Galleries - June 2012

Focus on EAST ANGLIA 31. GALLERIES JUNE 12 SUFFOLK AND ESSEX Suffolk in Junemeans Aldeburgh. The festival, centred on SnapeMaltings, has increasingly encouraged the participation of thevisual arts. This year a series of projects has been developed to stretch both artists and viewers. Brian Eno's track ‘Iceland’ will “issue as an aural blossom from flower-like speakers", while Maggi Hambling's piece draws on the sounds of water trapped in the vent of Thorpeness Sluice . . . At the Strand Gallery in Aldeburgh a book is being launched on theroleof art in the lives of Britten and Pears, illustrated with works from The Red House. A special edition has prints by Keith Grant. Piers Feetham meanwhile shows work by Laetitia Yhap, Caroline McAdam Clark and Tory Lawrence at two venues in the town. Julian Tennyson worried about Aldeburgh losing its character: no chance! The Suffolk/Essex border has been home to many artists and the Fry Gallery in Saffron Walden has done sterling work keeping the 'Great Bardfield' flag flying high. Another town initiative, i2Art , has built up a strong collection of artists, not just home-grown, but is always on thelookout for fresh talent. On the other side of this often underrated county, a gallery has recently opened near Tiptree, dedicated to contemporary British sculpture and ceramics. The Sculpt Gallery has at its heart a permanent collection of work by resident artist Maurice Blik. Very much a 'watch this space' enterprise in an area of estuaries, forever associated with the writer Margery Allingham, boasting many artists and excellent jam, but not an abundanceof galleries. SD NORWICH AND NORFOLK Go to look at some first-rate art in Norwich and Norfolk this month and you get to see (and go inside) some remarkable architecture, both ancient and modern. We start with ‘Submerged Spaces’, three related exhibitions by American video artist Bill Viola, organized by the Sainsbury Centre with the Norfolk & Norwich Festival. The main venue is the iconic Norman Foster building, where its large Lower Gallery has been transformed into a meditative space showing four key works from the last decade or so. Two further pieces are at city centre venues, the Crypt of the 14th C. Carnary Chapel in Norwich Cathedral Close and the Undercroft beneath the Memorial Gardens close to the Town Hall. Viola’s work always carries an intense spiritual charge so to see them in such venues is worth travelling far. The city also has excellent commercial galleries, two of them quite close to one another in the still beautifully preserved Mediaeval area, 18/21 Gallery and Mandell’s Gallery. 18/21, in the basement of the 15th C. Augustine Steward House, is run by Laura Williams whose mission is to show the best of the city’s (and region’s) contemporary artists – plenty of them, given its good art school. Currently featured is promising 25 year old abstract painter Alec Cumming, showing the first fruits of a residency in India. Then, round the corner and up the still- cobbled Elm Hill we come to Mandell’s, a handsome gallery space established years ago to show Norwich School artists and, likewise, enthusiastic supporters of first-rate artists with Norfolk connections. This month’s show features the masterly, dynamic 2- and 3-D collaged constructions of Eric Moody – and is typical of the gallery’s wide range of interests. If the countryside beckons, head 15 miles south to the idyllic Waveney Valley on the Norfolk/Suffolk border where 22 professional artists open their studios for the eighth Harleston and Waveney Art Trail. Smaller than most such trails, it is eminently viewable in its entirety over the course of a weekend (by bike?) and benefits from an unusually strong sense of artistic place . . . NU E ric Moody ‘Bookhead’, at Mandells Gallery Alec Cumming ‘Making a Move’, oil on canvas 213 x 198 cm at 18/21 Gallery