Unfurl Opens

Liff Top Posey [Detail]. Chalk pastel, gouache, watercolour and pencil crayons by Elizabeth Merriman

Stapleford Granary - Cambridge's community award winning arts centre is continuing with its 2024 programme of popular concerts and visual art exhibitions. They have just the thing as spring awakens our senses. Much of the work in C&C's new exhibition follows a floral theme and carries with it a restorative sense of emergence from the grey chill of winter.

Norwich-based artist and designer Claire Coles has created several large panels using techniques that include painting, découpage, stitched fabric and faux leather, and dutch metallic leaf to describe her abundant arrangements of flowers and foliage. These works impress in their decorative vigour and inherent sense of botanical balance. The larger tonal panel 'Dancing Reeds' has a harmonious composition in sober, soft shades of faux leather, describing its subject in silhouette.

Carolyn Brookes-Davies' new sculptures seem to have been subjected to an act of restoration or archaeological recovery. The natural seashell encrusted surfaces possess an ancient fascination, they sparkle as the light glances across them, incised by rusted metal bands, hooks and wires that emphasise their gourd-like shape, suggesting they have had a previous life or purpose as vessels or containers. They clearly represent something of a physical challenge too, in terms of the material she uses that we associate with fragility as opposed to strength. The neat, myriad rows of tiny shells are evidence of her capacity to create calming, pleasing shapes from the ‘chaos’ of the natural environment. Carolyn’s delicate razor shell stack is breath-taking in audacity and natural beauty.

Mark Edward's colour photographs of formal flower arrangements document a stranger's dedication to providing flowers for a  rural Suffolk church. At regular intervals a fresh arrangement would replace the previous one, for Mark to record. The three shown here communicate the sense of an offering and of seasonal fecundity through their rich floral imagery. His use of colour is subtle and muted. A row of windfall apples stand out, a healthy pink in this context. The obvious loving care put into the verdant displays contrast with the rough white washed church walls that act as their backdrop.

Helen Derbyshire has been planning these new embroidered textile works of wild grasses and spring flowers since this time last year. Her work is labour intensive and highly detailed, it takes a long time to produce a single work. They're machine stitched, with painted and hand embroidered flourishes. The casual viewer could misinterpret these framed works as drawings if it weren't for the threads that hang from their lower edges. The fresh depth of green she uses is a tantalising promise at this time of year, of things to come.

The blooms and seed heads from Elizabeth Merriman's garden are her constant inspiration. She has designed her garden around the coastal conditions that prevail in North Norfolk. The hot colours and exotic looking fronds are described in her distinctive loose pastel style of drawing and watercolour wash. Smaller canvases in oil shine like highly prized jewels.

Tim Plunkett has designed his turned wooden bowls and platters as part of a range of extremely desirable yet practical household objects for several years now. Only using wood that has been harvested sustainably, he highlights irregularities and extraordinary patterning in the grain that reveals itself as the cutting progresses. It is Tim's sense of proportion in the shaping of these one-off natural vessels that sets these pieces apart. Each piece represents a negotiation with his raw material to achieve an end product that is light weight and finely judged.

Ella Porter has been making ceramic work along side her print making for a while and the new work shows greater evidence of how each medium informs the other. There is much more surface detail on these sculptural pieces, impressions in the clay appear to have undergone some kind of acid bite, deep into the material, mirroring the accompanying diptych of an etching and the copper plate that produced it. There are two  of her recent glass bead 'paintings', soft focussed yet immaculate in their precision,

Layne Rowe is a glass artist whose work has to be seen to be believed. There is an acorn that displays such virtuosity, it leaves the viewer speechless. It resembles a Venetian glass master-craftsman's exhibition piece. Layne has worked in London and he established his studio in Cambridgeshire. For Unfurl he has displayed several sculptural pieces that show his range. The Panicles are like small glass crustacea that seem woven in beautiful complimentary colours of clear and opaque strands of glass. Other sculptures like his Corruption series are striking layered with coloured strata that mimic the sedimentary process. Shown in pairs each one shimmers seductively!

The eight artists and makers in this exhibition show how we can find ways of engaging with botanical subject matter, day to day. It is presented in beautifully designed, accessible gallery areas and social spaces throughout the ground floor. There is also a first rate café. Art and cake, what more could any visitor want!

Unfurl runs until 28 April at Stapleford Granary, 71A Bury Road Cambridge CB22 5BP

Check the Granary website here for opening hours and access details.

About the author

Paul Barratt

Paul Barratt started working in contemporary art galleries in 1989, having graduated in Fine Art from Goldmsith’s, London University. He initially worked at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, one of the contemporary art dealers, who dominated the London art market in the 80s and 90s. He was approached by the Lisson Gallery to be gallery manager for the influential art dealer Nicholas Logsdail. This was followed by a short period in New York at Gladstone Gallery, to work for visionary art dealer Barbara Gladstone, working with the artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney.

 

On his return to London, Paul secured a place on the postgraduate curatorial course at the Royal College of Art, to complete an MA. After graduation in 2001, he worked as an independent curator on several projects in Oslo, London, Brighton and Basel, before joining Paul Vater at his design agency Sugarfree in 2004. He has worked with Paul ever since.

View all posts by Paul Barratt