Canwood Gallery Herefordshire Art Week Exhibition

7-15th September 2019

Open daily 11am – 4pm

Don’t miss the chance to see and buy artwork by outstanding local and Internationally acclaimed artists, including Carl Andre, Nicole Farhi, Jonty Hurwitz and Tracey Emin in two large exhibition spaces, together with a sculpture trail set in 10 acres within an area of outstanding natural beauty. 

On site café serving Tea, Coffee and amazing cake. 

Canwood Gallery, Checkley, Herefordshire, HR1 4NF

A selection of the artist’s biographies….

Jonty Hurwitz 

Brief History 

Jonty Hurwitz is an artist, engineer and entrepreneur. He was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and spent his early life living in small hotels in rural towns in South Africa. He studied a B.Sc (Eng) at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and worked as a full-time researcher at the University of Cape Town. 
Following his studies Jonty travelled in India studying Yoga and wood carving, before arriving in London where he then spent many years in the tech world designing financial risk algorithms. 
Jonty started producing sculpture in 2009 and now creates scientifically inspired artworks and anamorphic sculptures. He is recognised for the smallest human form ever created using nano technology. 

“The technological singularity” is a future time speculated in science fiction.  At the singularity moment, a human made machine will design a machine more advanced than itself. This moment will mark the end of mankind’s dominance.   

The singularity is the moment that machines become more intelligent than us. Some analysts expect the singularity to occur some time in the 21st century, although their estimates vary -Wikipedia. 

“I want enlightenment and I want it now!” 

It marked the moment in my life that I made the decision to try and see myself through the eyes of my wife. My chance to express her love and doubt through art. My perception of her perception.  When I started the painstaking process of producing this work I felt a sense of urgency. ”I want enlightenment and I want it now!”.  It was the astronomer in me that needed space and time. The soul who sits quietly for hours on end gazing at the start to try and understand its place in the Universe by simplifying it. I chose triangles as a way of reducing my feelings into tangible geometry. Also a tribute to a hero in my life, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. 

After working in a capitalist rat race almost non-stop every waking hour for 20 years, balance did not come easily.  The painstaking process of painting each and every triangle gave me the space to slow down.  

Walenty Pytel 

We have an number of smaller affordable pieces 

Glenn Morris 

I am a professional sculptor working from my studio situated on the Welsh border near Hay on Wye. 

I work predominantly in stone using traditional carving techniques but employing other mediums when appropriate or suitable for the idea and subject matter.

I am a member of the Welsh sculptors group Sculpture Cymru and also the artist’s collective, ‘Vulgar Earth’ – a recently formed group of artists whose work is driven by the human relationship with the environment. 

Sculpture, or rather the act of making sculpture, can for me, sometimes feel like a sort of Faustian pact. I feel driven to work and handle materials; from the act of making comes immense pleasure and contentment, but often and counter to this, one experiences the emotional upheavals that flow from the practical hurdles of the medium, and also the darker side of the subject matter. 

A good deal of my life has been spent in the Arctic. During this time I lived and travelled with the native Inuit people. This culture, that exists on the very edge of where it is possible for humans to live has, I believe, imbued me with a deep sense of the frailty of the human condition and how society has lost connection with nature in the full sense of the word.  

My earlier work tended to draw on my Arctic experiences, particularly ice forms, native art and the rawness of the northern landscape, but I have since moved into areas of enquiry driven largely by current environmental and political issues. 

I am finding myself now drawn more to the human relationship with time, self and the environment. I want to draw out form, message and, perhaps, visual memory that uses the juxtaposition of conventional ideals of beauty with a more disturbing association, but without intentionally attempting to shock. 

Many private commissions and gallery shows including the Royal Academy in London and the Royal Cambrian Academy 

Fiona Morley 

My work is a combination of illustration and sculptural relief which is achieved with wire as the line can be taken off the page and into space. 

I am fascinated by humanity and our psychology.  Themes that run through my work are: our relationships with ourselves, with loved ones and the wider community; motherhood, and aloneness. 

More recently I have been making explorations into our thoughts, how thoughts can give rise to feelings of entrapment and paralysis through fears and anxiety. How we can get stuck with stories we think define us. Then ultimately, the pursuit of freedom from thought. 

I use symbols of the natural world, human, animal, bird and plant life to represent the different aspects of our inner selves, primarily the tension between the ‘enlightened’ or ‘free’ self, and the pull of our ego with its enticing endless chatter, often negative, illusionary and binding. 

It also alludes to our inter-connectedness with all forms of life, beyond our states of mind, where, especially in the developed world we increasing separate ourselves from it. 

Simon Meiklejohn 

A qualified mechanical engineer Simon trained under a traditional apprenticeship scheme in Hereford and studied fine art in Cleveland. Combining disciplines he achieves a balance between artist informing engineer and engineer informing artist. 

Art performs many subtle and dramatic roles in our society. It is a varying and multifaceted thing, and its forms overlap, compliment and sometimes oppose each other. I too am not one fixed and constant thing, I have different heads, moods and motivations that influence my work. Of these many forms I see areas that I move between. 

There is a whimsy, a humour and a child like playfulness, that sometimes takes the lead. In it’s way I feel it is very important, we should not be too grown up and serious all of the  time, we should have moments of silliness and be acquainted with the child’s innocence and purity, I think it is important for perspective and scale, and indeed mental health. There is also what I might refer to as pure art, that is, the pursuit of beauty, in all it’s aspects; form, colour, texture, movement and sound. These are the things that enrich our lives, quietly in the background, they ask nothing of us, they force no agenda. They are the glimpses of beauty that are caught in the corner of your eye. They are the tranquility that you do not realise you are watching, while your mind is miles away, either dealing with a problem or being momentarily and happily vacant. 

And then there is that, emotive, noble and ignoble thing we call fine art. I define it; if this is possible, as art that wishes to impart meaning, topic or emotion. It is a mixture of the whimsy and the pure, with politics and philosophy, propaganda and advertising, psychiatry, psychology and sociology, ideology and humanity. It is discussion and argument, postulation and ridicule, it plays on emotion, it questions concepts, it underlines and highlights, it is moot. 

In this last area is my passion, in this area I am most complete, every aspect of me is encompassed here, as an artist, as a maker, and as a human being. This is where I  explore my concerns, my frustrations and my observations, but this would not be possible in isolation, without the level and balance of the other areas I also occupy. 

For me the point of art is not intrinsic with topic, form, style or motivation, but is an opportunity to brake from the everyday and the functional. It is an excuse to stand and contemplate. It is a distraction, that allows us to return to our lives with fresh eyes and good humour. 

Daniel Pryde-Jarman

Daniel Pryde-Jarman is an artist and curator whose research interests include institutional critique, the politics of display, and forms of self-organised artist-led culture.

Pryde-Jarman has been involved in setting up several artist-run spaces, including Grey Area in Brighton (2006 – 2012), and is currently Director of Meter Room project space & studios, an arts charity based in Coventry that provides affordable studio space to recent art graduates. Pryde-Jarman trained at the University of Brighton and Chelsea College of Arts, and completed his practice-based PhD in Curatorial Practice at Coventry University.

Dazzle is a portable ‘sentry box’ sculpture that references the ways in which forms of observation and ‘watching over’ are themselves frequently made visible to signify the control and demarcation of space. A structure for displayed viewing. Its painted surface is inspired by the marine artist Norman Wilkinson’s ‘dazzle’ painting technique (sometimes known as ‘razzle dazzle’), which was developed at the Royal Academy of Arts to protect ships during WW1 by making it more difficult for observers to judge their exact form, direction and velocity. Diagrams designed at the RA were used by other artists to paint the vessels, one of whom was the Vorticist Edward Wadsworth. More recently the principles of dazzle painting have been used in Formula 1 testing to confound rival teams and to hamper facial recognition software.

During the H-Arts exhibition at Canwood Gallery, Dazzle will be moved to different sites on the grounds and used for a series of observations and recordings of the surrounding landscape by the artist.