Fen Ditton Gallery

Before completing the Drawing Year in 2021, Otis Blease studied Drawing and Printmaking at Bristol’s University of the West of England, where he was awarded the Dumfries House residency upon graduation. Having grown up in rural Cornwall, the move to London to study at The Royal Drawing School had a considerable impact on his work and the city’s constant state of motion added an energy and spontaneity to his practice. Working with mixed media materials, often onto paper he explores feelings of excitement and anxiety in his work, interested in the way life can seem both thrilling and mundane simultaneously.

Otis’ recent work is an exploration of combining drawing, painting and printmaking, and works from life, making drawings and notes in his sketchbook, often of the people he sees on public transport. These sketches are developed into charcoal drawings and then onto larger paintings. His work relies on ‘accidents’ and disused sections of previous works come back into play, with a mixed on observational and imaginary image making.

This conversation with emerging artist Otis Blease was recorded as part of our currently exhibition, Voices in Drawing, which features the work of six recent graduates and alumni from The Royal Drawing School

Olly Williamson was born in 1994 and grew up in a village just outside of Preston.  He completed the Drawing ear at the Royal Drawing School in 2023, after graduating from Manchester School of Art with a first-class honours in Fine Art in 2016.

Olly makes work about quiet situations in life, utilising intense observation and experimental structures of composition. His images reflect the underlying rhythms of the people and the world he sees around him, hoping to make the everyday feel monumental.

Originally from Cambridge, Felix Higham studied at Central St Martin’s before completing The Drawing Year in 2021. His artistic focus centres on the intricate study of people and the dynamics of life within the spaces we construct for our use. His observational drawings conducted in pubs and cafés provide material from which Felix constructs narrative works back in the studio. Through the placement of doorways and positioning of light sources, structural interiors become pivotal in dictating the viewer’s perspective within these spaces.

This conversation was recorded with emerging artist Ellie Lonsdale who is currently exhibiting at Fen Ditton Gallery as part our Voices in Drawing exhibition. The exhibition showcases the work of six recent graduates and alumni from The Royal Drawing School and is open until Sunday 25th February 2024.

Hello and welcome to the Fen Ditton Gallery podcast, with me Hannah Munby.

This conversation was recorded with emerging artist Euan Evans on my recent visit to his studio in Stoke Newington, to collect the paintings and drawings that are currently on show at Fen Ditton Gallery as part our Voices in Drawing exhibition. The exhibition showcases the work of six recent graduates and alumni from The Royal Drawing School and is open until Sunday 25th February 2024.

Euan Evans was born in Cornwall in 1996, and originally studied Jazz at Leeds Conservatoire before completing the Drawing Year in 2022. He went on to study MA Printmaking at The Royal College of Art and was awarded the Printmaker’s Council Sheila Sloss Award at his graduation show in 2023.

Euan’s training in music allows him to explore the interactions between improvisation, texture, and composition through visual enquiries. His recent work is poised between sculpture and printmaking, incorporating drawing and painting through his practice. His work is often routed in the personal, using inspiration from places that he has lived.   

Agnes Treherne was born in Sussex in 1987. She studied Fine Art and History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, and went on to complete The Drawing Year at The Royal Drawing School, graduating in 2021. In was in the September following her graduation that Agnes first exhibited at Fen Ditton Gallery. 

Agnes’ work is concerned with how our thoughts and articulations are informed by the environments in which we live. She works from the premise that the act of drawing, and the attention it gives to what is being drawn, is fruitful both to the artist and the subject, so that the existence of both is enriched by the other. When there is a figurative element in her paintings and drawings, it is often to convey both connection and dislocation.

This conversation was recorded with Agnes on my recent visit to her home in Sussex to collect the paintings and drawings that are currently on show at Fen Ditton Gallery as part our Voices in Drawing exhibition. The exhibition showcases the work of six recent graduates and alumni from The Royal Drawing School and is open until Sunday 25th February.

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Fen Ditton Gallery podcast, with me, Hannah Munby.

My conversation today is with textile artist Ptolemy Mann, whose exquisite bold woven works will be shown in our upcoming exhibition ‘Going Yellow’. In this conversation, Ptolemy and I discuss her bohemian upbringing; how her extensive colour theory training allows her to break the rules, how she has owned the phrase ‘Chromatic minimalism’, and why textile artists should be taken seriously in the contemporary art world.

Hello and welcome back to the Fen Ditton Gallery podcast

In this episode, I speak to Cambridge artist David Emond, whose exhibition ‘Light, Colour, Pattern’ is currently on display at Fen Ditton Gallery. This is David’s first solo exhibition and includes works that spans the last 45 years of his artistic journey.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Fen Ditton Gallery podcast that was recorded at the gallery as part of our current exhibition Willard Boepple 'Shards and Sources'.

We are very grateful to Elenor Ling and Kip Gresham, both of whom have been incredibly generous with their time and knowledge not just for this exhibition but for other projects at the gallery too – namely the Contemporary Printmaking Prize earlier in the year for which they were both judges.

We first had the pleasure of working with Kip Gresham and The Print Studio, Cambridge in January 2022 on an exhibition titled ‘The Language of Abstraction, which highlighted some of Kip’s most significant printmaking collaborations during his extensive career – including John McClean, Gillian Ayres, Kim Lim, and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham to name a few. It was this exhibition that introduced the gallery to American sculptor Willard Boepple and his astonishing screenprints stood out as a unique and dynamic response to the medium, offering a sculptural experience through the layered medium of screenprint.

In a newly commissioned essay by American art critic, Michael Fried, he writes of the prints that they are “...manifestly the work of a sculptor as one tracks not just the interaction of the hues but also the sense of implied physical relationships among the different shapes... an implied continuity from one shape to the next, as if across a sharp spatial "fold."

It was this implied continuity and sharp spatial folds that inspired Willard to take his monoprints, translate them to vinyl and re-work the narrative back into the low relief, three-dimensional forms that you can see in the gallery today.

Kip was joined by Elenor Ling who is the Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. She is responsible for the care, interpretation and display of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s print collection, comprising 125,000 objects, and has a particular interest in histories and methodologies of collecting. Elenor was co-curator of the major, interdisciplinary exhibition The Human Touch: Making Art, Leaving Traces (2021), and has been the sole curator of several exhibitions in the museum’s Print Gallery.

This week the Fitzwilliam Museum received the fifth allocation of editioned prints made at The Print Studio, Cambridge, which included Willard’s print ‘George’ which is available as part of this exhibition. The museum’s long-standing relationship with the Print Studio has become one of the Fitzwilliam’s key sources for contemporary works.

So, I think we can all agree that this conversation is very timely…

In this episode, I’m joined by artist Wycliffe Stutchbury who is currently exhibiting in our Water/Land exhibition.

Formerly a furniture maker, Wycliffe has chosen to continue to work with wood in his artistic career too. The works start with a hunt for the timber, whether that be foraging or searching dealers for the piece that will inspire his next project. The piece that we are lucky enough to be showing at the gallery is called ‘Hundred Foot Drain 9’ and has been made from a piece of Bog Oak that was recovered just down the road from us in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire.

Wycliffe says of his work “My compositions made from fallen and forgotten timber are studies in the narrative beauty of wood. They are made to reveal timbers’ response to its environment over time, its un-fashioned beauty, durability, and vulnerability. The origin of the material I use is central to my work.’

In 2003, he graduated from the University of Brighton with a BA in 3D Craft and co-founded the Blue Monkey Studio, a collective of Eastbourne based artists, in the same year. The artist has exhibited extensively in the UK and the US and has significant works in international private collections. He has received several notable awards, including from the Crafts Council UK and the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers UK. In 2018, Wycliffe was shortlisted for the Loewe Craft Prize.

Welcome back to the Fen Ditton Gallery podcast, with me, Hannah Munby. This episode features a recent conversation with Otis Blease, who is one of three recent graduates from Royal Drawing School that will be exhibited in our Voices in Drawing exhibition this autumn.

Otis completed a Drawing and Printmaking degree at Bristol UWE, before going on to study on the prestigious Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing School. Having grown up in rural Cornwall and, on moving to Bristol and then London to study, he says he finally found the context for the energetic lines that had begun to emerge in his work.

This conversation explores Otis’ inspirations and motivations behind his work, how he coped being flung back into rural life during the pandemic and what’s next for this young emerging artist.

Fen Ditton Gallery is delighted to be hosting a new exhibition of photographs by former Head of Photography at Central St Martins, Graham Murrell, 20 YEARS ON.

It was twenty years ago that Graham Murrell completed his first major exhibition, Lights Spells, made and exhibited at Kettle’s Yard in collaboration with his Central St Martin’s colleague, Kathryn Faulkner. The two photographers visited Jim Ede’s former home now gallery over the course of 18 months to capture the ever-changing light and atmosphere of the space. The title of the exhibition and book was inspired by Jim Ede’s edict that you must “first furnish your house with light”.

Murrell comments “The project was made possible by the support and enthusiasm of the, then, Director of Kettles Yard, the late Michael Harrison. (It was this support) that lead to all the opportunities that have come my way over the past 20 years. All of which encouraged me to leave my post at Central St Martin’s and concentrate on making books and exhibitions.”

This is the first time a major exhibition of photographs spanning this period of Murrell’s career have been shown together. Fen Ditton Gallery have worked closely with Murrell to select the works and it was during these conversations that it become so apparent the influence that Michael Harrison had on Murrell’s career. It felt poignant to dedicate this exhibition to his memory.

This episode is a talk that was recorded during the opening night of the exhibition. 

Welcome back to the Fen Ditton Gallery podcast hosted by Hannah Munby.

This episode features a recent conversation with Past President of the Royal Society of British Artists, James Horton.

James was elected as the president in 2009 and stood down in 2017, returning back to, as he says, the indulgence of being a painter once again. During his time as president of the society, he was a pioneer for young artists and worked hard to provide them a platform after leaving education.

This conversation took place in earlier in the month and includes some of the works that we have as part of our current Spring exhibition. We chat about his marriage to painting and love affair with music, his extended trip to India at the beginning of the pandemic and how his life has changed since he stepped down from the RBA.

I hope you enjoy listening to this episode.

This episode features a recent conversation with ceramicist Frances Priest, who I caught up with towards the end of January. Drawing is an important part of Frances’ practice and we have been lucky enough to show a selection of these works in our Plantlife exhibition last year and will soon be exhibiting a selection of newly developed works from her India series in our upcoming Spring show.

Thank you to Frances for her time, it was lovely to chat about not only her beautiful work, but her new studio assistant and the food stops of Yorkshire too!

Welcome back to the Fen Ditton Gallery podcast, hosted by Hannah Munby.

I’m delighted to bring you my recent conversation with painter, printmaker and collage artist, Rebecca Jewell. The daughter of a zoologist and an archaeo-zoologist, Rebecca spent her childhood immersed in the natural world and this interest has followed her through life. Her work is a cross-cultural examination of the human exploitation and veneration of birds. Her intricate drawings of artefacts and bird specimens, and her unique feather collages, are inspired both by material culture collections in museums and issues around the contemporary hunting and trapping of birds, particularly in the Southern Mediterranean.

Having studied Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, Rebecca went on to complete a PHD in Natural History Illustration from the Royal College of Art. She is now a fellow of the Zoological Society of London, a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Member of the Artworker's Guild.

Rebecca has spent much time throughout her career getting to know the British Museum collections. She took up residencies there in 2005 – 2010 and is presently the Artist in Residence for their ‘In Storage’ project. In 2019, 40 works by Rebecca were acquired by the British Museum.

I hope you enjoy my interview with Rebecca. It was a pleasure to catch up with her and discover more about her childhood, inspiration and process, and how she hopes her art will raise awareness of some of the most pressing conservation efforts of our time. 

Welcome back to this series of conversations with artists and makers we’ve had the pleasure of working with at Fen Ditton Gallery. 

This month, gallery manager Hannah has been chatting to Kate Jones, one half of contemporary glass-making duo, Studio Gillies Jones. Working from their studio in the North York Moors, Kate and Stephen are partners in life and art, and their hand-blown, hand-engraved glass bowls and plates draw inspiration by their surroundings and the natural world.

As is the times we’re living in, this interview was recorded remotely and at the mercy of the internet.

Thank you for listening to this episode and thank you to Kate for making the time to talk to me. 

Plantlife is open at Fen Ditton Gallery until Sunday 15th November. A percentage of all sales will be donated to the Road Verges Project, run by conservation charity, Plantlife.

If you liked this interview, please do rate us and subscribe to the podcast to be the first to hear the latest episode.

Welcome back to our new podcast from Hannah, gallery manager at Fen Ditton Gallery, featuring her conversations with some of the artists and makers we have had the pleasure to work with.

This episode features a recent interview with Paul Hart, as we prepare for his next exhibition at Fen Ditton Gallery, Edgelands. For the past decade, the Fens have become the central focus of Paul’s work, resulting in a series of three major monographs ‘Farmed’, ‘Drained’ and now ‘Reclaimed’, which was published earlier this year, in the heart of lockdown. Edgelands features selected works from all three publications and opens later this month.

In the second episode in a new series of interviews with contemporary artists and makers, hosted by gallery manager, Hannah Munby, we have been lucky enough to catch up with textile artist and designer, Pauline Burbidge, whose 2sqm quilt, Starscape, will be exhibited as part of our Plantlife exhibition.

I hope you enjoy listening to this interview with Pauline and discovering more about the inspiration behind the quilt, her life and work on the Scottish Borders with her artist husband, Charlie Poulsen and what she’s been up to during the lockdown.

The gallery programme has developed over the two years since we opened to include an annual exhibition of artworks inspired by the natural world. Plantlife is the third in this series and explores the relationship that artists have with plants, their shape, colour and form and how that translates to the objects and images they create in response.