Horsham Museum & Art Gallery – Page 9

A Summer of Art at Horsham Museum & Art Gallery

“We saw this at Frankfurt; we never expected to see it at Horsham!” was one such exclamation from a delighted visitor last Saturday after the successful launch of ‘Matisse: Drawing with Scissors’―the new month long exhibition at Horsham Museum & Art Gallery. Thanks to support from Toovey’s auctioneers and in association with Horsham District Arts, the Museum should be hearing further exclamations of delight as this summer sees a showcase of truly great and remarkable art.

From May to mid-September Horsham Museum and Art Gallery has pulled together a fantastic exhibition programme. After a year of discussions and networking, using the connections brought together by Horsham District Arts working with Toovey’s and University of Chichester Bishop Otter Gallery, the public have the chance to see great contemporary art with a focus on British art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Following on from the riot of colours and shapes that is the Matisse exhibition, the Museum hosts ‘Off The Wall’ where 50 artists and craftspeople display their finest work in a preview show for the best Contemporary Arts Auction to be held in the South East. Using his contacts and a great deal of persuasion Nicholas Toovey has curated an exciting showcase, which Horsham Museum & Art Gallery is delighted to host. With artists of the calibre of Chris Kettle, Christine Tongue, Eve Shepherd and Muju, we know the public will value the opportunity to see, debate and be inspired by this fantastic collection, and perhaps dip their toes in the Contemporary Art market. With 150 works on display it will be an exciting and rewarding time. Some may even decide to bid for a work at the auction on the 21st July and take it ‘Off The Wall’ and home to their own interior.

From July to September the Museum & Art Gallery has engineered a once in a lifetime opportunity to see name-dropping art that for many a year has lain awaiting discovery by art lovers. Works by Henry Moore, Jacob Epstein, Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer, Ivon Hitchens and other great artists will be on show at Horsham Museum. The exhibition ‘A Summer of Great British Art’ is only possible because The University of Chichester Otter Gallery is closing this summer for refurbishment and Toovey’s Auction House has generously helped support this exhibition.

‘Matisse: Drawing with Scissors’ runs from 28 April – 26 May; ‘Off The Wall’ runs from 1 June to 7 July; and ‘A Summer of Great British Art’ runs from 17 July to 15 September.

Henri Matisse Exhibition at Horsham Museum & Art Gallery

Tristesse Matisse at Horsham Museum — Henri Matisse - 'Tristesse du Roi (Sorrow of the King)', 1952 Gouache découpée, 292 x 386cm Copyright: DACS

Thanks to sponsorship by Toovey’s auction house and the Hayward Gallery, Horsham Museum and Art Gallery is able to host an exhibition of Matisse’s later work. Opened just two years ago the Art Gallery was a new venture for the Museum, with the hope that it would be able to offer visitors and the community of the district the opportunity to see, admire and become inspired by art. ‘MATISSE: Drawing with Scissors, Late Works 1950-1954 – A Hayward Touring Exhibition from Southbank Centre, London’ is an amazingly colourful exhibition that reveals how Matisse was one of the twentieth century’s leading artists and designers – even while bedridden he was able to create iconic work with his ‘drawing with scissors’ series. It will inspire those who find the brush and pencil a barrier to art.

As the Hayward Gallery notes, “The French painter, sculptor and designer, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was one of the twentieth century’s most influential artists. His vibrant works are celebrated for their extraordinary richness and luminosity of colour. Matisse: Drawing with Scissors, a Hayward Touring exhibition from the Southbank Centre, London, features 35 lithographic prints of the famous cut-outs, produced in the last four years of his life, when the artist was confined to his bed. It includes many of his iconic images, such as The Snail and the Blue Nudes.” Matisse continued creating highly original works into his eighties. For his cut-outs he used paper hand-painted with gouache, laid down in abstract or figurative patterns: “the paper cut-out allows me to draw in the colour… Instead of drawing the outline and putting the colour inside it… I draw straight into the colour.” The colours he used were so strong that he was advised by his doctor to wear dark glasses.

The lithographic reproductions in this exhibition are taken from a special double issue of Verve, a review of art and literature, published by Tériade, a major publisher of fine art books in 1958.

Matisse began his working life as a lawyer, before going to Paris to study art in 1890. At first strongly influenced by the Impressionists, he soon created his own style, using brilliant, pure colours, and started making sculptures as well as paintings. In 1905 he and his colleagues were branded the Fauves (wild beasts) because of their unconventional use of colour, and it was during this time that he painted his celebrated Luxe, Calme et Volupté (Luxury, Tranquillity and Delight). “There is no gap between my earlier pictures and my cut-outs,” Matisse wrote “I have only reached a form reduced to the essential through greater absoluteness and greater abstraction.”

‘Matisse: Drawing with Scissors’ opens on 28 April and closes 26 May 2012. For further information contact Horsham Museum.

Invitation to Enter the Selection Process

The Toovey’s Contemporary Art Auction has been announced for Saturday, July 21st 2012.

Artists wishing to participate in this exciting event are invited to enter the selection process. The sale consists solely of work entered by self-representing artists. The final selection will be made by event organiser Nicholas Toovey once the deadline of 30th March has passed.

The Contemporary Art Auction is now in its sixth year and continues to gather momentum, it is now considered to be a major platform for artists to showcase their work in Sussex. The auction this year will be preceded by an exhibition at Horsham Museum & Art Gallery between the 1st June and 7th July.

If you are interested in participating, but would like to know more, please do not hesitate to contact Nicholas (via the email button on the top bar), who will be happy to provide further information and a catalogue from last year’s auction should you require. Click here for testimonials from other artists or click here for testimonials from a few of our buyers. If you think your art has what it takes to be chosen for this year’s auction and would like to enter the selection process you will need to email images of the work you would like to submit (up to a maximum of ten) with sizes and a price list of suggested reserves by 30th March 2012. Images should be supplied in a JPEG format and do not have to be professional photographs – snapshots will suffice. This, along with a CV and any other information you feel would be relevant, will allow Nicholas Toovey to make an informed decision on whom to represent this year.

Below is a selection of works sold in the 2011 auction, as you can see the auction includes sculptures, ceramics and paintings, in addition to hand-created prints, photographs and metalwork.

Toovey’s featured in All About Horsham magazine

Rupert Toovey on the rostrum — One of the photographs taken by Toby Phillips

Toovey’s were recently featured in the magazine All About Horsham (or AAH). It is an interesting outsider perspective of Toovey’s written by the editor, Ben Morris, after an interview with many of the team of specialists at Toovey’s. You can view this feature and many other interesting articles about the Horsham District on the All About Horsham (AAH) website here. Photographs were taken by Toby Phillips, including this one of Rupert Toovey on the rostrum. Toby is holding an exhibition at Horsham Museum and Art Gallery between 5th January until 10th March 2012, showing his photography of the Sussex Downs and Horsham rugby club players, whom he shot for a charity calendar.

Hung, Drawn & Displayed at Horsham Museum

If you want your visual senses to be numbed by the quality, revived by the beauty and then ripped apart by the drama of some of the images, then you don’t want to miss Hung, Drawn and Displayed at Horsham Museum & Art Gallery. If that wasn’t enough you can have the adrenalin rush of the auction process as you can enjoy the chase of buying your favourite piece on May 28th at Toovey’s Spring Gardens salerooms. In an exhibition featuring the work of sixty artists, including some of the regions most talented contemporary names, the visitor can, in the relaxed atmosphere of Horsham museum, enjoy seeing the contrast of 21st Century art in the relaxed atmosphere of the Causeway’s medieval timber-framed building.

Horsham Museum’s new Art Gallery was launched last year with Artventure, a preview exhibition of Toovey’s Contemporary Art Auction. It proved to be a great success, not only in showcasing work, but also in revealing that there was a desire in Horsham District for such an opportunity. The success of the show was such that Horsham Museum and Art Gallery were delighted to be able to repeat the opportunity. An opportunity where the public can enjoy spending hours looking at the works hung, drawn and displayed.

The exhibition and sale has been organised by Nicholas Toovey, sourcing emerging and established artists and craftsmen from across the region with an emphasis on the local scene. Nicholas has managed to pull together some amazing works by renowned artists including Chris Kettle whose painting Natura Sola Magistra, will be a talking point for visitors. Along with paintings are various craftsmen, some exhibiting for the first time, each merging the boundary between art and craft. No doubt tying people in to knots over the meaning of art, will be Horsham-based ceramicist Deborah Timperly, whose work Knotted and Hung will cause some debate.

Chris Kettle's oil on canvas 'Natura Sola Magistra' — 'Natura Sola Magistra' by Chris Kettle

Deborah Timperley bone china 'Knotted and Hung' — 'Knotted and Hung' by Deborah Timperley

The free exhibition Hung, Drawn and Displayed opens on Friday 8April and runs till 11 May at Horsham Museum & Art Gallery. Two weeks later on 28 May all works displayed will be auctioned at Toovey’s, Washington. A fully-illustrated catalogue with more information on every artist is available from the museum, helping raise funds to enable it to buy contemporary art, preserving the present for the future.