Three of the members of SEVEN, Amanda, Kim and Juliet, are delighted to be part of the “Without Boundaries” exhibition to be hosted at Hadleigh Old Fire Station in June 2025.
This is an exhibition of contemporary mixed media art, with evocative and strong links to themes ofmemory, nature, and the Estuary, exploring both the fragility and depth of the Estuary’s ecosystem.
The artists featured will be working in a variety of media, including textiles, collage, 3D, sound, video, light, ceramics, mosiacs and sounds.
Its on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 June, 10am to 4pm, free entry and free car parking. You also invited to the Private View on Friday 20th, from 6-9pm.
This forms part of the Estuary Anthology, a showcase of independently produced creative activities taking part during the 2025 Estuary Festival – check out estuaryfestival.com for all the details.
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!
Join us for our exhibition of handmade art books at this year’s Leigh Art Trail 2022.
Come, take a peek and discover how one theme – in this case, silver – has been explored and expressed in five very different ways.
Why Silver?
2022 marks 25 creativity-crammed years of the Leigh Art Trail, so for this year’s theme we chose silver.
“Silver (Ag), chemical element, a white lustrous metal valued for its decorative beauty and electrical conductivity.”
Slick. Stylish. Modern. Shimmering. Reflective.
From silver screens to silver bullets, silver is brimming with uses and associations — as you’ll see, each SEVEN member has picked a particular silver thread and run with it.
While for some artists exhibiting their work is partly motivated by making a sale, for SEVEN it’s simply about sharing our books. So after the pandemic hiatus a return to the real life Leigh Art Trail was pretty exciting – what would people say?
Our comments book
Spreading the Sketchbook Love
“I love this[.] Would prefer to have a sketchbook than a piece on the wall. Beautiful, ever changing work – I love it!!!” – B Dred
Mention selling the books to Jo and she turns all shades of white.
For us the Trail marks the culmination of our yearly project – individual explorations based around a central theme. This is the end of the journey, a point to pause, reflect on, share our work and hear what you have to say.
A visitor quote
From Confusion to Curiosity
This year Trailers were invited to zero-waste grocery store The Refill Room to peruse our altered books. And, because our host venue is all about, well, zero-waste our group theme was Reclamation and we used altered (or reclaimed) books – find out more about that here.
Being old pros at this LAT exhibiting lark, nowadays we know to expect a variety of responses from backing out the door in befuddlement to Trailers who come specifically to see our books:
“Wonderful work – each one is so individual. A joy to finally be able to handle work again – especially such joyful, tactile pieces. Love what you did with my mum’s book Juliet!” – Anne L
Provoking People
We aren’t trying to be Bansky or Tracy Emin or anything…
Yes, our 2020 project began with the oh-so-serious zero-waste theme – really it’s shocking how much we waste! – but our yearly theme is simply a launchpad for creative exploration. That’s why we called our project Reclamation – the word gave us something beyond issues of waste to play with.
But, still, the very act of reusing old books proved provocative:
“Really liked what you’ve done with the Girl annual, but I struggled with it as well. If it had been done in an Eagle annual it would have annoyed me intensely, but maybe that’s a (small) part of the point…?” – Anon
So some Trailers come specifically to see us (colour us honoured!). Some stumble upon us. Others back away looking a little bemused. While some stop and pour over the pages with a kind of child-like wonder. Whatever the response – well, sort of! – we love to hear what you have to say.
Thank you to everyone who came along to Leigh Art Trail (2020) 2021 and took a look at our SEVEN art books, we can’t wait to see you again!
