Paule Vézelay

The new Wigan public library in the town centre opened a few weeks ago. One new development is that there are a number of prints from the Council’s art collection on display. There are works by a number of well known artists including David Hockney and Victor Passmore. But one I spotted and that I quite liked was by an artist I’ve never heard of – Paule Vézelay. There was an information panel next to the painting with some details on the artist, including a brief biography.

 

Paule Vézelay – A Group of Five Contrasted Forms (1970)

With a name like this my first impression that the artist was male and was probably French. In fact she was a British woman born in Bristol in 1892 as Marjorie Watson-Williams.

Although I’d never heard of her before seeing the print in the library, she was well known enough to have her self portrait displayed in the national Portrait Gallery in London.

She studied art in London and originally was a figurative painter, but moved to France in 1926 where she was influenced by abstract art and became one of the first British artists to adopt the style, exhibiting with Hans Arp and Wassily Kandinsky in Milan in 1938. I guess she changed her name in an attempt to gain credibility, which wouldn’t have been easy for a woman who was also English when the art world was dominated by men from the continent.

She returned to England at the outbreak of the Second World War. The Tate held a retrospective exhibition of her work in 1983 and own a number of her paintings, reliefs and sculptures covering the range of her work, including some figurative paintings from early in her career

The Bathers (1923)

The print on display in the library is a later work – one of a series of silkscreen prints produced in collaboration with Tanagra and Curwen between 1970 and 1976 (I can’t find anything out about them despite Googling them, but I guess they must be established silkscreen printers). Although it is obviously an abstract design, some of the objects depicted could be taken for  human figures and trees, depending on how you look at them.  Some of her earlier abstract works are more complex, with more diffuse shapes and bright colours. She also continued to incorporate figurative elements within her work after she adopted the abstract style.

Five Nudes (1931)

However, quite a lot of her paintings, particularly after she left France, are composed of fairly simple shapes, carefully arranged and with a relatively limited palette.

Eight Forms and Three Circles  (1959)

As well as the Tate website, there’s a good selection of images of her work here.

The Spaghetti Western Orchestra at the Lowry

On Friday I went to the Lowry in Salford to watch a performance by the Spaghetti Western Orchestra. They’re a group of Australian Musicians who’d featured as the novelty act at the Proms last year. I don’t normally watch the proms, but caught their performance by accident when it was shown on BBC4 one Friday Evening and enjoyed it. I’m quite a fan of Spaghetti Westerns – especially Sergio Leone‘s “Dollars Trilogy” and Once Upon a Time in the West (one of my favourite films) and their scores composed by Ennio Morricone and enjoyed their novel interpretation of the music

I got the ticket for the Salford show as a Christmas present from my daughter and I went along with her and my son. It took place in the Quay Theatre, the smaller of the two auditoria at the Lowry and started at 5 p.m. – almost a matinee performance. There was another taking place later in the evening but it had sold out and so they scheduled a second show at the earlier time, which also sold out. I guess their tour had been set up earlier last year when they weren’t well known and so they went for the smaller venue, and their performance at the Proms has boosted their popularity and ticket sales.

They’ve also appeared on Later with Jools Holland.

The show is a really a musical comedy act rather than a concert. The ensemble are made up in very stylised make-up as stock characters such as a bank teller and bar tender. The only one who speaks is the “Storyteller” who provides a running commentary and interacts with the audience. The show is slickly put together and choreographed. Based around Morricones’s music they incorporate comedy, mime, set pieces from Westerns such as a bar room brawl and unusual and novelty instruments such as a one stringed home made fiddle, beer bottles and a Theremin. A major feature of the act is the use of sound effects, some tunes played entirely using various movie “Foley” effects. This is consistent with the Spaghetti Western tradition as Morricone incorporated sound effects into his scores. One highlight was the  “gunfight soundscape” which included the use of cornflakes.

But the group are also very competent, trained musicians, and this comes across in their act. Between them they played double bass,  trumpet, bassoon, keyboards, vibraphone, mandolin, drums and percussion as well as the assortment of miscellaneous objects.  I was particularly impressed with their jazz rendition of Chi Mai, which started with the band playing on beer bottles

Audience interaction was encouraged and it was great fun to join in with a vocal interpretation of the Good the Bad and the Ugly during their encore.

After the show, as is usually the case at concerts, there were CDs for sale and two of the band, Graeme Leak (the Bankteller) and Jess Ciampa (the Lieteller) were available to sign the sleeves. I managed to snap them using the camera on my phone.

By the sea at Sunderland

Mention Sunderland and most people will probably picture a northern industrial town struggling (like most northern towns) to overcome the north-south divide and bias towards the south of England, or a middling Premier League football club with quite a nice stadium. They wouldn’t be wrong. But there’s more to Sunderland than that. Although it’s on the coast, most people are probably not aware that it’s quite a pleasant sea-side town as well with a beautiful sandy bay extending across the Roker and Seaburn districts, which are just north of the city centre.

The bay extends for a mile or so from the old port in the south at the Roker end to the start of the cliffs at the north of the Seaburn stretch of the bay. There’s a promenade extending along the full length of the beach which has a blue flag status. When the tide goes out there’s a large, flat sandy each. I reckon the sea must be pretty cold all year round – it is the North Sea after all – but it’s popular with surfers as well as children who want to splash in the water (and some adults too).

There are the usual typical features of the English seaside with a stretch of cafes, restaurants and fish and chip shops, and a small funfair. The buildings on the promenade at the southern Roker end are mainly hotels and guest houses while the north end of Seaburn is a little more up market, dominated by housing.

The painter L S Lowry, who hailed from Manchester, used to come up to Seaburn for holidays in the Seaburn hotel – now long gone and replaced by a block of flats -  and there are a number of his paintings and drawings featuring the sea and promenade. Some examples can be seen here.

Pencil drawing by L S Lowry “A Promenade” (1960) Source here

We were up there earlier this week visiting family and, as we usually do when we travel up to Sunderland, we found some time to have a walk along the promenade and on the beach. It was a cold day with a grey sky, but it’s always nice to take in some sea air. The sea was fairly rough and there were a number of surfers  riding the waves. We also saw three very hardy children dressed in their swimming costumes braving the cold water.

We’ve walked along the promenade and beach a few times during previous visits during the spring and summer where I’d taken a number of photos.

Roker beach during the summer

Looking out to sea from Seaburn promenade

Looking towards the promenade from the end of the pier on a summer evening.

Fishermen on the pier at sunset on a summer evening

After eating some fish and chips for our dinner (or lunch if you’re from the south) we drove a mile further north along the coast, past Whitburn up to Souter Lighthouse where we parked up and went for a walk along the cliffs. The land along the coast from Whitburn up to South Shields is now owned by the National Trust and has been preserved from development, creating a coastal park making it possible to walk all along the coast from the old port at Sunderland to South Shields.

At one time much of this land was industrial with Souter lighthouse sandwiched between the Marsden pit to the south and Marsden Village, built to house the miners, to the north. All of this is long gone. The pit was closed in the late sixties and it was demolished son after along with the village.

Today there’s a pleasant walk along the cliffs from which there are some stunning views of the rocky coastline and out to sea.

The sky was grey and dramatic and the sun kept breaking through the clouds lighting up the crests of the waves and creating some interesting effects.

A cold day in Howth

Over the past 7 or 8 years I’ve been over to Dublin several times on business. Whenever I travel for work I usually try to add a day or two on to the trip so that I can take a look around, so I’ve got to know Dublin fairly well. During a recent visit I decided to explore a little further afield so got the DART train from Connolly Station out to Howth (pronounced so that it rhymes with “both”), a small town on the coast about 9 miles north east of the city centre overlooking Dublin Bay.

The town nestles below Howth head, a large land mass dominating the north side of the bay – you can see it from the ferry sailing in from England – which is connected to the rest of Dublin via a narrow strip of land.

Its a pleasant little town with good sea views and a harbour full of yachts. I’m told that there are good views to be had from Howth head, but, although it’s only a few miles walk around the headland, it was a cold day when there was a freezing wind blowing in from the Irish Sea, so I restricted my visit to having a walk around the harbour.

There’s a large rocky island just off shore known as “Ireland’s Eye”.  From the beach I could see a Martello tower and another building – probably a church. There are boat trips out to the island during the summer, but not on a cold winter’s day.

Martello towers are small defensive forts that were built around the coast of Britain and Ireland from the Napoleonic Wars onwards. Their design was  inspired by a round fortress, at Mortella (Myrtle) Point in Corsica. There are several around Dublin Bay including one at Sandcove, in the northern suburbs of Dublin, which featured in the opening chapter of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and which today is a museum dedicated to the writer.

It’s still a working port, and standing on the harbour wall I watched a small fishing boat heading out into the bay, past Ireland’s Eye.

There are a number of seafood restaurants lining one side of the harbour. It was too late for lunch and too early for an evening meal but I popped into one where I bought some native oysters – the first I’ve eaten. A little pricey, but worth it.