New Icons

Curated by Rupert Martin of Art Landmarks
Fri 10 Nov to Sat 9 Dec 1989

Works by Craigie Aitchison, Cecil Collins, Stephen Cox, Dennis Creffield, Brian Falconbridge, Peter Fraser, Garry Miller, Roger Wagner, Richard Webb

This exhibition looks at the way a number of artists have approached the subject of religious imagery in an attempt to interpret the Christian message afresh in the modern world.

Anthony Green's Mirror

Organised and toured by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia
Fri 10 Nov – Sat 9 Dec 1989

Anthony Green’s idiosyncratic and oblique view is an intensely personal one of contemporary suburban life. These large, bizarrely shaped canvases set out to provoke and even shock, presenting a surprising angle on everyday life. As he says, “Lots of people loathe my paintings and hate what I stand for – sentimentality, the family, married love – yet others love it; there never seems to be an in-between. My paintings do not just exist, they have a message”.

Tour supported by Eastern Arts Association

People and Portraits

Organised by Warwickshire County Council and the Mead Gallery
Mon 2 Oct – Sat 28 Oct 1989

To celebrate the centenary of Warwickshire Council, Fiona Bailey was invited to organise a community photography project ‘People and Portraits’. The exhibition is the result of the year’s work and includes twelve completed projects produced by groups from across the county.

Singular Visions

Andy Goldsworthy, Christopher Le Brun, Sandra Masterson, Michael Porter, Terry Shave
Mon 2 Oct – Sat 28 Oct 1989

This exhibition brings together new work by five artists who have in common a romantic preoccupation with the landscape but who take a diverse approach to the media that they use.

Curated by Clare Stracey of Midlands Contemporary Art. Sponsored by ISTEL

US-UK Print Collection

Exchange Touring Exhibition for the Printmakers’ Council with the California Society of Printmakers. Sponsored by British Council for Applied Arts International and Whatman Paper
Mon 29 May – Sat 1 Jul 1989

A survey of 200 prints by 100 printmakers – 50 from the UK and 50 from the west coast of America.

English Cathedrals: Drawings by Dennis Creffield

Arts Council Touring Exhibition from the Southbank Centre
Sat 20 May – Sat 24 Jun 1989

In 1987, Dennis Creffield was commissioned by the Arts Council to make drawings of all the medieval cathedrals of England. The charcoal drawings are not descriptions of the building but deeply felt evocations of the artist’s own experience of them. He made a number of studies in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, specially for the Mead Gallery exhibition. In 1989 the University bought three of these drawings for its Art Collection.

A year later Creffield wrote about his experience:

“The spire and empty shell of the old cathedral church of Coventry is closely surrounded by tall trees it is also in a secluded but busy part of the city centre. These two conditions dictated that I drew either in the winter or early spring – at dawn or in the evening. I returned a number of times but the final drawings were made on the evening/morning of 23rd/24th March 1988. There was an angry, fitful, buffeting, equinoctial gale blowing and it was only later when looking at the drawings (I don’t look at the drawings while drawing, I simply smell, listen and respond to them) that I recognised a visual emotional connection in them with that terrible night in 1940 when the cathedral was gutted by fire bombs.”

Sponsored by the Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham

Graham Nickson

Toured by the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland
Mon 24 Apr – Sat 20 May 1989

After studying at Camberwell School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, Graham Nickson went to work in the US. This exhibition brings together a significant group of paintings, some of which have taken up to four years to complete. Working on a large scale, Nickson has painted exterior and interior scenes that use strong colours to emphasise the almost abstract structures that underpin his work and give it such impact.

The Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan

Curated and organised by Mead Gallery
Mon 13 Feb to Sat 18 Mar 1989

The Swan at Stratford-upon-Avon is one of the Britain’s most exciting theatre spaces. Opened in 1986 as the third of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Stratford auditoria, in its first three seasons it has presented a range of classic plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries and immediate followers including Ben Jones, Christopher Marlow and Cyril Tourneur.

This exhibition uses stage sets, costumes, props and models from the productions with lighting and sound to evoke the excitement and success of the Swan. It also celebrates the achievement of local architects, Michael Reardon and Tim Furby and documents their design process.

The exhibition is devised in association with the The Graduate School of Renaissance Studies of the University of Warwick. It will be accompanied by talks and workshops on practical aspects of stage production and by a newly published, illustrated book.

Faces and Places: The Rugby Collection

 

Curated and organised by Mead Gallery
Mon 9 Jan – Sat 11 Mar 1989

The annual exhibition of the Rugby Collection examines the portrayal of everyday life by British artists in the mid twentieth century. Portraits by Stanley Spencer, Percy Wyndham Lewis and Maggi Hambling are shown alongside landscapes by Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash, LS Lowry and Lucian Freud. A number of paintings commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee reflect life during the Second World War.