JORVIK Viking Centre, in York, is temporarily closed for the foreseeable future in response to Government advice relating to minimising the risk of Covid-19.
Today’s statement from the Coppergate visitor attraction said: “The health and wellbeing of our staff, volunteers and visitors is our number one priority and so we have decided this action is the best step to take at this moment in time.
“We will do all that we can to keep you updated on the situation through our website and social media channels.
“If you are a visitor, group leader or school booked with us over the next few weeks, our reservations team will be contacting you shortly to discuss what your options are with regards rescheduling, refunds and alternative experiences. We apologise for any inconvenience this closure may have caused.”
The statement continued: “We are owned by York Archaeological Trust, an educational charity with a mission of ‘Building Better Lives Through Heritage’; and so ensuring all of our audiences remain engaged with their past is one of our key aims.
“With this in mind, we are working hard behind the scenes to create some new digital content that we look forward to sharing with you in the coming days and weeks. Please keep checking our social media and website for details.”
Meanwhile, donations are being sought for Jorvik’s own future wellbeing. “If you would like to show your support and offer a donation to York Archaeological Trust to help assist us during this difficult time, it would be appreciated enormously,”
Donors are asked to click on a link at jorvikvikingcentre.co.uk. Alternatively, please email enquiries@yorkat.co.uk or call 01904 663000.
Nothing happening full stop. Now, with time on your frequently washed hands, home is where the art is and plenty else besides
Exit 10 Things To See Next Week in York and beyond for the unforeseeable future. Enter home entertainment, wherever you may be, whether still together or in isolation, in the shadow of the Coronavirus pandemic. From behind his closed door, CHARLES HUTCHINSON makes these suggestions.
Compiling your Desert Island Discs
CREATE your own Desert Island Discs and accompanying reasons, should you ever be called to answer Lauren Laverne’s questions on the BBC Radio 4 Sunday morning staple. Cue Eric Coates’s opening theme, By The Sleepy Lagoon, then your eight music choices, one book choice, one luxury.
Then play your list, but cutting it down to eight will be much harder than you first expect.
Make a cut-out of Lauren Laverne and do your own edition of Desert Island Discs
Desert Island Discs, suggestion number two
AND while you are about it, also take every opportunity to raid the Beeb’s Desert Island Discs back catalogue at BBC Sounds. Recommendations? Ian Wright, former footballer, turned broadcaster; Dr John Cooper Clarke, sage Salford stick insect and man of multitudinous words; Kathy Burke, Camden Town actress, comedian, writer, producer and director.
Make a timetable for the day
LIKE you would at work…though this timetable may not be possible, if indeed you are working from home.
Nevertheless, should the time need passing, allow, say, an hour for each activity, be it writing; reading; playing board games at the stipulated distances apart or card games, which can be done on your own, such as Patience; watching a movie, maybe a long-neglected DVD rescued from a dusty shelf; or whatever else is on your list.
“Puzzles are wonderfully relaxing yet keep the brain very active ,” says jigsaw enthusiast and York actor Ian Giles
Re-discover a childhood joy
PLUCKING one out of the air, how about jigsaw puzzles, a favourite of Mother Hutch and Granny Pyman before her.
“They are wonderfully relaxing yet keep the brain very active and there’s a feeling of creative satisfaction on completion,” recommends York actor Ian Giles, a devotee of such puzzle solving.
Singing
YORK singer Jessa Liversidge runs the Singing For All choir, as heard savouring I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing at Big Ian’s A Night To Remember at a packed York Barbican (remember those days?) on Leap Year Saturday.
Now, abiding by the Government’s Avoid Unnecessary Social Contact advice, to keep people singing, she is planning a range of online singing opportunities to suit not only her Singing For All and Easingwold Community Singers folks, but “any frustrated singers”. “Get in touch to find out how to join,” says Jessa, whose Twitter account is @jessaliversidge. She posts regularly.
Still on song: York singer Jessa Liversidge would like to reach the world to sing online
Lighting a candle
THE Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend Dr John Sentamu, is asking us all to place a lighted candle in our window at 7pm this coming Sunday “as a sign of solidarity and hope in the light of Christ that can never be extinguished”.
Baking
ALL those cookbooks that you bought for the nice pictures, but have never opened since, are bursting with opportunities to try out a new dish…if the supermarket shelves have not been emptied by 10 o’clock in the morning.
Why not raid the store cupboard too, check the dates (and the dried dates from last Christmas) and see if anything may come in handy. The likelihood is more and more hours will have to be spent at home; this is a chance to stretch your culinary skills.
Candlelight: The Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend Dr John Sentamu’s Sunday request
Gardening
HOPEFULLY, going for walks, maintaining a safe, previously anti-social distance, will still be a possibility, as advocated by Prime Minister Johnson, until otherwise stated.
If not, or if isolation is your way ahead, spring is in the air, gardens are turning green, the grass is growing. Gardening will surely be one of the unbroken joys of the ever-so-uncertain path that lies ahead.
Should you not have a garden, windowsills are havens for green-fingered pursuits: the seeds of much content.
And what about…
Podcasts. Books. More podcasts. More books. Box sets (yawn). Discovering a new band online, or maybe an old one you had long neglected. Writing a 10 Things like this one. Reading Bard of Barnsley Ian McMillan’s morning Tweets, or any time of day, in fact. Reading York musician and motivational speaker Big Ian Donaghy’s perennially positive thoughts for the day @trainingcarers, BIGIAN #DEMENTIAisAteamGAME. Watch Channel 4 News, especially Jon Snow, one bright-tied 72 year old who should defy the imminent Government “curfew” on the over-70s. (UPDATE: 19/3/2020. Or maybe not. Tonight he broadcast from his central London home.)
Poetry in motion: Ian McMillan’s joyous Tweets from his early-morning walks
And finally…
PLEASE stop flicking through social media at every turn…except for displays of the ever-so-British black humour in response to the new C-word.
Any suggestions for further editions of 10 Things To Do At Home And Beyond are most welcome. Please send to charles.hutchinson104@gmail.com
Hare, there and everywhere: Whitby sculptor Emma Stothard surrounded by her 366 Leaping Hares at Nunnington Hall. Picture: Anthony Chappel-Ross
WHITBY sculptor Emma Stothard’s wildlife work has
come on leaps and bounds over the past year for her latest show at Nunnington
Hall, Nunnington, near Helmsley.
To mark 2020 being a leap year, she has created a
one-off installation of 366 Leaping Hares, one for each day of the year, combining
sculptures,
illustrations and paintings, all for sale, on display amid the historic
collection in the Smoking Room of the National Trust country house.
Alas, Nunnington Hall is now closed with effect from this Wednesday (May 18), in response to Government advice on the Coronavirus pandemic. “The safety of our staff, volunteers and visitors is our priority,” says senior visitor experience officer Laura Kennedy.
Out of the top drawer: four of Emma Stothard’s 366 Leaping Hares emerging from the Smoking Room furniture at Nunnington Hall. Picture: Anthony Chappel-Ross
Let’s take a leap of faith, however, beyond the month of the Mad March Hare
and leap ahead to later in the year when hopefully you can still see 366
Leaping Hares. “The idea came first, doing something for 2020, for Leap Year,
rather than responding to a particular space, and I thought ‘let’s do 366
hares’,” says Emma. “Given that number, I knew some would need to be small,
with some bigger ones for contrast.”
Emma spent the past year creating each work, whether clay, wire or willow
sculptures, textiles hangs and cushions, drawings and ceramic tiles.
All have been individually hand-finished and dated by the sculptor,
not least a special Leap Day Hare to mark Saturday, February 29. “Each of those
366 days is going to be special for someone – a birthday, an anniversary, maybe
even a proposal of marriage on the Leap Day itself!” says Emma.
Emma Stothard working in her studio on her 366 Leaping Hares. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
She has responded too to Nunnington Hall’s “rich sense of history”. “Generations
have lived here, and you can feel their presence in the furniture, the
wallpaper and the textiles,” she says.
Consequently, Emma’s installation explores the array of materials that
embodies the ever-changing architecture and fabric of the historic building,
while experimenting with contemporary methods too in her hotchpotch of hares
that range from four-foot willow sculptures to four-inch miniature wire and
clay collectables.
Placed by Emma amid the historic collection, some are in full view; others are in the Smoking Room’s hidden spaces, nooks and crannies, even emerging from drawers or to be spotted under furniture.
Hare, there, everywhere, yes, Emma loves hares. “They’re just so
wonderful to see, aren’t they,” she enthuses. “I see them quite a lot when I’m
walking across the fields with my dog.
Going to the wire: A close-up of Emma Stothard’s handiwork as she makes a hare. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
“I love spotting them because they’re so elusive, so quick moving. They’re
magical to sculpt, and it’s the same with roe deer. I find them fascinating, beautiful,
because you can never get that close to them.
“We’re steeped in their history and it feels a real privilege to be in their presence when they run out of front of me.”
The large number of hares required was the green light for Emma to
broaden her working practices. “Like casting in bronze for the first time. I’d
been recommended by (the late) Sally Arnup to use Aron McCartney, who has a
metal-casting foundry at Barnard Castle,
but there never came a time to be able to cast anything until now,” she says.
“Now that I have, hopefully we can continue with the relationship.”
Taking shape: hares lined up for the next stage of sculptor Emma Stothard’s creative process. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
This is not the first time that Nunnington Hall has had an impact on
Emma’s work. “I first exhibited here in 2012 on the Rievaulx Terrace, when I
was also commissioned to make my first wire sculpture of a horse, which you can
still see here,” she says. “They like to move it around the gardens to keep
people on their toes.
“The wire horse was the first time I moved away from working in willow and
has led me to doing more public commissions in wire and now bronze wire. There
are 12 little galvanized ones in the new exhibition, coated in zinc in the
galvanizing process.”
Her outdoor willow sculptures, meanwhile, must be treated at regular
intervals. “Think of it as a seasonal chore in the garden,” she says. “Four times
a year; 50 per cent linseed oil; 50 per cent Turps substitute, which is a
traditional way to protect the strength of the willow.
“There’s no reason you can’t get ten years out of them if you look after
them properly, as linseed oil builds a layer of varnish, like shellac. So, remember,
four times a year, once a season.”
Start counting: 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6….366 Leaping Hares in Nunnington Hall’s Smoking Room. Hope to see them again some time in 2020. Picture: Anthony Chappel-Ross
In Staithes, you can spot Emma’s coral and coronation blue lobsters, her 9ft marine crustaceans first exhibited in the Sculpture By The Sea exhibition at the 2015 Staithes Festival of Arts and Heritage, and now she has made Withernsea Crab, a three metre-high sculpture of a brown crab for the Withernsea Fish Trail.
Emma also had been working on sculptures for
Jardin Blanc at May’s now cancelled 2020 Chelsea Flower Show, her fourth such
commission for the hospitality area, where Raymond Blanc is the executive chef.
More Emma work, by the way, can be found at Blanc’s Oxfordshire restaurant, the
Belmond Le Manoir au Quat’Saisons.
At the time of this interview, Emma was on the cusp of signing a contract to create seven life-size sculptures celebrating Whitby’s fishing heritage on the east side of the East Coat harbour. ”I’m hoping to have the first piece installed in time for the Whitby Fish & Ships Festival in May,” she said. The 2020 festival has since been cancelled, but look out for Emma’s sculptures at the 2021 event on May 15 and 16 next spring.
Looking ahead, where would Emma most love to exhibit? “My dream is to do an exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park [at West Bretton, near Wakefield], particularly as I did my teacher-training there at Bretton Hall,” she says.
One final question for Emma: is it true that boxing hares are not male rivals scrapping over a female in hare-to-hare combat but in fact, contrary to myth, jack versus jill (as hares were known). “That’s right: it’s male against female, and in my boxing-hare couples, it’s always a female fending off a male,” she says.
As and when Nunnington Hall re-opens, Emma Stothard’s installation 366 Leaping
Hares would then be on view and on sale until November 1.
The brochure cover for the now cancelled 2020 York Open Studios
NEXT month’s 20th anniversary York Open Studios has been called off and will not be rearranged for later in the year under the ever-darkening shadow of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Launched in 2001, when only 20 artists took part, Britain’s longest-running Open Studios event was to have showcased 144 artists and makers in 100 studios and workplaces over two weekends, April 18 and 19 and April 25 and 26.
The York Open Studios logo
Event chair Beccy Ridsdel says: “It’s been a very difficult decision to make, but the safety of visitors and participating artists is our priority, and with Coronavirus advice currently changing daily, we have sadly decided we are unable to proceed with this year’s event. However, York Open Studios will be running in 2021.”
Now the focus turns to still highlighting the work of the 144 artists, makers and designers, whose full details can be found at yorkopenstudios.co.uk and in the newly redundant 2020 brochure that can be found around the city.
“It’s been a very difficult decision to make,” says York Open Studios chair Beccy Ridsdel after Coronavirus forced the cancellation of next month’s event
“These small creative businesses are in
need of support during these volatile times, so please take time to take a look
at their work, websites and social media pages and contact them directly to
purchase works,” advise the event organisers.
On show and for sale would have been
ceramics, collages, digital works, illustrations, jewellery, mixed media, paintings,
prints, photography, sculpture, textiles and wood works.
HAS there ever been a more cynical, anti-arts, pro-insurance industry posh pals statement from Prime Minister Johnson than yesterday’s first Coronavirus daily briefing?
For one so notoriously careless with words, despite his love of a luxuriant lexicon, his careful avoidance of enforcing a shutdown of pubs, clubs, theatres etc, in favour of merely recommending “avoiding unnecessary social” interaction, effectively amounts to washing his and his Government’s hands of the future of one of the power houses of British life: the entertainment industry.
No formal closures means no chance of insurance pay-outs. In an already increasingly intolerant, Right-veering Britain, with its Brexit V-sign to Europe, could it be this is another way to try to suffocate and stifle our potent, provocative, influential, politically challenging, counter-thinking, all-embracing, anti-divisive, collective-spirited, often radical, always relevant, life-enriching, rather than rich-enriching, font of free expression, protest and empowerment?
Was this the day the music died?
History shows that the arts, the pubs, the theatres, the counter-culture, has always found a way to bite back, to fight back, often at times of greatest repression and depression. No Margaret Thatcher, no Specials’ Ghost Town.
We and our very necessary social interactions shall be back, hopefully after only a short break. Meanwhile, we are all in the hands of science, that equally progressive bedfellow to the arts.
Aesthetica Art Prize main prize winner: Rhea Storr’s A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message
RHEA Storr has won the
2020 Aesthetica Art Prize main prize at York Art Gallery for her work A Protest, A
Celebration, A Mixed Message.
The Emerging Prize was awarded to Chris Yuan for Counterfictions at Thursday evening’s award ceremony, hosted by York’s art and culture publication Aesthetica Magazine.
The winners were selected
from a shortlist of 18 artists for this annual competition, a first look into
new creative talent that showcases works that redefine the parameters of
contemporary art, with artists reflecting on the global situation.
“They offer us insight
into how we can encourage positive change,” says Aesthetica director Cherie
Federico. “The exhibited works explore themes such as race and identity,
technology, dataism, surveillance culture, geopolitics and the climate crisis.”
Mad Mauve, from Patty Carroll’s series Anonymous Women – Demise, one of the finalists in the 2020 Aesthetica Art Prize
British artist and filmmaker Rhea Storr’s A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message considers cultural representation, masquerade and the performance of black bodies.
Her winning work is concerned with
the ability of 16mm film to speak about black and mixed-race identities, using
moments of tension where images break down or are resistive. “Images that deny
access – fail to articulate what they represent or don’t tell the whole story –
provide significant starting points,” says Rhea, who began her PhD in media
and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, last year.
Through video, fiction, sound, design and performance, British artist Chris Yuan examines the messy web of human construction. His Emerging Prize winner, Counterfictions, constructs alternative realities of ecological collapse after the construction of President Trump’s border wall proposal.
A still from Chris Yuan’s Counterfictions, winner of the 2020 Aesthetica Art Prize Emerging Prize
His film weaves together information from
scientific facts and quotes from the president, as well as references to
literature and mythology.
The Aesthetica Art Prize provides a
platform for practitioners across the world, supporting and enhancing their
careers through global recognition and new opportunities.
“Since its
establishment 13 years ago, the prize has supported a vast number of artists
who have progressed in their careers, gaining funding, residencies and
commissions,” says Cherie. “Finalists have been featured in both group and solo
exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery, The Photographer’s Gallery,
V&A and MoMA, among others.”
Soft Takeover, by Andreas Lutz, among the 18 Aesthetica Art Prize finalists
This year’s shortlisted
final 18 artists were: Andreas Lutz (Germany); Andres Orozco (USA); Bill Posters (Barnaby Francis)
& Daniel Howe (UK); Chris Yuan (UK); Christiane
Zschommler (UK); Christopher Stott (Canada); Erik Deerly (USA); Fragmentin
(Switzerland); Emmy Yoneda (UK); Geoff Titley (UK); Kenichi Shikata (Japan);
Laura Besançon (UK); Natalia Garcia Clark (Mexico); Oliver Canessa (Gibraltar);
Patty Carroll (USA); Pernille Spence & Zoë Irvine (UK), Rhea Storr (UK) and
Stephanie Potter Corwin (USA).
“The Prize has two
layers: one dedicated to supporting artists; the other for presenting ideas to
global audiences to initiate change,” says Cherie. “Curating this year’s
exhibition was immeasurably satisfying and I’m privileged to have the
opportunity to see so much talent, drawing on both personal and universal
narratives.”
The Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition, featuring work by the winners and shortlisted artists, runs at York Art Gallery until July 5.
A still from BobSink, Pernille Spence and Zoe Irvine’s piece in the Aesthetica Art Prize final
Looking ahead, submissions are open for next year’s Aesthetica Art
Prize with a deadline of August 31 2020. To find out more, visit
aestheticamagazine.com/art-prize.
Dales Lambs, by Askrigg artist Piers Browne, at Pyramid Gallery, York
WENSLEYDALE artist
Piers Browne bathes his travel-inspired exhibition of paintings and etchings in
Full Sunlight at Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York.
Piers has put together a show that celebrates the bright light of Morocco, the South of France and the Italian Lakes, alongside landscapes in the Yorkshire Dales, where his home studio overlooks Askrigg.
“This rather special exhibition of
small spontaneous acrylics and watercolour crayon works is the result of happy, more frivolous days
abroad in sunshine,” says gallery owner Terry Brett. “The flow of inspiration
to paper is easy and the results are fresh and uncomplicated.
Peaceful Moment In The Sun, by Helen Martino
“Piers had great success with the
show Call Of Celtic Seas in Highgate, North London, this January and
regularly shows at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. He now finds
the painting of large canvasses to meet his high expectations more effort than
ever before. In contrast, creating the Full Sunlight collection has been a
pleasure for him.”
Piers, who has
exhibited at Pyramid Gallery for 25 years, is joined in the Full Sunlight show
by Holtby potter Hannah Arnup, Cambridge figurative sculptress Helen Martino
and Stroud glassmaker Fiaz Elson.
Hannah Arnup has been
making a new collection of sgrafitto decorated bowls and tripod vessels at her
studio in Ballimorris, County Clare, southern Ireland, and at the late Mick and
Sally Arnup’s former studio at Holtby, near York.
One of Hannah Arnup’s studio ceramics in her latest collection of tripod vessels and plates depicting the Yorkshire Wolds and gothic windows at Pyramid Gallery
Inherited by Hannah,
the Holtby studio has been re-opened to provide studio space for a group of
artists.
Terry Brett views Full
Sunlight as a “new start” to the gallery year after several challenges to
trading in York.
“Although we had our
best Christmas season in 38 years, there have been several challenges to the
first two months of the year,” he says.
Pyramid Gallery owner Terry Brett holds one of Piers Browne’s Full Sunlight works as he stands on the newly repaved Stonegate
“I think shoppers took
a break between New Year and Brexit [January 31], and then we had Stonegate being
completely repaved, along with severe storms, floods and the effects of
Coronavirus, which has affected tourism.
“Thankfully City of
York engineers and the contractors really worked hard and finished repaving our
end of the street four weeks ahead of schedule. I’m very grateful for their
efforts and very pleased with the result. Stonegate looks amazing now and the
slabs will be less likely to crack under the weight of delivery vehicles.”
Full Sunlight runs until April 26, open 10am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday, and 11am to 4.30pm on Sundays, including over Easter. More images of the work on display can be found at pyramidgallery.com.
York artist Sue Clayton with odd socks for World Down Syndrome Day’s event at Pocklington Arts Centre
YORK artist Sue Clayton will mark World Down Syndrome Day at Pocklington Arts Centre on March 21 as her Downright Marvellous At Large exhibition draws to a close that day.
Sue’s portraits of adults with Down
Syndrome and a giant pair of hand-knitted socks will provide the backdrop for
the 11am to 1pm event featuring children’s craft activities, music, cake and a
pop-up exhibition.
That show, This Is Me, will be running in
the arts centre studio during the final week of Downright Marvellous At Large
from March 14 to 21. On show will be self-portraits by members of Wold Haven
Day Centre, Pocklington, and Applefields Special School, York, created at workshops
led by Sue.
Sue put her exhibition together in honour
of her son, James, who has Down Syndrome and turns 18 this year. “Downright
Marvellous At Large is a true celebration of adults with Down’s at work and play,
and I hope it has made a real impression on visitors,” she says.
“I can’t wait to bring what has been a
really busy, successful exhibition to a suitable close in spectacular style with
a celebration to mark World Down Syndrome Day.
“Everyone is invited to come along,
enjoy some children’s crafts, a pop-up exhibition and a free piece of cake, as
well as a few surprises along the way”
Sue’s portraits, presenting the
“unrepresented and significant” social presence of adults with Down Syndrome, is
complemented by a giant pair of odd socks created using hand-knitted squares
donated by members of the public.
Many
people wear odd socks on World Down Syndrome Day, a global event that aims to
raise awareness and promote independence,
self-advocacy and freedom of choice for people with the congenital
condition.
Socks are used because their shape replicates the extra 21st chromosome
that people with Down Syndrome have.
Penguins at Scarborough? Anything is possible in a tourism poster
VINTAGE posters from a golden age of travel and
tourism will go on display at Woodend, The Crescent, Scarborough, on Saturday.
Dating from the 1910s to the 1960s, the posters
in Scarborough: A Day At The Seaside were issued by the-then
Scarborough Corporation’s tourism department and by rail companies operating in
the area.
Just the tonic: taking a holiday at Scarborough
On show from the coming weekend to April 26, they will
include such nostalgic images as a family of penguins seeking shade under a
parasol on Scarborough’s South Bay beach, alongside other bright and
idyllic scenes from a bygone era.
The prints are all taken from the 200-plus original
posters held in the Scarborough Collections, under the care of Scarborough
Museums Trust.
Scarborough Open Air Theatre…as it was in 1938
Andrew Clay, the trust’s chief executive, says: “This
will be a vibrant and colourful exhibition recalling an age when travelling by
train for a holiday at the seaside was the height of sophistication.”
Limited-edition prints of the posters on display will be available to
buy, all at the actual size.
Scarborough: the essence of coastal sophistication for courting couples in 1932
Woodend is open Mondays to Fridays, 9am to 5pm, and Saturdays and
Sundays, 10am to 4pm. Entry is free.
JONNY
Hannah’s Songs For Darktown Lovers is the Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields
Forever of exhibitions.
His
music-inspired Double A-sides show is split between two independent York
businesses: Lotte Inch Gallery, at 14 Bootham, and gallery curator Lotte’s
friends Dan Kentley and Dom White’s FortyFive Vinyl Café in Micklegate.
“Songs
For Darktown Lovers roots itself in all things music, and of course, love,”
says Lotte. “With Sinatra’s Songs For Swinging Lovers playing in the
background, this exhibition is an alternative Valentine for the creatively
minded.
“It’s
also a love letter to ‘Darktown’, a fictional place that Jonny refers to when
modern life becomes too much, a place with countless retreats, all revealed in
his book Greetings From Darktown, published by Merrell Publishers in 2014.”
One-of-a-kind
Scottish artist, designer, illustrator, lecturer and all-round creative spark
Hannah has exhibited previously at Lotte’s gallery, and she contacted him last
spring with a view to him doing a show for FortyFive.
“She
told me about this vinyl café because I like to go to charity shops and buy old
vinyl albums that I know will be awful but have striking covers, and then I
create my own newly reinterpreted vinyl sleeves from that,” says
culture-vulture Jonny, who attended the exhibition openings at FortyFive, where
he span vintage discs and played an acoustic guitar set with fellow artist Jonathan Gibbs, and at Lotte’s gallery amid the
aroma of morning-after coffee the next day.
Dance Stance Shoe, by Jonny Hannah
“What’s
been nice with this show is having the chance to do the more informal works for
the café and the formal pieces, such as hand-painted wooden cut-outs, for the
gallery.”
Happenstance
led to the Darktown Lovers theme. “Originally, I was going to do the show
before Christmas but time ran out, and then I thought Valentine’s Day would be
a good setting,” says Jonny.
“So, the
work is inspired by love songs and songs I love – as they’re not all love
songs. Country rock; a bit of classical; some French chanson; rockabilly. The
café exhibition has become this imagined playlist of vinyl that never will be,
but I’ve made it as the perfect playlist in my head.”
Growing
up in Dunfermline, before studying at Cowdenbeath College of Knowledge, Liverpool School of Art and the
Royal College of Art in London, Jonny recalls how he would pick out album
covers such as Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell.
“Everyone had that album in Dunfermline! Then, as I became older, and I
like to think more sophisticated, I was drawn to those wonderful Blue Note jazz
covers. I loved the 12-inch format; going to the record shop on Saturdays with
your pocket money was so exciting,” he says.
“Then it became CDs, and now downloads, but it’s great that vinyl has
made a comeback. My sons play music, but I’ve no idea what, because it’s all on
headphones. In fact, they complain I play my music too loud, which is surely
the wrong way round! But music should be a social thing, bringing you together
to see a band or enjoy a DJ set.
“Music that matters to you is as important as buying clothes or a pair
of shoes or the first time you saw a film like Kes. You remember the mood you
were in when you first heard it.”
Harmonium, by Jonny Hannah
Since
graduating in 1998, Jonny has worked both as a commercial designer and an
illustrator and printmaker. He lives by the sea in Southampton, where he
lectures in illustration at Southampton Solent University.
He boasts an impressive list of
exhibitions, advertising projects and clients, such as Royal Mail, the New York
Times, the Guardian and Conde Nast, and he has published a series of
“undeniably Hannah-esque” books with Merrell Publishers, Mainstone Press and
Design For Today.
You may recall his Darktown Turbo
Taxi solo exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield, in 2018,
and Darktown lies at the heart of his latest works too, but what is Darktown,
Jonny?
“It started off as my idea that it
was on the edge of any city that had a collection of odd characters, that had
places they frequented, maybe shops too,” he says.
“The inspiration came from Fats
Waller, the jazz singer, singing Darktown Strutter’s Ball, and C W Stoneking
replying Don’t Go Dancin’ Down The Darktown Strutter’s Ball. So, Fats is saying
‘go’; Stoneking is saying ‘don’t go’, and you think, ‘oh god, what should I
do?’!
“I decided I should go down there and
it’s become my alternative reality to my reality, as opposed to one of my great
hates: Star Wars fantasy.”
Defining that alternative reality,
Jonny says: “It has to be urban, ever since I left home in Dunfermline; it has
to have a lot of concrete, like there is in Southampton, my home now.
Pepe Le Moko by Jonny Hannah
“You’re cherry picking from what you
do and don’t want to experience, including shops, characters, streets.”
One street, in particular: Shirley
High Street, where Jonny lives in Southampton. “I take some of the characters
from there and mix them in my head with historical characters,” he says. “But
it all has to have that dollop of reality; if you go too far off on fantastical
bent, it isn’t Darktown.”
How did Jonny develop his distinctive
style? “You have to be patient, to make things work, for your style to appear.
I’d start from other artists and do my own versions, and after a decade, maybe
a couple of decades, I’ve found my own style with life’s experience feeding
into it: who you are, where you live. Whereas if you force it, that’s when it
becomes disingenuous.
“The more you do it, the more those
things inside you, what’s internal, becomes external and is expressed in your
art. That’s when you overtake your influences and your voice becomes the
significant voice, not the ones that inspired you.”
Jonny Hannah’s pricing policy is
admirable. “The idea of my work being available potentially to almost anyone is
exciting, so I’ve sold it for as little as £5. I price it for what I think it’s
worth; even if people say I undervalue it, I don’t think I do,” he says.
“I love the idea that my art is
distributed rather than being stuck in my lock-up, so the possibility of it
being someone’s home, office, or place of work, is important to me.
“I also like to think of myself as
being like a medium holding a séance, where my art is telling you about Fats
Waller and Jacques Brel, if you don’t know who Jacques Brel is; I’m contacting
their spirit, so I’m doing my job as a conveyor of popular culture that you can
connect with.”
Cakes & Ale Shoe, by Jonny Hannah
Jonny acknowledges the significance
of art that provokes and can change opinions in the world, “but I don’t need to
be one of those people”, he says. “I like the idea that art is entertaining.
I’ve always opted for entertainment, for enjoyment, for making people happy
with what I create. I have fun making them, and that notion of enjoyment is so
important to me.”
Jonny’s palette of colours exudes that element of enjoyment and fun too. “I don’t say that it’s specifically down to my colour blindness – I’m colour blind for green and blue – but I did start by using primary colours, then varying their brightness,” he says.
“You can try out endless variations and for me now it’s always blue, red, yellow, black and white and variations on that,” he says. “I’ve tried to be subtle with colour but it just doesn’t work for me!”
His Darktown Turbo Taxi, first exhibited
in his Yorkshire Sculpture Park show, and now acquired by Southampton Solent
University for permanent display there, is a case in point. “It was my agent’s
idea that I should buy this Saab 9-3 Turbo off Gumtree and paint it. Afterwards,
someone said ‘you can’t miss it in a car park’, and he was right! That notion
of not being able to miss it is part of my painting philosophy.”
That said, Jonny reveals: “I don’t
think too much. I say to my students thinking can be a bad thing. If you face a
blank canvas, then start creating, you come up with something better. Drawing
is a form of thinking in itself; you start drawing, you are thinking.
A Confederacy Of Dunces, by Jonny Hannah
“You find that certain things keep
coming back in your work, and what I know I can be guilty of is laziness, when
I need to find new inspiration or find new ways of expressing things. It’s
always that thing of challenging yourself creatively. There’s nothing worse
than repetition.”
After releasing his latest book, A
Confederacy Of Dunces, for The Folio Society, Jonny is now working on a commission
for Museums Northumberland on Northumberland folklore that will run from May to
September at Woodhorn Museum, Ashington, Hexham Old Gaol, Morpeth Chantry
Bagpipe Museum and Berwick Museum and Art Gallery.
He is also creating a set of woodcuts
for The Skids’ frontman Richard Jobson’s book of short stories set in an
imaginary bar in Berlin called The Alabama Song. “Richard lives in Berlin for
half the year now, and the woodcuts will go on show in an exhibition at events where
he’ll sing and I’ll play guitar,” says Jonny.
Also bubbling up is a book on the history
of pop culture, as his prodigious productivity continues unabated, with a
mischievous spirit at play. “When you’re young, you get told to tidy up, but as
you get older, mess is a creative thing,” reckons Jonny.
“If you’re creative, there’s an
immaturity to you that never goes away. You don’t have to tidy up until it really
does become too much!”
Jonny Hannah’s Songs For Darktown Lovers runs until March 7. Lotte
Inch Gallery is open Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, or by appointment
on 01904 848660. FortyFive Vinyl Café’s opening hours are Monday to
Friday, 9am to 6pm; Saturday, 10am to 6pm; Sunday, 10am to 5pm.
