Saturday 12th June – Saturday 10th July
Open Wednesday – Saturday

Private View at Wingfield House, BA14 9LF: Friday 23rd July, 6 – 8pm
Clarissa Galliano will be giving a talk about her work at 7pm
To reserve your place for this event please contact Evie at the gallery.

Show of contemporary botanical drawings by Clarissa Galliano with sculptural mixed media jewellery by Zoe Arnold and Suzanne Potter and ceramics by Robyn Hardyman.

‘Formations’ refers to each artist’s interest in the structure of growth.  Clarissa Galliano specialises in large scale charcoal botanical drawings.  Her captivating observations of British flora celebrate the intricacies of natural structure and form. Material and conceptual formations are explored in Zoe Arnold’s mixed media and precious metal pieces, which are as much individual works of art as they are wearable sculpture.  Suzanne Potter creates by hand, working intuitively, mixing flat shapes with constructed hollow forms, based on simple geometry and graphic, minimal aesthetics.

Clarissa Galliano is drawn to the architectural aspects of flowers and plants; these drawings do not solely highlight the decorative. The images are robust renditions of her chosen natural specimens, born out of intense focus. Each drawing becomes a journey of its own, slowly revealing the twists and turns of stems, leaves and petals through the artist’s distinctive construction of charcoal marks.

These botanical ‘portraits’ seem to explore and explode the abstract qualities of plants with a sculptural approach. The single stems or flower groups are presented in a suspended form so we are confronted with their inner workings, faults and folds.  Their monumentality gives them a commanding presence yet they preserve a certain surprise and intimacy, like a giant pressed stem revealed from between a press.
Read more about the artist. 

A catalogue of Clarissa’s works will be available to order in digital or printed form and a set of limited edition postcards available to buy.

Zoe Arnold studied jewellery design at Central Saint Martins in London, graduating with a first class Honours degree in 2003, and has gone on to establish herself as an independent artist jeweller. Her pieces are in many prestigious collections, including the Crafts Council and the V&A.

Known for their individuality and wit, her works are made with a varied use of materials and techniques, a love of fine craftsmanship and traditional hand skills, combined with storytelling and poetic imagery. Each piece made by Zoe has meaning to be unravelled, but never fully explained. Her work is often inspired by her poetry which is presented with the work.  Like Clarissa’s drawings, Zoe’s works of art go beyond the descriptive into the suggestive.  Sentimental jewellery this is not; it is everyday emotion, or subtle memory, worked into objects.Read more about the artist. 

Suzanne Potter is a jeweller, maker of small objects and solo twin. Her absorbing collection of work centres on the notions of twinness and identity. Suzanne’s spare and thought provoking pieces celebrate being one half of two, and collectively commemorates her lost sister, marking a new path of innate enquiry, and emotive subject matter.  These designs echo each other, and refer to the parallel worlds of biology and botany – connections, vessels, cells, seeds, reflections, and shadows.

Seeing beauty and design potential in often-overlooked corners of the natural world, Suzanne Potter has a creative eye for material combinations in her jewellery. Cut branches from her garden are as precious as traditional high status materials – even more so, as no two are the same, and once cut, they’re gone. The twigs in these pieces are from Philadelphus shrubs. After being stripped of their outer bark and allowed to dry out, they are painted and the surface rubbed back to create visual texture. Suzanne then attaches coloured laminate end caps to punctuate and define their form. Read more about the artist. 

New to the gallery for June, Robyn Hardyman creates beautifully elegant porcelain vessels in an a harmonious range of glazes, inspired by the quiet balance of oriental ceramics.  Read more about the artist.