Covid 19 has closed galleries, art fairs, exhibitions and studios. The following is a list of initiatives that our members are involved in, as well as a list of exhibitions which had to close due to the pandemic.
Paper Patrons
Paper Patrons is a new platform set up by Eleanor May Watson. Launched by artists for artists, it has created the opportunity for patrons to buy exciting affordable works-on-paper straight from the artist’s studio for £50. Several of our artists are participating in this initiative. Watch out for Geraldine Van Heemstra’s beautiful etchings.
Artist Support Pledge
Artist Support Pledge, an initiative set up by the Sussex-based artist Matthew Burrows, is offering a self-sustaining lifeline to an ever-expanding number of fellow artists across the world. The concept is simple: artists are invited to post pictures of their works for sale for £200 or less on Instagram using the hashtag #ArtistSupportPledge. Every time an artist makes £1,000 in sales they then pledge to plough back £200 on purchasing the work of another artist using the hashtag.
Check out Kate Lowe’s oil paintings.
Our artists and writers have been involved in the following recent events/exhibitions:
MK Gallery
MK Calling 2020
MK Calling showcases the most dynamic work being made today including work by Royal Academicians, and alumni of The British Art Show, John Moores Painting Prize and New Contemporaries. The show features numerous pieces that address and challenge many contemporary issues such as the environment and the political climate, as well as a number of playful and performance works.
Check out: Nazanin Moradi’s installation titled: Turning and Turning
Royal Academy of Art
Summer Exhibition 2020
The Summer Exhibition, which was originally due to run 9 June — 16 August, has been rescheduled for autumn 2020 due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The exact dates will be announced in due course.
Each year, a committee of diverse artists choose an array of art in all mediums – prints and paintings, film and photography, sculpture, architectural works and more – for everyone and anyone to enjoy.
You’ll see work by leading artists, Royal Academicians and household names, as well as new and emerging talent you might not know. So, explore art you love, art you hate, and art that simply puts a smile on your face.
Watch out for finalists Amy Robson and Kate Lowe.
Thameside Studios
What She Didn’t Say
Covid 19 meant an early close for this show that included expanded paintings, sculptures and weavings by four female artists. The work focused on the boundaries and spaces between our inner experience of being and what we are able to express to others; pieces lure you in with beauty but have an uneasiness and disquiet. Fragmented, translucent with traces of existence, but no humans present.
Pollen artist Rachel Goodison created spaces in between her playful sculptural forms, exploring the emotions we feel when surrounded by familiar materials presented in unfamiliar ways.
Holly Henry Gallery @ Art Hub
Unlucky Stars
Just before Covid 19, Robert C Gray presented his first solo show Unlucky Stars. The drawings, sculptures and installations explore a generation’s unique approach to adulthood, and the feeling of not having it all, .
Jane Deering Gallery
Keep Looking
Opening this summer, Pollen artist Amy Robson showcases a new body of oil paintings created from the same vantage point along the coast in rural New England, USA.
Wilderness Art Collective Exhibition
Wilderness of the Mind
Geraldine van Heemstra has co-organised an online exhibition for The Wilderness Art Collective. Join for the opening on June 11th; there will be daily interviews, studio visits and demonstrations.
Stasi
Pollen Collective painter Amy Robson was in the process of making an artist’s book from her ‘Stasi’ series of paintings of the former East German Stasi Headquarters in Berlin. Then Covid hit. As a way to ‘print’ the book without using any paper or printing resources, she created a virtual ‘flipbook’ which can be shared widely - and for free (see link below). The series juxtaposes banal interior details such as kitchen tiles, telephones or net curtains with the unseen atrocities that were happening in the space.
