Monthly Meeting Talks
6.30 for 7pm prompt start upstairs at
The Bulls Head, Lonsdale Road, Barnes SW13
Please buy your drinks at the bar first. A £5 contribution towards the speaker’s expenses and equipment is gratefully received.
Monday 15th January
Paul Davis
MR CHELSEA
Best known for the wholesale rebuilding of Chelsea (including the much-praised Duke of York Square) Paul tells the story of an architect’s life, from humiliation at school as a boy, through travels as a young man inspired by artists and architect heroes, to designing stage sets, recording studios and houses for Roxy Music, Duran Duran and Beatle Ringo Starr.
Battles with planners led to the successful reinvention of hundreds of historic buildings, earning Paul the nickname ‘Mr Chelsea’, before he moved on to award-winning projects in the Far East. Throughout his career (and this book) Paul’s passion for placing people at the heart of architecture shines through.
PAINTING NATURE
Sara will talk about her method of capturing nature using a grisaille underpainting to establish tone and composition before gradually building blocks of colour in oil.
Sara grew up in Barnes and after completing a Foundation at The Central School of Art and a BA Hons in fashion textiles at Winchester School of Art, Sara pursued a career as a textile designer. Clients included Burberry, M & S, Top Shop and House of Fraser. In the late 1990's Sara moved on from textiles to painting murals and decorating. Clients began to request help with the design of their homes, so Sara gradually built a reputation for interior design and her business Inspired Interiors was born.
Meantime, Sara painted whenever possible and regularly sold her work. Wanting it to be more full time, she joined Wimbledon Art Studios in 2018. Since then, she has sold successfully at Wimbledon Art Fairs and Brixton Urban Art Fair. She also enjoys teaching drawing and painting from her studio.
Monday 12th February
Sara Vertigan
REFUSE TO RE-USE
Known to Barnes residents for his archive project at Olympic Records, Roger works mainly in sculpture and installation art. He is interested in the history, use and cannibalisation of found objects - often presented as part of an immersive installation.
Roger will talk about his residency at the Townmead Road Recycling Centre in 2013. It is a fascinating insight into the workings of a recycling centre which led to two shows at Chelsea School of Art and Design as part of his BA in Fine Art. He will also talk about other residencies including a Mannequin factory that was closing down in North London, a residency in Elsewhere - a 70 year old thrift store in Greensboro North Carolina- and his last 5 years of the Olympic Studios archive project .
Monday 11th March
Roger Miles
SCULPTURES OF JUGS AND PAINTINGS OF SCULPTURES OF JUGS
Barnes resident Bruce McLean is a Scottish sculptor, filmmaker, and painter. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1961 to 1963 and at Saint Martin's School of Art from 1963 to 1966, where he and others rebelled against what appeared to be the formalist academicism of his teachers, including Anthony Caro and Phillip King. In 1965, he abandoned conventional studio production in favour of impermanent sculptures using materials such as water, along with performances of a generally satirical nature directed against the art world. When, in 1972, he was offered an exhibition at the Tate Gallery, he opted for a 'retrospective' he titled King for a Day, which lasted only one day. From the mid-1970s, while continuing to mount occasional performances, McLean has turned increasingly to painting, sculpture, and film work. In 1985, McLean won the John Moores Painting Prize. Since retiring from his professorship of painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, he has taken on a large studio in the west of London, where he has been making increasingly large paintings and sculptural film works.
Monday 15th April
Bruce McLean
CERAMICS AND PAINTING
Michaela is a painter and ceramicist. Her work features people and the natural world with a strong narrative vein running through the ceramics.
Pattern and folkloric elements are also a component as is the Islamic origin of the maiolica glaze she uses.
Michaela studied at Chelsea School of Art, l'Ecole des Beaux Arts and more recently Turps Banana.