Summer Exhibitions at Victoria Art Gallery Bath

Two exciting exhibitions that run until October at the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath. The gallery large permanent collection. On display, are paintings by Gainsborough, Turner and Sickert, and many other leading artists from the 15th century to the present day. Decorative arts include collections of pottery, porcelain, glass and watches.

Mark Angus: Flying Figures

Works on glass and paper

Mark Angus: Red Figure

Originally from Bath, Mark Angus is one of Europe’s best stained glass artists. His stunning work for churches and cathedrals in England and Germany is well known, but his freestanding glass figures go on public view here for the first time. Glowingly coloured diving and backlit figures explore the theme of Eternal Youth.

Exhibition Ends 2 October 2011

Jilly Sutton: Across the Grain

Graffiti Tree with Windy Head

Jilly Sutton BA ARBS uses felled trees and often driftwood to carve her large wooden heads and figures, sometimes sandblasting them at the local boatyard to give a grainy texture, and using limewash pigments to finish them. She works mainly as a wood carver in her studio beside the River Dart, where the clamness of the river influences the peacefulness of her sculptures.

In this new show, sculpture and pictures made from wood complement a dramatic installation of elm trees that were inflicted by the fatal Dutch Elm Disease. Jilly dug them up with their roots and decorated them with new interpretations linking man and tree.

Jilly Sutton’s wooden sculptures, often heads, are mainly figurative, but sometimes abstract. Her portrait of poet Andrew Motion is part of the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection. She has exhibited and sold her sculptures around the world. Many of her carvings are cast in bronze or olive stone resin.

Whilst training as a sculptor at Exeter College of Art, Jilly Sutton wrote her thesis on the history of the foliated head as depicted in art. She lived for many years in Nigeria and drew inspiration from the art forms that flourished there, both carvings and textiles. She researched and worked with indigo dye both in Africa and England.

For someone who works so sensitively with wood it is perhaps no surprise to learn that her father and grandfather were both nurserymen. Now her inspiration comes from an area closer to home – the ancient trees and woodland that surround her home on the bank of the River Dart in Devon.

Sutton comments: “Working with the unpredictable nature of wood is always hard but provides me with a constant challenge! The warmth, the surface texture and the predominantly grainy finish of the timber are all important to me.”

The exhibits will be for sale.

Exhibition Ends 2 October 2011

The Victoria Art Gallery

Bridge Street

Bath

BA2 4AT

Tel: +44 (0)1225 477233