Gallery and Exhibitions

The gallery is open with contemporary art on show and for sale Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 4pm and to 7pm late night Fridays.

Artist are welcome to submit their work for display. The gallery houses a gift shop which stocks a range of ethically sourced home accessories (rugs, cushions, bags), gifts, handmade cards and jewelery. The private view for each exhibition is generally on the first Tuesday of the opening week.

Exhibitions change fortnightly and for details of current and forthcoming exhibitions please contact gallery for details on 01992 509596.

Current  Exhibitions.....

FLUX'2008

ArtWorks is a group of graduate artists who have worked together, as well as individually, for some years. Their work is contemporary, based on ideas and experiences. They have found that holding occasional workshops together provides a rich source of ideas, and the ensuing works, whilst having common themes at first,develop individually in highly personal ways.


The theme for this exhibition is FLUX and the artists are exhibiting in two groups during October

Flux : one
  Flux : two
Impressions of Languedoc - September 2nd - 13th

The latest exhibition in the Gallery is a group show by eight artists who enjoyed a painting holiday together in the Languedoc region of France in May this year. Each participant has his/her own unique style and this will be an interesting opportunity to see the different visual responses to the landscape around Paziols and the famous scosmopolitan coastal town of Collioure. 




Holly Darton - artist in residence Courtyard arts, Port Vale, Hertford August 11-30

‘Authentic/Non Authentic' - Open studio, Performances, Blog & Workshops

Artist Holly Darton will be based this August at Courtyard Arts. She will be working in the space for three weeks developing performance work in response to ideas of authenticity, her life in Hertford, and art as a lifestyle.

She is using this residency to develop solo ideas. The residency provides uninterrupted time away from work commitments to focus on this. It is a new phase for Holly and comes at a crucial stage, a chance to establish a further identity nationally drawing together her relationship with London and Hertford.

Holly has been funded by The Arts Council East and East Herts Council.

Open studio, visitor’s welcome: Saturdays- August 16 and 23, 11am-1pm.

Meet the artist: every Tuesday-Friday in August, 12.30- 1pm

Formal presentation and performance: Saturday August 30, 2pm.

Workshops:

14/08/08- Visit to Royal Academy Summer Show and discussion of the work of 6 short-listed artists, as well as of performance practice. Suitable for those 18+ with an interest in contemporary art.

21/08/08- Straw Sculptures. Ages 8-11.

26/08/08- Portfolio building for 15-18 year olds preparing to progress to Art and Design courses at colleges or universities in 2009. Please bring a selection of current work.

Blog:

Follow the development of the residency, read Holly’s thoughts and ideas, see photographs and leave feedback online at www.hollyinresidenceatcourtyard.blogspot.com

Courtyard is also running a wide range of summer holiday art workshops and events for kids throughout August including: Drumming, Self portraits on canvas, Dr Who 3-D pictures, Robot models, Plaster sculpture and Dragon kites. Classes from 10.30am-12.30pm. Ages 5-11years.

Further information on the residency, the artist and for images please contact Holly Darton via e-mail at hollydarton21@hotmail.com.

Background

Holly graduated from Central St Martins School of Art and Design in BA Fine Art. She’s been working as an artist for the past eight years alongside her work at Hertford Regional College as Fine Art lecturer. She works in sculpture, video and performance and has shown work throughout the UK and internationally, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on board a Routemaster bus, The CCA gallery Glasgow, The Chisenhale Gallery London and Colchester Art Centre.

She runs workshops and facilitates projects and festivals, recently creatively producing ‘Keeping it Live’ a 3-day festival of Live Art in May that saw 10 artists from around the UK present work at Courtyard Arts.

Holly, who approached performance from sculpture, has worked in collaboration with Ben Connors under the guise ‘Ben and Holly’ and more recently with live artist Jenny Hunt. She continuously seeks opportunities to develop her practice through residency programmes and periods of research and development time. She has recently been selected as an Escalator Artist - an Arts Council funded programme supporting the development of artists living in the East.

LINED PAPER - Recent Drawings and Prints by Jim Butler - July 29th - August 9th


For a preview of some of the work, visit: http://www.jimbutlerartist.com/drawings.htm

Jim Butler was born in Dublin and lives in Cambridge where he runs the B.A. in Illustration & Animation at Anglia Ruskin University.
Since completing an M.A. in Communication Design in 2001, he has combined his own practice, centred around drawing, printmaking and artist’s books, with university teaching. His work has been exhibited widely in galleries in the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland, Mexico and the USA, while his commissioned illustration work has included clients such as Adidas and Siemens.
The focus of this exhibition is drawing. This drawing occurs outdoors, on location within the urban built environment.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF PAINTING – FATHER AND SON

Courtyard Arts in Hertford is running a unique exhibition by two accomplished painters, Daniel Gleeson and David Paul Gleeson. Between them, this father and son team, have notched up 100 years of painting. Each is an independently established painter with his own influences and style.

Daniel Gleeson writes “Since my student days in the 40s, I have concentrated on drawing. At first this was chiefly figurative, with emphasis on line, pattern and texture. Later it developed into a passion for colour and the meaning behind an image. Now, I feel free to paint (I distrust the idea of style), swinging from symbolism to a free, sensual, abstract splashing and a combination of both. I am not quite at the end of a long apprenticeship which reveals, I know, many sources of approach, technique and inspiration – including the printed word:

    ‘Blessed be to God for dappled things-
    For skies as couple-colour as a brindled cow;
    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh–firecoal chestnut falls; finches wings; …. ’ “

David Paul Gleeson writes “In my work I try to look again at the everyday. There is a bit of mystery, alchemy even, in the craft of painting. All my work conjures up a world that is barely glimpsed and often overlooked. The magic of the quotidian.
When painting, a moment of strange beauty appears on the surface after careful observation and meditation. A fleeting instant transformed, by colour and tone, into an intriguing image.

‘If we can abandon our assumption that we are looking at a quite usual thing, we shall find ourselves in the presence of something unparalleled and wonderful. If we recognise the novelty and wonder in such experiences and take the chance to isolate and savour a sense of what is intimate and unintended in people, we shall cherish these images as much as anything we know’






Previous  Exhibitions.....

NICHOLAS PATERSON - Norfolk Landscapes 2006-2008, 17th June -28th June 2008. 

Nicholas Paterson's new solo exhibition focuses on his landscape paintings of the north Norfolk coast made over the past two years. His recent work concentrates on the big skies and dramatic sunsets and weather effects seen on the Norfolk coastline near the town of Holt where he has had a house since 2000. The large and beautiful spaces of Holkham Beach and Brancaster Marshes feature prominently in his paintings in this exhibition. Nicholas Paterson is a figurative artist and he has exhibited portraits and nudes widely over the past twenty years, in London and California. The Norfolk landscapes are something of a new departure for him,  and many were exhibited at The Ben Nicholson Gallery, Gresham's school, Holt, Norfolk in September 2006.

Nicholas Paterson has been a painter and teacher of Art for over twenty years in leading independent schools. He is currently head of Art at Haileybury in Hertfordshire and lives in Norfolk and Hertfordshire.




Courtyard Arts announce the latest exhibition is by ANNIE TAPPENDEN and is entitled ‘Fifteen minutes of Fame’. It is a show of portraiture of friends and family by Annie and others with the opportunity to look the work, and the option of having a portrait done. This will therefore take the form of an ‘artist in residence’ week. Annie Tappenden BA MA is a Counsellor who uses art as a facilitator within her work



Pregurgitate is a show which features the work of Liam Herne and Joe Woolf, two students who are just about to finish their final year of a Fine Art Degree at the University of Hertfordshire.  Both these artists are responsive to past practices within art history or inspired by the works of past masters which they then use to create their own contemporary works.  This show combines the media’s of painting, graffiti, sculpture, photography and video.

Herne’s work explores the idea of the internal and external, metamorphosis, restriction and living sculpture.  He is interested in imprisoning space and living forms and animating or giving life to seemingly lifeless objects or materials.  This work all comes under the heading of what Herne calls Passive Movement.


Woolf’s work is an exploration of painting. He uses compositions and details from the work of the old masters and replicates them on canvas to look like graffiti, using stencils and spray paint and bold acrylic backgrounds he forms juxtapositions in the relationship of paintings styles from the end of the renaissance to modern day contemporary practice.


Courtyard Arts annual OPEN EXHIBITION is from May 8th to May 24th.





PART TIME is the new exhibition beginning Tuesday April 29. This vibrant exhibition shows new work made by 5 graduating Fine Art students of Hertford Regional College, Ware. They study one day a week and have called their exhibition PART TIME because it is the one common element that defines them. They have very varied inspirational sources. Sally Hutchings’ inspiration comes from the streets around Brick Lane; Rachel Melrose is motivated by the Christian faith; for Chris Moss it is the concept of Personal Journeys; Irene Robson has been experimenting with decay and Andrew Willson has been photographing motion and reflections.

The exhibition will run from Tuesday 29th to Monday 5th May.




Courtyard Arts latest exhibition features Cathy Smale and is entitles Visible Horizons running from April 15 to April 27.  Cathy says

"My paintings are inspired by the world around me, places I have visited or travelled through, and the sketches I have made along the way.    I spent six months travelling in Australia, New Zealand and Thailand, and the sketchbooks I filled during that time continue to provide a valuable stimulus for my work.  In addition, other subjects include local landscapes/townscapes and the summer festivals."









Courtyard Arts latest exhibition features two painters, Fiona Scheibl and Linda Keeley. The exhibition is entitled Visionary Landscapes. It runs from April 1 to April 12, Open 10 - 4, Tuesdays to Saturdays, late opening until 7 on Fridays. Free admission.




In a joint show by Gillian Mackenna and Heather Jukes, entitled Ways of Seeing, the two artists express their different visual responses to landscape and organic objects.

Gillian has a BA Hons degree in Art and Design and is a Fellow of the Courtyard Arts Centre where she has a studio. She has exhibited widely. Originally from Kenya, her abstract landscape paintings capture the essence of large, open and rugged places in muted colours, often incorporating textures obtained by sprinkled salt on wet washes. Her inspiration in the studio is based on sketches taken from the landscape and her large collection of shells, stones, bark, fossils, pebbles and vegetational forms which she highly prizes.  

Heather is a BA Hons Fine Art graduate. Her art practice has evolved in response to her earlier science background. She experiments with art processes to explore how light passes through objects such as fruit, flowers and even pieces of laboratory ware. The work shown in this exhibition is part of a series entitled Unnatural Selection. Each piece is produced in a darkroom but without a camera and captures a coloured ‘X ray’ image of its subject on photographic paper. The process plays with scale and colour and leaves the meaning open to the viewer’s interpretation.