Tag: Barbara Hepworth

Hepworth Wakefield & Arrive In Edinburgh, 16 August 2018

We set off from Noddyland quite early, 9:30ish, as we were keen to get to Edinburgh well before dark.

As planned, we stopped off at the Hepworth Wakefield to see the Lee Miller & Surrealism In Britain exhibition there, which was good.

We also took some lunch at the Hepworth Wakefield cafe; a much better option than a soul-destroying service station experience.

The traffic wasn’t too bad and/but we arrived in Edinburgh (or should I say Leith?) a little later than planned; just before 19:00.

We quickly went out to get our Leith bearings & some breakfast things.

In search of coffee, we accidentally found Sketchy Beats Cafe, a sort of grunge music and art bar run by a warm and friendly chap named Danny. He explained that Sketchy Beats is not really a coffee shop and suggested that we get our provisions at Tesco instead, which we did.

Danny also suggested that we return later to see the jam, which we also did. In fact, Danny seemed quite keen for me to bring my baritone ukulele with me and join in the jam, which I guessed might be a less wise idea.

We had a super tapas meal at a tapas place, surprisingly named Tapa, just three or four minutes walk from our apartment. Very rich but delicious tapas there, with a lot of iberico variants on offer

We did go back to Sketchy Beats after dinner, which was fun. The music was all very garage/grunge; highly amplified and rock style. I’m not sure that the dulcet tones of Benjy The Baritone Ukulele would have done the business there.

Daisy and I pulled out just after an explicit, dirgy number about mother-f***ing which might even have made Tarantino blush.

Thus we had a reasonably early night despite us ploughing the grimy lows of the Leith nightlife.

We’d arrived.

You can view all of our pictures from this Edinburgh trip by clicking the picture (Flickr album link) below:

P1020573

Frank Auerbach and Barbara Hepworth, Tate Britain, 12 October 2015

This was another evening opportunity to see a preview of a Tate exhibition – in this instance the new Frank Auerbach exhibition.

Janie and I were both working that day and arranged to meet at the Tate Britain itself – I got there well early and was glad of the good weather for hanging around early evening outdoors.

Although our main purpose was the Auerbach, we judged that those rooms would be quite busy at first, so went and looked at the Barbara Hepworth first, which we both enjoyed very much.

Indeed the early part of the Auerbach seemed very dark after the Hepworth, but Auerbach is one of those artists who (in my view) got more interesting as he matured, so the exhibition grew on me as we went through the rooms.

We enjoyed a drink and some nibbles in the members’ room after we’d had our fill of exhibits. Well worthwhile, both exhibitions.

A good, informative Tate stub on Barbara Hepworth – here…

…and similarly a good stub on the Auerbach – here.

Battersea Park Open Air Sculpture Exhibition, Spring/Summer 1966

It is one of my earliest memories. All I remember is having so much fun, climbing in, out, around, and through sculptures.

Playing hide and seek by dint of the artworks.

In my memory it was a Henry Moore exhibition, but on discovering a little pile of long-forgotten photographs (fiendishly mixed up with some of my parents’ late 1980s prints), followed by a little on-line research, I learn that it was a much wider exhibition, organised by the Greater London Council (GLC), that Battersea Park affair in 1966.

Not only Henry Moore & Barbara Hepworth but also F. E. McWilliam, Bernard Meadows, Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Anthony Caro, Hubert Dalwood, William Turnbull, John Hoskin, Brian Wall, Phillip King, David Hall, David Annesley, Kim Lim and David Smith…apparently. I doubt if the three-going-on-four-ish version of me took all of that in.

The exhibition was thoroughly reviewed by Norman Lynton in The Guardian that May…

Norman Lynton on Battersea SculptureNorman Lynton on Battersea Sculpture Sat, May 21, 1966 – 7 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

…and by Nigel Gosling in the Observer the next day:

Gosling On Battersea ParkGosling On Battersea Park Sun, May 22, 1966 – 24 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

My guess is that we, the Harris family, ventured to the exhibition the following weekend, the late May Bank Holiday, although it’s possible that it was later that summer, perhaps the August Bank Holiday.

The reason I suspect it was the earlier holiday is because the photos look to me as though dad wanted those pictures from that exhibition to use as examples for his photographic studio classes that spring and summer.

Dad’s shop and studio was in St John’s Hill, Battersea.

Such a photogenic exhibition up the other end of Battersea would have been too good an opportunity to miss in those days, when (as I understand it) the studio was still a key part of dad’s business.

Anyway, that was dad’s job. My job was having fun.

The “pictures for the studio” theory would also explain why I hadn’t seen the pictures before now. Dad probably rescued those prints from the shop when he closed down the shop in the mid 1980s and the packet got mixed up then with mum and dads holiday snaps from the late 1980s. The negatives, sadly, seem lost.

Still, it was quite extraordinary seeing these pictures when I discovered them in March 2021, nearly 55 years after the event.

I have such a strong memory of having a wonderful time that day in Battersea Park and the pictures bear that out.

I have a feeling that mum didn’t really approve of this “let the children play” style exhibition. I can imagine there was a view in a fairly large section of the public that such sculptural works are to be revered rather than toyed with by children.

Mum doesn’t look 100% sure. I look sure.

But I think such exhibitions are a superb idea.

Personally, I have always been drawn to sculpture. Perhaps my fondness for sculpture would have happened anyway. But something tells me that my love of sculpture was forged that day in Battersea Park, which I so clearly remember as being just the most amazing fun.

You can see all the pictures (there are only eleven, most are shown in this piece) in Flickr by clicking here or below:

1966 Battersea Park Sculptures 07