WHILE the Bloomsbury set – Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell et al – is most frequently associated with their unconventional and creative lives in London and Sussex, the Bloomsbury Group also had strong Wiltshire connections, which are celebrated in the summer exhibition at Salisbury Museum in the Cathedral Close, and in a commissioned play, which will…
SIXTEEN days of visual arts celebration, exploring the galleries, studios and arts centres of Dorset, begins with the return of the biennial Dorset Art Weeks, this year from 23rd May to 7th June. More than 290 venues, from Highcliffe to Monkton Wykd, will have work by painters, potters, printmakers, photographers, sculptors, textile artists, makers and…
ANYONE who has visited the great Tisbury tithe barn, now home to the Messums West contemporary art gallery, will understand why the word “cathedral” comes to mind – and the new installation, Forest Cathedral, takes this as its inspiration, creating a powerful experience for visitors to the 700-year old building, with its awe-inspiring, soaring timber…
THERE is a concert with a difference at Lady St Mary Church at Wareham on 24th May, as part of this year’s Purbeck Art Weeks. The early music collective Parnassus Ensemble will be joined by artist Jeremy Queyras for a programme of cantatas by Pachelbel, Kuhnau and Bach, with the painter responding to the music…
WE wouldn’t exist without the sun – but how much do most of us know about it? Installation artist Luke Jerram asks visitors to come and discover the bright star that gives us light and life in his new touring project, Helios, which will be at Dorchester Corn Exchange until Monday 6th April. Helios, like…
ROGER Fry, painter and member of the Bloomsbury Group, is celebrated in a new exhibition at the Museum of Somerset,Taunton, on until 4th July. A Life in Art: Roger Fry is a major new exhibition exploring the life, work and influence of one of the most important figures in 20th century British art. The exhibition…
PHOTOGRAPHER Lucy Sewill has exhibited and published widely and has work in the National Portrait Gallery. Her portraits of leading actresses are currently on show at Dorset Museum and Art Gallery in Dorchester, until 28th April. Visible Women is a striking and timely series including Juliet Stevenson, Dame Harriet Walter, Dame Meera Syal, Julie Graham,…
THE new exhibition at The Art Stable at Gold Hill Organic Farm, Child Okeford, features the work of 20th century painter and film-maker Humphrey Jennings and his daughter Charlotte. The work is on show in the main gallery and upstairs until 21st March. Best-known as a documentary film-maker, Humphrey Jennings (1907 to 1950) was described…
WHEN one of Dorset’s finest painters persuaded one of the region’s most exciting sculptors to be painted at work in her studio, the results were bound to be exciting. And they are. Journey: Binny Matthews and Clare Trenchard, Paintings of the Sculptor’s Studio, is at Sladers Yard, West Bay, until 7th March. Inspired by Moroccan…
EXPLORE the free-spirited era of the 1960s – the so-called “swinging” decade – through boutique fashion alongside fabulously creative homemade garments at Blandford Fashion Museum. The museum is housed in the Georgian, Grade II-listed Lime Tree House in The Plocks, built by the Bastard brothers after the great fire of 1731. It houses collections that…