30th August 2024 - 28th September 2024
Preview: Friday 30th August 17:30 onwards, all welcome!
Philip Halstead, Harriet Halstead, Dorrie King, Michael Monk, Jackie Pope, and Carole Vincent
Corsham Court
This exhibition brings together work by the six of us, whom at various times between 1960 and 1975, studied at Bath Academy of Art. Looking back, it is easy to spot our younger selves in what we do now. We hope to celebrate the connection between our current practice and that forged fifty, and in some cases, sixty years, ago.
We remember our years at Corsham as halcyon days where we learnt how to ‘think’, to understand the importance of experimentation, of critique and discussion, gaining as much from our peers as from our tutors. There was an encouragement to develop a personal voice and to search for validity in one’s work. Apart from our studies, there were picnics in Capability Brown’s park in Corsham Court, river swims, film nights, and a vibrant students’ union. We were less than 400 students altogether, a close-knit community. Generous individual studio accommodation was provided over three sites in rural Wiltshire and there was an extensive library situated in the historic Corsham Court. We realise how extraordinarily fortunate we were to have first rate darkrooms, a range of specialist print studios, a warehouse-sized workshop with facilities for joinery, stone carving, fibreglass and welding, all of which were supported by specialist technicians. Amongst the tutors and visiting lecturers were Gillian Ayres, Colin Crumplin, Graham Day, Robyn Denny, John Ernest, Terry Frost, Dave Harding, Adrian Heath, Howard Hodgkin, Malcolm Hughes, Michael Kidner, Peter Kinley, Malcom Ross-White, Stephen Russ, Michael Simpson, William Scott, and many more both established and up and coming artists. Apart from Carole Vincent, who died in 2019, this exhibition combines work from our student days with our current practice. We all recognise the liberating education encountered at Bath Academy. There didn’t seem to be a Corsham house style, we were encouraged to find our own voices, take risks, and challenge conventions whilst being true to ourselves. Harriet Halstead Corsham 1972-1975 “My obsession with elemental landscapes, light, colour and the weather, began with a Cornish childhood. Watching the movement of water, the endless waves of the sea and the patterns of ripples on the sand, captured my imagination. At Corsham I studied post impressionism and the optical mixing of colour. After graduation I adopted this method. I believe pointillism offers both an abstract delight in the interaction of colours when viewed closely and the evocation of an image when viewed at distance. Movement, light, and a sense of flux challenge the solidity and strength of the forms. In the studio my works are developed from drawings and watercolours made on location. They incorporate a slightly moving view giving a sense of active exploration of the environment. Landscape, and the seasons still provide an anchor for me. In the face of climate change however, this security now feels uncertain and increasingly subject to erosion shift and change. This is reflected in some of my observations. Carole Vincent taught me for Art and Dance at school and my interest in the expressive qualities of movement goes back to her cross curricular teaching. She recommended Corsham to me and remained an influential mentor. On her death she left Half Acre Studios to me, and this is now run by our son Samuel Halstead and his wife Phoebe Stannard.” Philip Halstead Corsham 1972-1975 “My earlier work was often derived from historical or contemporary photographic sources. The tutors at Corsham encouraged experimentation, with generous access to materials, well-staffed workshops and studio space. I draw the strange world we live in. Corsham lay under the flight path of the prototype Concorde, highlighting the vastness of space and the presence of human intervention. During the pandemic I was awed by the irony of rows of idle aeroplanes and spent many an hour painting the muse provided by those stationery ‘models’. The underlying geometry and visual dynamics of painting have always fascinated me. Encountering the non-representational work of artists such as Jean Arp, were seminal light bulb moments. I still experience the frisson of making and looking at art and the world around me with equal curiosity and excitement. I live and work in North Cornwall and am fascinated by its geology. I draw frequently from life using a variety of media to layer the surface and the studio work is developed through degrees of abstraction. As well as Corsham I studied at York School of Art by and graduated from an art teacher training course at Brighton. Since then I have combined art teaching in schools, education management and family with drawing and painting.” Dorrie King Dorothy King, Bath Academy of Art, Fine Art 1972-1975 “My final show at Corsham consisted of etchings, and large canvases which incorporated fiberglass and steel. I referenced the process of painting, building layers in front of the picture plane. I was one of the painting students based in the Sculpture Department. I was inspired by what these students were up to and took advantage of their specialist workshops. I was relieved not to be allocated a painting studio in rural Monks Park, away from this hive of industry. I was influenced by those artists who used systems (mathematical or random) to determine aesthetic decisions. Although frequently deviating from a prescribed order, I was, and still am, fascinated by grids and repetition. The System’s artist Michael Kidner was my personal tutor and I wish I had had the opportunity to thank him for his encouragement. At Corsham, Printmaking (etching) was my subsidiary subject. Recently I have extended this interest into letterpress. I have made use of combinations of cross sections of antique tables and chairs, cut to type height, and I print these under pressure. The embossed negative space created though the use of letterpress leading is reminiscent of the window-like grids of my student days. I am still intrigued by the push and pull of pictorial space and magical visual ambiguities… Fifty years on I feel there is still so much more to do!” Michael Monk Corsham 1972-1975 “During my first term at Corsham in Adrian Heaths studio I produced some painterly abstract collages, my first successful works. I soon learnt the invaluable lesson- that what you leave out or take out is almost as important as what you put in. There were some advantages with this seemingly haphazard way of working – I found I could easily assimilate chance elements and it was relatively cheap- apart from a little paint and glue the materials were lying all around. However, it was 40 years before I returned to collage. Between 2012 and 2017 I completed four series of works in this medium which eventually totalled 646 pieces! Since moving from Dorset to the Suffolk coast in 2018 I have worked on 50 designs for place mats based on Deckchair fabric, a light-hearted footnote to my various series of grids and systems. Bin Lids and a group of works derived from these titled English Customs and Pastimes. Lay a dustbin lid on primed card and cut around and away you go- Bin Lids. For smaller use a dinner plate or side plate. I have never much been a fan of the Tondo, so quite a challenge, but at least you no longer have to worry about the tricky corner bits! Most recently I have been working on a number of large canvases- a Wiltshire Suite.” Jackie Pope Bath Academy of Art 1960 -1963 “The sensation of colour is fundamental to my work, not only in the way it is structured in the paintings, but also to the experiences I try to create in the minds of others. The modification of colour by atmospherics and movement are also generative, as is the work of other artists both contemporary such as Bridget Riley and Morandi historically. Improvisation with the painting process is as important to me as more carefully considered decisions and together they determine the final form of the work. Like most people I often reflect upon my student days and how they have shaped my subsequent activities. The years at Corsham 1960-63 were an exciting period of discovery. We were made aware of the importance of ‘first hand observation’ and experimenting with many media to achieve ‘a fluency of expression’. I was fortunate to find myself under the tutelage of a young Howard Hodgkin and the painter Robyn Denny, both colourists, who understood that what one wants to express in painting is not verbal, finding its real meaning only in the visual language of painting. In addition to the teaching at Corsham I had in my background the experience of growing up in Cornwall with its strong tradition of painting, its exciting whitening light and elemental skies which had become the mainspring of my motivation as a painter.” Carole Vincent Corsham 1958 – 1961 Carole moved to Cornwall when she was 21 having graduated from Bath Academy of Art at Corsham. She taught in schools in North Cornwall. In the 1970s she left teaching to become a full-time artist, but she continued to teach adults and children at her studio in Boscastle. She was a polymath who was able to link art with science, maths and dance. Her teaching proved inspirational to many students. Her early work was mainly painting, but gradually she moved to sculpture. Starting with wood, then moving to slate and finally concrete in the 1980s. Her work explored the use of colour and texture in cast concrete for sculpture, and after many experiments she was able to create the full spectrum of colours in concrete, a unique achievement. She had major public commissions, notably the Armada Dial in Plymouth, the Devon Pedestrians placed in three locations (Exeter, Plymouth and Barnstaple), The Red Carpet in Edinburgh and Les Jongleurs sited in St Helier, Jersey. At Half Acre, her North Cornwall home, she created The Blue Circle Garden, which she rebuilt at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2001. Her garden, landscaped from a bare field, was filled with sculpture and was regularly opened for the National Gardens Scheme. In 2000 she worked on the creation of the Bude Light with Anthony Fanshawe. She was a member of the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, designing their exhibitions and displaying a wide range of work. She was a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art. In 2007 she was the first winner of the British Pre-Cast ‘Creativity in Concrete’ award. Carole Vincent died after a short illness in May 2019.
Bath Academy of Art had been established in 1946 in the small rural market town of Corsham under the direction of the educational visionary Clifford Ellis. In partnership with Lord Methuen he created a special environment for the study of art. Modelled on the Bauhaus, Ellis engaged teaching staff who were themselves practising artists and the Principal, Michael Finn, previously of Falmouth School of Art, continued this tradition in 1972.
