estate is any longer a ‘forgotten community’, and draw out lessons and conclusions that may be relevant to other areas in the UK and elsewhere.'

Dad's experiences and other contributions to the development of community work were published in Community Work: Theory and practice (1974) and The Barton Project (1976). Both books applied his Christian faith to his work, and called for the active involvement of Christians in community work and other public services. My other posts about Dad and his work can be found by clicking here.
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U2 - Bad.

Windows on the world (356)

Brussels, 2016

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Good Charlotte - Where Would We Be Now.