Surrey Artist of the Year Competition Adam Aaronson Hannah Bruce Christine Hopkins Denise Jaques Jule Mallett Rachel Mulligan JoJo Rowley Jim Tucker
Surrey Artist of the Year 2016 17 September – 5 November Organised by New Ashgate Gallery in partnership with Surrey Arts The competition is supported by Patricia Baines Trust Surrey Life magazine, which has a monthly section dedicated to the local art scene, is the official media partner of the competition
New Ashgate Gallery Waggon Yard Farnham Surrey GU9 7PS Editor: Calum Ridgewell Cover Image: Celadon sails , glass, 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted in any other form.
Shortlist: Adam Aaronson Hannah Bruce Christine Hopkins Denise Jaques Jule Mallett Rachel Mulligan JoJo Rowley Jim Tucker
Celebrating the talent in the region The Surrey Artist of the Year competition gives recognition to the great variety of inspirational creative talent in the region. The prize is in its eight year and celebrates the partnership between New Ashgate Gallery and Surrey Artists’ Open Studios. The award and the exhibition bring new artwork from artists’ studios to the market place. It also enables the artists to find new audiences and to develop a relationship with a professional gallery. The selection of artists for the exhibition is a democratic process. The gallery does not curate the exhibition – we invite you to choose. Votes were counted from Surrey Artists’ Open Studios summer event and the artists with the most votes have been invited to showcase their work as part of the Surrey Artist of the Year exhibition at the New Ashgate Gallery. The public is asked to vote again during the show to choose their three favourite artists. The votes cast by visitors and a panel of judges will decide the Surrey Artist of the Year 2016. The winning artist will be announced at a presentation on 21 October and awarded a solo exhibition at the New Ashgate Gallery as well as a cash prize of £1,000. The Surrey Artist of the Year competition is an important part of the New Ashgate Gallery’s mission as an educational charity. The Gallery Trust is dedicated to promote and champion the best contemporary art and craft and to provide an unparalleled resource in Farnham, Surrey and beyond. We raise aspirations and inspire excellence. The exhibition enables us to support and promote emerging and established artists and makers. It also coincides with Farnham’s Craft Month and we will be offering public workshops and professional practice seminars to artists. I would like to thank our partners, Surrey Arts and the Surrey Life magazine, that have so kindly supported our partnership over the years. We would also like to thank the Patricia Baines Trust – the financial support of the Trust has made this project to flourish year after year. I hope that you enjoy the exhibition. Dr Outi Remes Gallery Director New Ashgate Gallery Trust
Surrey Artists’ Open Studios Surrey Artists’ Open Studios is a county-wide membership scheme, offering the public direct access to artists and makers during an annual event in June, as well as offering artists a range of other benefits including specialist training and professional development. The scheme is thriving with over 390 members, 300 of whom participated in Open Studios this year, and with about 16,000 visitors during two weeks in June. Artists’ Open Studios vary enormously, with individual artists opening their studios to the public, as well as large groups of artists exhibiting and demonstrating together. Artists often make the most of their settings, offering a chance to see inside some really interesting buildings or setting their work in beautiful gardens. But whatever their circumstances they all have one thing in common; they offer an opportunity for the public to see the work being made, to understand the materials and processes involved, and to talk directly with the artist about what inspires them. In 2009, the Surrey Artist of the Year competition was set up in partnership with the New Ashgate Gallery. This enables the public to vote for their favourite artist during their visits to Open Studios, with the most popular receiving an invitation to exhibit work at the gallery. This helps to raise the profile of Surrey based artists as well as providing them with professional development and support to build an audience for their work. Our partnership with the New Ashgate Gallery, provides a highly valued opportunity for artists to work with a contemporary art and craft gallery to develop their practice and promote their work.
Jane McGibbon SAOS Coordinator
The Artists
Celadon Sails, Glass, 2016
Adam Aaronson Adam Aaronson has been at the heart of British studio glass for nearly forty years, first running galleries dedicated to glass art and subsequently as a glass artist in his own right, learning how to create glass art later in his career and developing self-taught methods. Adam specialises in free blown glass. His vessels and sculptures are at once a celebration of the simplicity of pure form, and also an investigation into layering. His coloured patinas draw on painterly techniques and are predominately inspired by a love of nature, especially the play of light on water and the landscape. Adam’s glass work has been exhibited internationally and at prestigious institutions nationally including Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow and Broadfield House Glass Museum, Stourbridge.
Adam is based in West Horsley.
I think of my work as a story of surface and form. Each blown glass artwork is a canvas, depicting landscape in a variety of abstracted ways
Roasting Tomatoes, Oil on Canvas, 2015
Hannah Bruce Having taught art for 15 years Hannah has relinquished that responsibility and taken up looking after her little boy; deciding on a career detour. Hannah is capable of working in a variety of styles and genres, but is currently most well known for her strawberries and food themed work. Her primary interest is using oil paint to create art that investigates surface pattern and texture, using limited colour. Works seen at a distance give the effect of realism but up close you can see the application of paint. She enjoys cropping or limiting the properties of an image to its essential forms. Hannah is Chairwoman of Woking Art Society and is extremely interested in art education and making art accessible to all.
Hannah is based in Woking.
I am passionate about painting art works that are vibrant; exploring colour, pattern and surface in large and heavily cropped compositions. Artwork should shine and make you smile inside.
Seafood Bar, Mixed Media, 2016
Christine Hopkins Christine Hopkins is a painter/printmaker, and is showing mixed media paintings for the Surrey Artist of the Year exhibition. The use of collage is evident in much of her work, and as well as working with acrylic inks and wax crayons, she uses her printmaking experience to add layers of texture and detail to her finished work. The contents of the recycling bin are often incorporated, although she will also hunt out relevant paper ephemera to use as background to the drawn structural framework which forms the backbone to all her work. Her love of strong linear form often leads to the addition of scaffolding or other street objects like telephone poles and wiring. It delights her if a viewer recognises the landscape of a painting, as many of them are entirely works of fiction, drawn from careful observation and memory of many places rather than one specific location.
Christine is based in Reigate.
Working in mixed media gives me a child-like pleasure – I’m able to be creative without being bound by technicalities.
Mosaic Shard, Mosaic, 2016
Denise Jaques Denise Jaques is an experimental mixed media artist. She uses a wide range of materials including glass, ceramics, metal, wire and found pieces to create beautiful mosaics for the garden, the home and to wear. She is fascinated with the journey of experimentation and excited by the unknown destination. Denise often makes pieces of fused glass which echo her abstract paintings. These are broken into fragments which become the pallet for creating her mosaics, then reassembled along with traditional mosaic tesserae, deconstructed found objects such as old mirrors and furniture to create her contemporary interpretation of mosaics.
Denise is based in Farnham.
My mosaic artwork has a strong sense of colour, pattern and rhythm and plays with the idea of distorted reflections. 1
Menagerie of Objet d’art for grown-ups, Mixed Media, 2016
Jule Mallett Growing up Jule’s favourite shop was the ‘Treasure Trove’ filled with memorabilia, the macabre and a giant stuffed bear. Most weekends she rummaged through her grandparents bureau and drawers looking for something forgotten. At university Jule studied Archaeology and developed a particular curiosity for Ethnoarchaeology. Today all of these strands have unconsciously come together in her work. Equipped with a camera on a summer’s day, Jule is the person taking photographs of rust and peeling paint. At weekends she still at her happiest rummaging through battered cardboard boxes and is often drawn to the domestic. Nothing she uses is pristine, every surface of her work narrates its own passage through time. Combining print, thread and rust Jule creates original engaging pieces which reflect her love of the worn and imperfect. Whether drawn, dyed, painted, printed or stitched each piece evokes a sense of playful nostalgia which encourages the viewer to re-examine their own relationship with the old, damaged and mundane.
Jule is based in Guildford. Whether drawn, painted, printed or stitched I hope my pieces evoke a sense of playful charm and nostalgia encouraging others to reconsider their relationship with their own old, imperfect and mundane.
Snow Scene, Stained Glass, 2016
Rachel Mulligan Working with traditional materials and techniques, and some she has innovated, Rachel Mulligan designs and makes her windows from a purpose built studio in her garden. Rachel originally trained in Fine Art before discovering the beauty of stained glass. She has spent the last two years making exhibition panels about subjects that inspire her - fragments of poetry, her garden, storytelling. They are underpinned by a love of nature, colour and the changing seasons. Rachel uses hand-made glass that she engraves, paints, stains and fires before leading together. The design can take as long, if not longer, to resolve than the glass. Rachel won the Surrey Artist of the year competition in 2014. We are delighted to see her work back in the competition.
Rachel is based in Farncombe.
I have so many ideas that I still want to turn into stained glass. Winning the award was a pivotal moment for me. After twenty years of largely working to commission, the artist in me is now on the loose!
Agate Vessel, Porcelain, 2015
JoJo Rowley JoJo’s response to our busy hectic lives is to create ceramic works that exude a sense of calm and quiet. She hand throws consciously pared back forms and uses simple decoration to try to achieve this. Where colour is used, it is used singularly on the interior space of the piece and is chosen to contrast with the creamy white exterior. With her recent Agate Ware range she uses soft muted coloured clay additions to create cloud like patterns in the porcelain through which the eye can wander meditatively. JoJo sands each of her porcelain vessels between firings so that left unglazed the exterior is smooth and tactile, allowing a real, contemplative connection with the clay.
JoJo is based in Ockley.
Working with clay relies heavily on touch and it is important to me that my pots imbued a sense of harmony when held.
A Room for the Night, Photo on canvas, 2016
Jim Tucker Jim Tucker’s main inspiration is the aesthetic of the eroded, weathered and discarded. The found objects and materials Jim uses, such as wood, metal, plastic and paper all have a common denominator in that they have had a former life at the hand of the man. Jim’s early work was largely instinctive and later became influenced by constructivism, neo-plasticism and Bauhaus modernism. The surface quality and plasticity is a vital aspect of his work, as are the colour relationships which inform the themes. Jim enjoys the variety of interpretation that found objects afford, with opportunities to be representational or abstract, humorous or austere. A particular aim of Jim’s work is to bring the unconsidered and abandoned, the once loved and once useful back to people’s attention.
Jim is based in Reigate.
My work is concerned with the intrinsic beauty of found materials.
Fleeting Moments, Photo on canvas, 2015
Surrey Artist of the Year 2015 Winner: Christiane Zschommler Since moving away from London in 2004 and living on Basingstoke Canal, Christiane Zschommler is strongly drawn to and influenced by the potential of water and the changing patterns of the canal and its surroundings in Surrey throughout the seasons. Living on the Basingstoke canal, water and the change of weather feel much more an integral part of our life. This connection to nature has left an indelible stamp on the work on the work Christiane now produces. The canal is a never-ending source of wonder; the ponds between locks are stagnant pools that are sensitive to minute changes in light, wind climate and the seasons. Freezing the motion of water or framing a small part of it, the image becomes an abstraction, of something that exists only for the briefest of moments.
Christiane is based in New Haw.
There is poetry within rippling water.