January 2020 NO.5
The year concluded with a bang not a whimper as The Point in Doncaster hosted an impressive finale to our Annual Members Print Exhibition during December. A particularly Herculean task for the staff who only weeks earlier had suffered considerably in some of the worst flooding in the area in living memory. For the first time ever, we have been able to record a footfall for our exhibition and despite its proximity to Christmas some 379 visitors attended the exhibition in Doncaster. This is a very pleasing outcome and we hope some will be inspired to take their photography to new heights. We would like to thank all the staff at The Point for their professionalism, friendliness and passion for what they do. We would certainly like to be able to arrange other exhibitions at this venue in the longer term.
“Kolmanskop” by Lesley Cooke ARPS.
Happy New Year to all our members and welcome to our latest newsletter.
We would also like to thank the RPS Regional Officer for Yorkshire, Mark Slater for opening the exhibition and the RPS Regional Officer for the East Midlands, Stewart Wall ARPS for his humour and storyboard telling. Stewart’s images can be found on the RPS East Midlands Web Site at https://rps.org/news/regions/eastmidlands/2019/visual-arts-exhibition-atdoncaster/
2019 has been a year of mixed fortunes for the Visual Art Group with the resignation of long-standing committee members Robert and Jay Charnock and the loss of our regular print exhibition venue in Croydon, South London.
So, what have we got in store for 2020 and beyond?
But the committee rose to the challenge and delivered our ever popular residential weekends at Windsor Great Park (Spring) and Liverpool (Autumn), two sublime issues of the VAG magazine and an excellent monograph, just about to pop through your letterbox, supported by events delivered in the regions by our Sub-Groups in the South West and Central England.
Our annual members' print exhibition programme for 2020 is now well in progress. We received 434 entries, an impressive increase in last year's total especially at a time when we are looking beyond the capital for our exhibition spaces.
The 2020 Members' Print Exhibition
Selectors for this year were: Caroline Colegate ARPS; Marcus ScottTaggart, and Paul Mitchell FRPS The following submissions gained special recognition from selectors as stated below. RPS GOLD MEDAL WINNER Chris Palmer FRPS ‘Winter Dip’ SELECTOR'S AWARD: Caroline Colegate ARPS: Roger Ford FRPS ‘Surrender’ SELECTOR'S AWARD: Paul Mitchell FRPS: Mark Snowdon ARPS ‘Saltburn’ SELECTOR'S AWARD: Marcus ScottTaggart: Wendy North LRPS ‘Homage To Mondrian’ HIGHLY COMMENDED Christine Adams ARPS ‘Bonsai Reimagined’ Susan Brown FRPS ‘Fence And Dunes’ Carol Paes LRPS ‘Man On Stairs’ COMMENDED Mike Longhurst ARPS ‘Where Are The Tourists?’ Peter Martin ARPS ‘Saplings’ Wendy Meagher LRPS ‘South Coast Bollard’ Congratulations to all our winners and to everyone for the high quality of the submitted entries. Those of you with pictures in the exhibition will have already been contacted with instructions to send in a digital version of your print. Please be aware that if you do not do this, we will be unable to include a digital version of your image in either the magazine catalogue or on our web site.
Opening exhibition 21st March – 4th May Patchings Art Centre Oxton Road Calverton Nottingham NG14 6NU On-site parking and entrance free www.patchingsartcentre.co.uk
Patchings Art Centre in Nottingham will be our venue for the opening exhibition and the pictures will be on display there from the 21st March through to the 4th May. The awards ceremony and official opening of the exhibition will be undertaken by Stewart Wall, the Regional Organiser East Midlands. The team are currently trying to source additional venues for later in the year. This will certainly include, as normal, The Edinburgh International Exhibition of Photography which will showcase a good selection of our exhibition during the Festival Fringe, the world's largest arts festival, in August. More details on the full roadshow for 2020 will be available as soon as possible.
Residential weekends Spring 2020: 24th-27th April: Stratford-upon-Avon Autumn 2020: 2nd-5th October: Buxton, Derbyshire
After a hugely successful Liverpool experience last September our next residential weekend will be in Stratfordupon-Avon. The birthplace of Shakespeare is a pretty and much admired market town offering a host of Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture, boat trips on the River Avon, a butterfly farm and much more, with places like Warwick Castle and Hidcote Manor not a million miles away. Speakers include: Janice Alamanou, a multi-award winning international fine-art photographer who will talk about evolving from capturing the actual to creating the perception, with collections like 'Soul Elements' (amalgamations of images that invite the viewer to debate and reflect), 'The White Collection' (photography predominantly white, recreating landscapes
and cityscapes with a difference) and 'Photography with Precious Metals' (her pioneering hand-gilded photographs with 24ct gold, palladium and copper. Martin Addison FRPS who will give a talk and lead a workshop on how to increase your creativity, with emphasis on seeing images differenly, camera movement, multi-exposure and creative focusing. Verity Milligan, a young professional who says: "Delving further into the art of landscape photography is rarely a straightforward journey. There are conventions and expectations of the places we explore, but more often than not these can put hidden constraints on our creativity." Her talk will be an anecdotal exploration of grappling with self-imposed expectations and finding a way to "embrace the gloom". She will also lead a workshop. Michael Pritchard FRPS, Director of Education and Public Affairs at The Royal Photographic Society and a photographic historian with a particular interest in British photographers, who will lift the veil of mystery from the Tyng. Les Forrester ARPS, an architecture, fine art and monochrome photographer who is also featured in our current monograph, This event is coupled with our AGM and, although three months away, almost fully booked. If you are tempted to join us member or not - please contact Andreas Klatt at visualart@rps.org for availability and more information. Our 2020 Autumn Weekend is set for the first weekend in October and will take us to Buxton, gateway to the Peak District. Among other speakers Robert Harvey ARPS will return by popular request with a talk and a workshops on photographing England's national parks. Our base will be the Palace Hotel, a magnificent Victorian building in five acres of landscaped gardens overlooking the centre of this famous spa town. This event will become bookable at the end of May.
Going round in Circles Regular members will know that the Visual Art Group has both postal print circles and email digital image circles. Whilst the email Circles are flourishing and have a waiting list, interest in Print Circles is unfortunately diminishing. But we know that many of our members already print either at home or through a commercial company. Our increasing entries to our Annual Members' Print Exhibition is testament to this and black and white imagery in particular has seen a resurgence in printing. The RPS Landscape Special Interest Group has recently developed 4 Print Portfolio Groups since it started in 2016 which has been a real success story. So, if you are interested in joining a print circle you will need to know a bit more. • • • • •
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Print Circles contain 6-10 members They accept both home and commercially printed images. Printed images are usually A4 and are sent around on a six weekly cycle in a print pouch which is provided. The cost to the photographer is only the postage - approximately £3.00 each cycle. There may be 2-3 print portfolios circulating at any one time so it may be some time before you get your beloved print back. Opportunities are taken to explore different photographic and fine are papers and to learn what works best in what situations.
So, if printing is already your thing, or might be your New Year’s Resolution, the Print Circles have a lot to offer. Why not try one out for comfort.
The featured image this month from Lesley Cooke ARPS is provided by courtesy of one of the recent Print Circles. For more information, please contact Gill Dishart at gill@dishart.plus.com
From the Regions …. The Visual Art Group has currently two subgroups providing events and meetings for both members and non-members closer to home and tailored to local needs. We would like to establish more across the country so if you and a small number of fellow photographers are interested in this approach the VAG committee will give you support and help including financial support to cover initial set up costs and will be happy to share experiences, difficulties, rewards and successes. Feel free to discuss this with any committee member. In central England The Rollright Visual Art Group was formed to benefit photographers who live away from major metropolitan areas and the traditonal centres of activity. With its base in the north Cotswolds, amid four or five counties and four RPS regions, the group is open to RPS members and non-members from a wide catchment area. It is not affiliated to any of the regions and does not intend to impinge on the programmes of camera clubs which often favour competitions, but rather offers another location which some of us may find easier to access in order to meet other enthusiasts in an informal and friendly atmosphere. Meetings are arranged four times a year, always on a Saturday from 10:00 to 16:00 at the Long Compton Village Hall, CV36 5JS. The dates for 2020 are 22nd February, 16th May, 22nd August and 21st November. If you want to join the next meeting, one of our
popular show-and-tell days, please go to this this web page and sign on. Bring along prints (preferably mounted to A3) and/or jpgs on a stick, but not to worry if you’d rather not. Come anyway and see what everybody else has been up to. Event organiser: Andreas Klatt ARPS (rpsva@klatt.co.uk) More from the South West Sub-Group next time.
Generous Donation Our many thanks go to John Grant LRPS and his wife Rozina for their generous legacy of £1,000 to the Visual Art Group. Having lived in Wiltshire to the age of 92 and 96 respectively, they sadly died in December 2018 within two weeks of each other. Both John and Rozina were keen photographers for several decades with John joining the Visual Art Group in 2001. This kind gift will go towards sorely needed equipment and frames for our continuing exhibition roadshow. Once again, many thanks.
Visual Art member David Townsend shares the joys and pitfalls of hosting his own photographic exhibition. I first dipped my toes into exhibiting in 2018. It all began with a cup of tea at Thornham in Norfolk with my wife’s weaving mentor, Melanie. I had recently been exposed to the wonders of multiple exposure impressionist photography by Valda Bailey and Doug Chinnery. Out of politeness, Melanie asked if I had taken any interesting pictures that day. I showed her images from Thornham harbour and a recent trip to the Northumberland coast that were still on my camera’s memory card. She went WOW! and a year later I showed around 15 images as fine art prints, cheap & cheerful prints and various sized canvases at an exhibition in Thornham of the work of 50 textile workers (weavers, embroiderers etc) who had responded to a design challenge based on five of my images! I was taken by surprise by the positive response from visitors to my photographs. With my selfconfidence growing I thought: Where next to share my images? Finding suitable and affordable gallery space is the obvious challenge and I am lucky to live close to Oundle School. Its Yarrow Gallery, built in memory of a former pupil killed at Ypres, holds a variety of art exhibitions for the benefit of pupils and town alike, with no charge to exhibitors during term time. I had little expectation that they would rate my work good enough to exhibit, but if you don’t ask you won’t get. I asked and I got! I had no choice of time of year for my exhibition, and I am hoping the weather is mild as you read this! The Yarrow Gallery is only five miles from my home and the School staff are extremely helpful. They will help with the hanging, which I have four days to complete. The Gallery has two floors and 56 metres of exhibition space – that’s a lot of wall! Designing a layout for over 80 images was a challenge. I broke it down into sections – upstairs, downstairs, panel by entrance, wall left of window etc. I decided to have two themes, rather than a motley collection of images. Downstairs are local images, with sections on Oundle, Cambridge and my garden, whereas upstairs is devoted to my Coastal Impressions project. My personal style is particularly evident there. I had already taken most of the images but took a few more to complete the Oundle panel. I simplified the matter of print sizes. All the prints are presented in wooden 40 x 50cm frames, the latter kindly loaned by Cambridge Camera Club. The frames have no glass, enabling the viewer to fully appreciate the Fotospeed Cotton Etching paper which does so much to enhance my images. I could claim that the consistent frame size means the viewer concentrates on the image not the framing – but it also saves a lot of decisions and reduces the cost! The exhibition opens as you receive this newsletter so I can’t say whether my hanging plan survived unscathed or how the exhibition was received. Publicity is essential but not my favourite task. Things were going well until the Gallery pointed out that my poster had a minor mistake – only a private viewing on 10th so actually opening to the public on the 11th. Not a major problem unless you have already had 1000 flyers printed with the wrong start date and distributed some of them. A brief moment wondering how to alter the date on each flyer was soon overtaken by accepting that I just had to order replacement flyers, with the correct dates, whilst crossing my fingers that no one had already organised a visit for the 10th. The flyers are going to local hotels, galleries, shops etc. I am very grateful to RPS East Anglia Organiser Jonathan Vaines, who offered to help promote my exhibition by placing an entry on the RPS website Events page and Moira Ellice who invited me to write a piece for the Creative Eye magazine. Also, I submitted an article about the exhibition, my
photography, my life and everything to the online magazine On Landscape which is due to be published in issue 198. Why did I do it? - primarily to share my images. If I am lucky enough to sell any prints it will cover some of my costs, but that isn’t the driving force. Preparing the exhibition has been a lot of hard work and has been possible only because I am retired, but it has been rewarding. Seeing so many of my images in print and developing a coherent display has given a purpose to my photography. And my wife Sue is so pleased that I am at last doing something with all those photographs! The further reward will (hopefully!) be hearing the positive reaction of visitors to the exhibition. Entry to the exhibition is free and VAG members are particularly welcome to visit! ‘Creating Good Impressions – where art meets photography’ is being held at The Yarrow Gallery, 2 Glapthorn Road, Oundle, Peterborough, PE8 4JF from 11th to 24th January 2020. The gallery is open daily, on-Sat 1030-1300 & 1430-1700, Sun 1430-1700. For more information on the gallery see www.oundleschool.org.uk/The-Yarrow-Gallery
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------And finally ……. Remember that this newsletter is about and for the members of the Visual Art Group. If any of you would like to share your photographic experiences and journeys with others and have a chance of having your images feature in the newsletter then please contact me as below. Janie Chapman LRPS Secretary: RPS Visual Art Group
Web editor: Michael Butterworth LRPS t: 01295 710348 e: visualartweb@rps.org
Useful Committee Contacts Chairman: Andreas Klatt ARPS t: 01608 684848 e: visualart@rps.org
Exhibition lead: Wendy Meagher LRPS t: 01869 356216 e: wmeagher@gmail.com
Secretary: Janie Chapman LRPS t: 01327 342226 e: visualartsec@rps.org Membership Secretary: Mark Deutsch LRPS t: 07736 480227 e: mrkdeutsch@aol.com
Circles: Gill Dishart ARPS t: 01332 874841 e: gill@dishart.plus.com
Web site address
http://rps.org/groups/visual-art