THREE leading local galleries all have exciting exhibitions for the autumn – The Art Stable at Gold Hill Organic Farm, Child Okeford, has a retrospective on the work of the late David Gommon. Sladers Yard at West Bay celebrates mother and daughter Marzia Colonna and Fiamma Colonna Montagu, and the Slade Centre at Gillingham looks back at the history of its building through the eyes of illustrator Jonny Hannah. All three exhibitions continue into November.
Filled with Delight, the title of the Art Stable exhibition, reflects on the life and work of David Gommon, (1913-87), with paintings from 1936 to 1985, to coincide with the publication of a monograph on his life and work of David Gommon, published by Sansom & Co. The exhibition runs from 18th October to 15th November.
Gommon began painting Dorset landscapes after falling in love with the county in the 1930s on a cycling trip away from Battersea, where he grew up. He would stay with the Pooley family in Hartgrove, just a 10-minute drive from the gallery. Some of these early paintings would have been exhibited at the Wertheim Gallery, where he held his first solo exhibition when he was only 19 years old. Lucy Wertheim exhibited his work in her influential gallery, alongside Barbara Hepworth, Robert Medley, Henry Moore, Cedric Morris and Christopher Wood. His early work was influenced by the Neo-Romantic group of artists that emerged in the 1930s, which also included Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland.
He recalled going to Chesil Beach and being “overwhelmed by the revelation of beach, the sea, the sky!” One stormy night, he and a friend, staying in a beach hut on Chesil Beach, sat listening to Uncle Vanya on a battery wireless. Gommon remembered: “The sound of the rain intensified on our wooden roof – but the voice from the radio continued, … ‘Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life; we shall rejoice.'” That idealistic world came to an end with the outbreak of the Second World War, during which he stopped painting altogether.
After the war, settling in Northampton, he taught at the grammar school and began painting again. Dorset remained an important imaginative part of his life, and he returned to it again and again in his paintings with images of that landscape, developing an eye for what lay beneath the surface, the forces that had formed it and a sense of its history. Thomas Hardy was a particular interest, and his shadowy figure appears in some of the paintings.
The title of the new Sladers Yard exhibition, As Dreams are made on, is a quotation from The Tempest, and refers to Shakespeare’s idea that life is an illusion, made up of dreams, fragments and memories. In this exhibition the artists are showing work which carries the quality of dreams, works resonant of deep sensory impressions and memories of colours and textures in nature.
Marzia Colonna was born in Pisa in 1951. She entered art school at the exceptionally young age of 12 and continued to study at the Academia di Belle Arti in Florence. In 1970 she moved to England with her husband Robert Montagu. Her first solo exhibition in London was in 1979 and she has exhibited in London and in Dorset ever since. At Sladers Yard, where she has had regular exhibitions, she is showing recent collages alongside the unique and irresistible sculptures of her daughter, Fiamma Colonna Montagu.
The gallery is also showing beautiful furniture by resident designer-maker Petter Southall. The exhibition continues to 8th November.
The Slade Centre at Gillingham is based in a former department store, at the west end of the town. William Slade & Sons opened in 1904 in a new and imposing building on The Square in the centre of the town. This new department store was one of the largest of the four such shops in Gillingham at the time. Mr Slade and his family set out to meet the community’s every need – from watering cans to ladies’ bloomers, bicycle repair kits to boot polish. The Misses Slade even offered garment repairs and alterations.
Artist Jonny Hannah, best known for his distinctive style of book illustration, accepted an invitation from gallery owner Anne Hitchcock, to explore and celebrate the origins of the building. His response has been to create his own version of a department store, which he calls The Darktown Department Store. It will be on display at The Slade Centre from Saturday, 11th October to 15th November.
While his book illustrations may be his most familiar works, Jonny Hannah has also exhibited widely as an artist. Born into a working class Scottish family and now living and working in Southampton, he embraces the notion of citizenship and illustrates it with humour and a zany, dazzling, typographical skill.
Pictured: Dancing Tree, 1979, oil on board, The Dancing Tree, by David Gommon, at The Art Stable. Hang-gliding at West Bay collage, by Marzia Colonna, at Sladers Yard, Portal: World Without End, by Fiamma Colonna Montagu, at Sladers Yard; and one of Jonny Hannah’s illustrations of The Darktown Department Store at The Slade Centre.