SEVEN was delighted to be invited to exhibit at Darlinghust Academy, a local primary school, in their “Art Across the Ages 0-99” summer exhibition, which also included work from residents and carers at Admirals Court, Belfairs Academy, the University of South Essex, and other local artists.
We contributed our freestanding “book” that we had previously exhibited at Leigh Community Centre. This was made up of artwork reproduced from our previous projects, printed out, mounted onto board and constructed into an A3 concertina book design. The artwork included pieces from our Estuary sketchbooks and our Railway inspired series that we showed previously at Leigh-on-Sea train station waiting room.
SEVEN exhibition at ‘Art across the ages 0-99’, Darlinghurst Academy
It was wonderful to see the children and parents so engaged with the art and variety of ideas. Thank you to Mrs Buckley and the school for inviting us to participate, and its great to see a school that recognises the importance of creativity.
The exhibition was held on 16 July 2024 at Darlinghurst Academy.
For this year’s Leigh Art Trail, we had a change of venue, as after 3 fabulous years at the Refill Room, we headed off to Metal Southend, in the delightful surroundings of Chalkwell Park. It felt like a home coming as we first met each other at Metal on Heidi Wigmore’s Creative Journalling classes.
Our theme this year was Ghosts. As usual, we each took the theme in a very different direction, for instance Nicola said “It’s also been a chance to explore the idea of what a ghost is. Are ghosts really lost souls, wandering? Sometimes with good intentions? Playful, even? At other times angry with the life and people they left behind?” while Jo was inspired by the book ‘Miss Willmott’s Ghosts‘. Juliet took her inspiration from the ghosts of Chalkwell Hall saying “Using research by writer, artist, and archivist Rachel Lichtenstein* as a starting point, I delved into the history of the Hall.”
Book pages: Nicola, Jo, Juliet
Amanda took a more instinctive approach, “No one idea has dominated the process of creation, but I have allowed it to develop and suggest to me what my overarching concerns were with the theme ‘Ghosts’.” whilst Kim created a ‘Miscellany of Ghosts’, “Well, I began with a list. Thinking about ghosts I wrote down whatever sprang to mind. As the list grew and grew, I realised that we use the word ‘ghost’ to describe a great many diverse things.” and Helen delved into her family history to reveal, “Yet, ultimately, I think this book is about haunting. How we’re haunted by our pasts. Our choices. Our guilt. Our memories. Haunted by our ancestors, even…
Book pages: Amanda, Kim, Helen
Metal proved to be a great venue as we had lots of room to show our Ghosts books, plus some accompanying working books and explanations. We also had a creativity table that all ages could have fun with drawing. We had a good mix of those who are avid Trailers and those walking through the park and popped in to see when the door was open, and those whose dogs came in for a look without them!
SEVEN exhibition at Chalkwell Hall, Metal Southend
We also had the benefit of showing with other artists (Wendy Scotland, Mia Davies and KOMAR) also exhibiting at the Hall. This resulted in a rich variety of work for people to see, plus many arty chats during the week. It also enabled us to co-host a private view, plus it was a treat to be able to see so many of our friends, family and supporters, on a very rainy Sunday afternoon.
Wendy Scotland, KOMAR and Mia Davies at Chalkwell Hall, Metal Southend
Thanks to Metal for allowing us to exhibit our work, and to Wendy and the whole Art Trail team for organising such a great week.
A selection of artists on the Trail created work for the event on themes varying from: the seasons; nature and humanity; the elements; angels; and spirituality. The choir’s Musical Director, Ruth Brown, then curated a beautiful program of choral music that complemented the artwork, which was displayed on large screens around the church.
Artist images displayed on screens accompanied the choir
It was lovely to see so many people in attendance and we look forward to collaborating with the choir in the future.
Gaudeamus Choir
The choir sing a wide range of music, from the middle-ages to the present day, unaccompanied and accompanied. However, they are particularly noted for their unaccompanied a cappella singing, be that Byrd, Bach, Stanford, or Cole Porter.
The event was held at St Clement’s Church, SS9 1PG on Thursday 4 July, 7.30pm
In September 2022, SEVEN exhibited sketchbooks in the Leigh Art Trail. The Art Trail also runs a Secret Auction (where artists donate a piece of work and the proceeds go towards running the Art Trail).
For the Secret Auction, SEVEN offered one winner the chance to attend one of our regular creative sessions at Metal. Our winning bidder was Nicky Roach, a local artist and maker.
In the session we began to look at the theme of ‘seasons’, in particular autumn. We worked through some of the processes, we often use to get a sketchbook started. At the end of the session we invited Nicky to come back and share how she’d got on with her sketchbook.
When Nicky returned, we were so delighted with the way she had developed her book…using narrative…characters…objects…even burning pages(!)…all within a 3D format. We thought we have to animate her book to bring this fantastical story to life!
Click below to play/enlarge the stop-frame-animation….Enjoy!
One of the key images that I love about winter is the silhouette of bare trees against the sky. So, as an addition to my winter sketchbook, I’ve created a short stop-frame animation of windy trees, inspired by William Kentridge.
SEVEN visited the William Kentridge exhibition at the RA last November which included a number of short, hand-drawn animations. I thought the simplicity of the animations was really effective and I wanted to try to capture this.
The first step was to draw several trees to illustrate the movement of them blowing in the howling winter winds. Each tree was cut out of card and photographed against my sketchbook, which I used as a background. I then built the animation and added a ‘wintery’ sound clip.
