Artist Café News from 1 June

We would like to extend our thanks to Stephanie Bell of BBC Radio Wiltshire who came to join us for the morning to find out what the Artists’ Café is all about and how it benefits our artists. She heard from several of our artists about what it means to them. She also managed to catch up with artist Cath Bloomfield who is one of the Somerset Printmakers whose work is the current exhibition in our main Gallery. Print Plus runs until Saturday 24 June - For more information click here. 

The Artist Café piece goes live on the radio today, June 7, at 15:10 here if you can’t hear it live it will be available on listen again here. There will also be a piece about our Cells which is due to air next Thursday, June 15, at 14:10.

Ian Lacy from CIC Love from the Artist came to let us know about how to get art cards and other print-on-demand services at a price that artists can afford, 40p per card and a minimum run of only ten cards. This enables artists to make a profit from their artwork reproductions. He left some samples and brochures with us so please do pop in if you want one of these. The artists’ site to find out more is here http://lovefromtheartist.org/ and the commercial site is here https://www.lovefromtheartist.com/

Patrick Hallissey shared information about an upcoming exhibition of work by Barbara Rae coming to the Adam Gallery in Bath ‘Postcards from the Artist’ more details here.

Patrick also mentioned an art auction that is being organised by Trowbridge Museum on Friday 8th September. There will be a silent auction to raise the profile of, and fundraise for, the Museum’s expansion project. The Museum is looking for artists to donate work, and you can get in touch with them here.

After the Artists Café we also went to see the exhibition of Michael Pennie’s work Drawings of Different Sizes at Drawing Projects UK, Bridge House. The exhibition was curated by Town Hall Arts curator Fiona Cassidy. Michael was kind enough to talk to us about the exhibition and his drawing practice. It runs until Saturday 10 June. Opening hours are Sat and Sun 10am-4pm and other days by appointment. Visit their website.

Finally our Open exhibition deadline is extended until the 8 June at 5pm – so there is still time to submit work. Prizes include a chance to exhibit your work at the Town Hall Arts next year. Click here for more information.

Next month’s Artist Café will be Thursday 6 July 10.30-12, and then we will take a break in August.

On Saturday 22nd April, Trowbridge Arts hosted a Horror Convention at Trowbridge Town Hall. It was the perfect "gothic" venue for this fabulously good fun event and everyone who braved the "scare tours" commented on the quality of the fright they received. I just saw smiles and laughter all day, local people pleasantly surprised by the fun and excitement on offer throughout the day and into the evening.

It was all so varied. Apart from the fabulous scare tours which took place in the old court room and the cells in the basement, there were costume and mask exhibitors along with live snake and spiders to see and touch. A virtual reality machine was available to try out along with quality costume and prop making clubs. Milton Keynes Garrison were showing their spectacular costuming by prowling the streets of Trowbridge to great delight as well as scaring the people inside the Town Hall with their realistic costumes and characterisations. Everyone, public and exhibitors alike had a great time and the atmosphere was super friendly, the scare tours were consistently commented on with people remarking on the quality and how they were well worth the money.

I really enjoyed my time at the Horror Con and can't wait for the next one, it was such a perfect venue and this exciting, unpretentious event was a great success.
Sarah Johnston, Westbury.

Colours of the Cape – an exhibition of watercolours

Tuesday 23 May – Saturday 27th May

Trowbridge Town Hall
Market Street, Trowbridge, BA14 8EQ

Price: Free entry

Time: 10am – 4pm Tues – Friday, 10- 1pm Saturday

An exhibition of watercolour paintings by Alice Jackman.

Recently reconnecting with her childhood haunts in South Africa, Alice has captured the essence of this wild, untamed landscape with its ever-changing light and enabling space to inhale the expanse and contemplate the Infinite.

Those acquainted with the worlds smallest floral kingdom, the Cape, will find memories stirred of Atlantic swells making landfall, verdant fynbos and the otherworldly intensity of the African palette. For those yet to visit, this is a tantalising preview.  Sir Francis Drake rounded the Cape on his voyage round the world and called it "a most stately thing and the fairest Cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth"

Alice will also be painting all week and welcomes the chance to talk to others who love colour.

This month's guest blog is written by Lizzie Crarer:

2017 has had a bit of a rocky start. The events in America over the past few weeks are a challenge to the liberal values that many of us have hitherto taken for granted, raising questions about political resistance, and what this looks like in today’s world.

In this context, I have been lucky enough to spend the past 2 weeks at Trowbridge Town Hall with a group of 5 other theatre artists, exploring a story of politics, protest – and, ultimately, hope.

Rosa ‘May’ Billinghurst was a young woman at the turn of the 20th Century who grew up in London, conscious of the massive social injustice that was the legacy of the industrial revolution. Increasingly frustrated at her inability to create political change, and with a government that evaded the issue of the women’s vote, she turned to the suffragette movement. She rose quickly through the ranks of the Women’s Social and Political Union, becoming a key member of the organization. She engaged in direct action, she spoke at rallies alongside WSPU leader Emmeline Pankhurst, and she endured prison sentences and the horror of force-feeding. She was funny, ascerbic and passionate, with a loving and unusually liberal family. She was also wheelchair-user.

Dialogue is a new exhibition opening at the Young Gallery in Salisbury on Saturday 12 November. It is an investigation into the conversation that exists between artists’ output when they work in close proximity.

This exhibition came about after the successful retrospective of Bill Goldsmith’s work by Trowbridge Arts at Trowbridge Town Hall earlier this year. Behind the Light showcased work from all periods of Bill’s artistic career, and led to Peter Riley, Curator at the Young Gallery, being keen to explore the artists’ work in relationship to each other.

Trowbridge Arts curator Fiona Cassidy talks to artist David Chandler. In this piece aired on Frome FM, Fiona talks about the past, present and future of Town Hall Arts. As Fiona takes David for a tour of the building she talks of the historical side of the building such as the old court rooms and the cells but also how Trowbridge Arts have made these spaces work to host exhibitions, theatre and live music events.

You can listen to the interview here.

The theme for this year’s National Poetry Day (Thursday, 6 October 2016) is ‘messages’. At Trowbridge Town Hall, poet Josephine Corcoran and a local professional artist will lead a two hour creative workshop which will encourage children to write and illustrate their own message poems which will go on public display at a special exhibition.

Spread over the whole of Wiltshire, The Cloth Road is an annual art trail linking the areas of West Wiltshire that were once cloth making communities. Now in it's seventh year, the trail exhibits and celebrates the work of local artists. The last Cloth Road event began on the 8th of May 2016, and for nine days it transformed visiting the Trowbridge Town Hall into an Aladdin's cave style adventure.

Did you know there is a retrospective exhibition by Bill Goldsmith at Trowbridge Town Hall?

If you have not heard of him you may be interested to know that Bill who studied at the Royal Academy in the 1950’s, exhibited widely in the 50’s and 60’s, even with Duncan Grant and Barbara Hepworth, and his work sits in private collections from London to New York.
On the other hand, maybe you knew Bill who lectured part time at many institutions including Swindon College of Art, albeit some time ago.

Alice McNeil Presents is a semi regular youth music night hosted at the Trowbridge Town Hall, the most recent of which happened on Friday the 20th of May. The neon Where Is Your Humanity? sign from an earlier event cast a soft red glow over the proceedings, and combined with rows of fairy lights and the last of the light reflected through the town halls windows created an atmosphere similar to that of a jazz club.