Sep 5, 2010

My Day at St. Barnabas - Alison Brown

It is a pity that St Barnabas Church is not open longer - for even the period on the guide to the Art Trail as they have some very interesting pictures.

When I arrived at about 3.15pm on Saturday , there was a bride, family and photographer at the gate. The Trail Guide said their exhibits were open until 4pm, so I assumed they were part of an installation. When I got inside the Church, the Church was half full, the organ was playing and at the back the vicar was robed talking to 2 other people. I said I must have misread the trail guide, but the vicar told me I had 10 minutes to go round, and a very nice woman ensured I saw everything displayed in the Church and missed nothing as the congregation looked on rather startled at this interesting beginning to the wedding service.

I would have loved more time to study the Emma Scutt portraits that were powerful although simple and quite primitive. They had echoes of Stanley Spencer and were of local people, so I recognised some.

Sean Pines' fashion photography was interesting - a and reminded me of a mixture of Aubrey Beardsley and Picasso's dancers

Apparently next weekend there will be a workshop on immigration based on the paintings of "Does Your Mother Come from Ireland?". They were powerful and very sad and I would have loved longer to look at them. There are also some photographs of animals, that I had no time to see properly in my 10 minutes I had to leave before the wedding, so missed looking at the Lano oil works or the Art of Silver.....

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