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Pier Arts Centre
The Pier Arts Centre is an art gallery and museum in Stromness, Orkney, Scotland. It was established in 1979 to provide a home for an important collection of fine art donated to "be held in trust for Orkney" by the author, peace activist and philanthropist Margaret Gardiner (1904–2005). Alongside the permanent collection the Centre curates a year-round programme of changing exhibitions and events. History 18th and 19th centuries The buildings occupied by The Pier Arts Centre are firmly rooted in the history of Orkney. The house fronting the street was built in the 18th century, and during much of the 19th century was occupied by Edward Clouston, a prosperous merchant and Agent of the Hudson's Bay Company. On the pier behind the house, Clouston erected stores and offices. On the first floor of his house, he had a finely panelled drawing room, furnished with books, family portraits, and a pianoforte. The arrival early each summer of the Hudson's Bay Company ships en rout ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stromness
Stromness (, non, Straumnes; nrn, Stromnes) is the second-most populous town in Orkney, Scotland. It is in the southwestern part of Mainland Orkney. It is a burgh with a parish around the outside with the town of Stromness as its capital. Etymology The name "Stromness" comes from the Norse ''Straumnes''. ''Straumr'' refers to the strong tides that rip past the Point of Ness through Hoy Sound to the south of the town. ''Nes'' means "headland". Stromness thus means "headland protruding into the tidal stream". In Viking times the anchorage where Stromness now stands was called Hamnavoe. Town A long-established seaport, Stromness has a population of approximately 2,190 residents. The old town is clustered along the characterful and winding main street, flanked by houses and shops built from local stone, with narrow lanes and alleys branching off it. There is a ferry link from Stromness to Scrabster on the north coast of mainland Scotland. First recorded as the site of an inn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Boyce
Martin Boyce (born 1967) is a Scottish sculptor inspired by early 20th century modernism. Boyce was born in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire and educated at Holy Cross High School in Hamilton. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art, graduating with a BA in environmental art in 1990, then a MFA in 1997. He lives in Glasgow with his wife and children. Boyce won the 2011 Turner Prize for his installation ''Do Words Have Voices'', displayed at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead. The installation is a recreation of a park in autumn. Books * ''Martin Boyce: When Now is Night'', Princeton Architectural Press Princeton Architectural Press is a small press publisher, specializing in books on architecture, design, photography, landscape, and visual culture, with over 1,000 titles on its backlist. In 2013, it added a line of stationery products, including ..., 2015 () References External linksMartin Boyce – Tanya Bonakdar Gallery [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo, born Naum Neemia Pevsner (23 August 1977) (Hebrew: נחום נחמיה פבזנר), was an influential sculptor, theorist, and key figure in Russia's post-Revolution avant-garde and the subsequent development of twentieth-century sculpture.Tate GalleryNaum Gabo biography. Retrieved March 23, 2018./ref> His work combined geometric abstraction with a dynamic organization of form in small reliefs and constructions, monumental public sculpture and pioneering kinetic works that assimilated new materials such as nylon, wire, lucite and semi-transparent materials, glass and metal. Responding to the scientific and political revolutions of his age, Gabo led an eventful and peripatetic life, moving to Berlin, Paris, Oslo, Moscow, London, and finally the United States, and within the circles of the major avant-garde movements of the day, including Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, the Bauhaus, de Stijl and the Abstraction-Création group.Hammer, Martin and Naum Gabo, Christina Lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Francis (artist)
Mark Francis (born 1962) is a Northern Irish painter living and working in London, England. Life and career Francis was born in Newtownards, Northern Ireland and studied painting at St. Martin's School of Art (1980–85) before going on to the Chelsea School of Art where he completed his Master of Arts in painting in 1986. Francis has exhibited internationally both individually and in group exhibitions. Indeed, his "practice over the past thirty years has focused on making paintings with singular optical intensity — powerful, apparently abstract combinations of concentrated patterning and stark colour contrasts." As an emerging artist in 1995, Francis was involved in ''The Adventure of Painting'' at Kunstverein Düsseldorf/Stuttgart, Germany and ''From Here'' at the Karsten Schubert/Waddington Galleries in London. These shows were pivotal in questioning the role of contemporary painting both in Europe and the UK which consequently led Francis to show in prestigious exhibitions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lesley Foxcroft
Lesley Foxcroft (born 1949) is an English sculptor working mostly in MDF, paper, and card. She studied at the Camberwell School of Fine Art during 1970–1974 and has gone on to be part of several solo and group exhibitions. Style Many of her works consist of pieces of MDF, paper and over such "everyday objects" attached to the walls of the gallery space with simple fixings such as bolts and washers. Of her style she has said that “I like the idea that the uncomplicated has a purpose: that the material does not give a sculpture its value, it is the artist that does'." Select solo exhibitions Foxcroft has held several solo exhibitions including the Galerie Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf, the ''Museum of Modern Art, Oxford'' in 1975, ''A arte Invernizzi, Milan'' in 2002, Work on permanent display Her piece "Stackwork" (1993) is part of the permanent collection at the Pier Arts Centre, in Orkney Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ian Hamilton Finlay
Ian Hamilton Finlay, CBE (28 October 1925 – 27 March 2006) was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener. Life Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas, to James Hamilton Finlay and his wife, Annie Pettigrew, both of Scots descent. He was educated at Dollar Academy in Clackmannanshire and later at Glasgow School of Art. At the age of 13, with the outbreak of the Second World War, he was evacuated to family in the countryside. In 1942, he joined the British Army. Finlay was married twice and had two children, Alec and Ailie. He died in Edinburgh. He is buried alone in Abercorn Churchyard in West Lothian. The grave lies in the extreme south-east corner of the churchyard. The gravestone refers to his parents and sister. Poetry At the end of the war, Finlay worked as a shepherd, before beginning to write short stories and poems, while living on Rousay, in Orkney. He published his first book, ''The Sea Bed and Other Stories'', in 1958, with some of his plays broadcast on the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robyn Denny
Edward Maurice FitzGerald "Robyn" Denny (3 October 1930 – 20 May 2014) was one of a group of young artists who transformed British art in the late 1950s, leading it into the international mainstream. Reacting against the mainstream St Ives School of landscape-based painting and inspired by Abstract Expressionism, American films, popular culture and urban modernity, they saw abstract painting as their only conceivable route. Early life He was born in Abinger, Surrey, the third son of The Rev. Sir Henry Denny, 7th Baronet, a clergyman, and his wife Joan, whose family name was also Denny. He was educated at Clayesmore School, Dorset. The family's coat of arms was: ''Gules a saltire argent between twelve cross crosslets or.'' Career After national service in the Royal Navy he studied at St Martin's School of Art (1951–54) and the Royal College of Art (1954–57). After graduating from the Royal College in 1957 he was awarded a scholarship to study in Italy, then taught part-t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Davie
James Alan Davie (28 September 1920 – 5 April 2014) was a Scottish painter and musician. Biography Davie was born in Grangemouth, Scotland in 1920, the son of Elizabeth (née Turnbull) and James William Davie, an art teacher and painter who exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1925. Alan Davie studied at Edinburgh College of Art from 1937 to 1941. An early exhibition of his work came through the Society of Scottish Artists. After the Second World War, Davie played tenor saxophone in the Tommy Sampson Orchestra, which was based in Edinburgh and broadcast and toured in Europe. He also earned a living making jewellery during the postwar period. Davie travelled widely and in Venice became influenced by other painters of the period, such as Paul Klee, Jackson Pollock and Joan Miró, as well as by a wide range of cultural symbols. In particular, his painting style owes much to his affinity with Zen. Having read Eugen Herrigel's book ''Zen in the Art of Archery'' (195 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanley Cursiter
Stanley Cursiter (29 April 1887 – 22 April 1976) was an Orcadian artist who played an important role in introducing Post-impressionism and Futurism to Scotland. He served as the keeper (1919–1930), then director (1930–1948), of the National Galleries of Scotland, and as HM Limner and Painter in Scotland (1948–1976). Biography He was born on 29 April 1887 at 15 East Road in Kirkwall, Orkney, the son of John Scott Cursiter and Mary Joan Thomson. He was educated at Kirkwall Grammar School before moving to Edinburgh, where he studied at Edinburgh College of Art. His early paintings were influenced by cubism, futurism and vorticism. From an early age, he clearly had access to great wealth as his accommodation from 1910 is listed as 28 Queen Street, one of the most prestigious addresses in Edinburgh, and not affordable to the average art student. A banner he designed for the Orcadian Women's Suffrage Society was carried at the Coronation Procession in 1911, and his fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sandra Blow
Sandra Betty Blow (14 September 1925 – 22 August 2006) was an English abstract painter and one of the pioneers of the British abstract movement of the 1950s. Blow's works are characteristically large scale, colourful abstract collages made from discarded materials. Born in London, she suffered scarlet fever as a child, spending weekends and holidays at her grandparents' fruit farm in Kent. There she spent time painting, before enrolling at Saint Martin's School of Art between 1941-1946, and then the Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Academy Schools, 1946-1947. She later enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, where she met Alberto Burri, her partner of a few years. Blow and Burri travelled in Italy together before moving to and working in Paris, and Burri became a life long influence in her work. Early life Sandra Betty Blow was born on 14 September 1925 in Newington, London. She came from a Jewish family; her father, Jacob, who was a fruit wholesaler, and her mother had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Order of the British Empire, CBE (8 June 1912 – 26 January 2004) was one of the foremost British Abstract art, abstract artists, a member of the influential Penwith Society of Arts. Early life Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, known as Willie, was born in St Andrews, Fife, on 8 June 1912 into an old landed Scottish family. Barns-Graham's parents were second cousins and their respective families were well established representatives of minor Scottish gentry from both the east and west of the country. As a child she showed very early signs of creative ability. It was at school that Wilhelmina decided that she wanted to be an artist after one of her paintings was chosen to be displayed on the wall there, she stated later in life that "painting chose me, not I it". Education After school she set her sights on Edinburgh College of Art where, after some dispute with her father who was an emotional man prone to uncontrolled anger, she enrolled in 1931. During her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Armitage
William Kenneth Armitage (18 July 1916 – 22 January 2002) was a British sculptor known for his semi-abstract bronzes. Life Armitage was born in Leeds on July 18, 1916, the youngest of three children studied at the Leeds College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art in London before joining the British Army (Royal Artillery) in 1939. In 1940 he married Joan Moore, another sculptor. They separated in the 1950s but never divorced. They had no children. After leaving the army, Armitage became head of the sculpture department at the Bath Academy of Art in 1946. In 1952, he held his first one-man show in London. In 1953, he became Great Britain's first university artist in residence, at the University of Leeds (to 1956). In 1958, he won best international sculpture under age 45 at the Venice Biennale. Armitage was made CBE in 1969 and was elected to the Royal Academy in 1994. In 2001, his sculpture "Both Arms" was erected along with a blue plaque in Millennium Square, Leeds, b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
