RAG Annual 24. A new exhibition at the iconic Polish Centre’s (POSK) gallery in Hammersmith featuring 33 artists showing individual works of quality and diversity. Free Entry. Open: Sun 3 – Thur 14 Nov. Daily 10am-5pm. Private View: Thur 7 Nov, 6-8pm. Artists’ Talk: Sat 9 Nov, 2.30-4.30pm.
RAG Annual 24. A new exhibition at the iconic Polish Centre’s (POSK) gallery in Hammersmith featuring 33 artists showing individual works of quality and diversity. Free Entry. Open: Sun 3 – Thur 14 Nov. Daily 10am-5pm. Private View: Thur 7 Nov, 6-8pm. Artists’ Talk: Sat 9 Nov, 2.30-4.30pm.
Annual Exhibition 2024
'RAG Annual 24' presents the work of 33 artists at the Polish Centre (POSK), 238-246 King St, Hammersmith, London W6 0RF.
The show is a stunning collection that reflects the way practitioners work, juxtaposed against the style or discipline of other members. Self-selected and without theme, the images give a broader appreciation of the current concerns of individual artists.
Following last year’s successful ‘Borders’ show, also at POSK, this year there is an Artists talk on Saturday 9 November. Everyone is welcome to join the discussion, to gain richer insights into an artist’s practice.
Free entry: Open daily: Sunday 3 – Thursday 14 November 2024, 10am-5pm
Private View: Thursday 7 November, 6-8pm
Artists’ talk: Saturday 9 November, 2.30-4.30pm
RAG shows are both visually exciting and thought-provoking. Once again designed and hung by RAG member John Potter (ex-RA exhibitions), there are framed works, canvases, assemblage, combined media and sculpture for sale. Join us at POSK to see and discuss the art. Relax in the lovely Maja Café with delicious coffee, cakes and Polish dishes.
Throughout the exhibition there will be postings of 'RAG Annual 24' on Instagram @riversideartistsgroup.
For more information please contact: Felicity Swan: Tel 07736 101503, felicity@felicityswan.com
Exhibiting artists:
Mike Abrahams, Susan Bazin, Peter Blegvad, Lynne Beel, Natalia Bobrova, Joanna Brendon MBE, Grazyna Cydzik, G. Calvert, Jim Cox, Brian Deighton, Josie Deighton, Emma Davis, Shona Elrick, Chloe Fremantle, Máire Gartland, Saadah George, Sarah Granville, Martin Ireland, Janey Hagger, Buffy Kimm, James Lawson, Seil Lien, Marianne Moore, Jane Oldfield, John Potter, Ryszard Rybicki, Felicity Swan, Sanja Stamenic, Celia Toler, Astrite Vula, Greta Wakil, Miles Watson, Stephen Williams.
For sales of work, please contact artists directly via the artists section of the website.
RAG, established in 1986 at Riverside Studios, is a diverse group of up to 40 practicing artists. These include established practitioners, fine art lecturers as well as newcomers and professionals from related disciplines. RAG’s membership uses a wide range of disciplines to develop and progress ideas and produce work that spans contemporary visual art forms. With notable past national and international exhibitions, RAG continues to show regularly in real life, alongside an active online presence. RAG is a not-for-profit organisation.
The Polish Social and Cultural Centre (POSK) in Hammersmith, London, was founded by the Polish community in Great Britain on the initiative of Professor Roman Ludwik Wajda (1901-1974). In 1964, the first public meetings began to take place, aimed at informing the Polish community about the idea of building the Centre. POSK's motto is “For the benefit of Poland and free Poles”. It is the main centre for all Poles in the UK and was created, amongst other things, to save and maintain the Polish Library (established 1942) in London. POSK hosts numerous exhibitions, meetings, concerts, film screenings and theatre performances.
For more information please see: posk.org/en/
Keith Ball RIP
Keith Ball and I showed over twenty times together from 1987 – 2005.
He was a founder member of RAG in 1986 and willingly contributed his many talents in setting up RAG’s Exhibitions. He became a curator of unusual spaces until he set up the Commercial Gallery in Commercial Street, East London and then under the name of Commercial Too before the gallery finally closed. As a writer and thinker he founded Everything magazine along with another RAG member Steve Rushton which at first was supported by RAG and then, having managed to gain funding, became an independent and important art publication.
He was a lovely and kind man with a wry and informed sense of humour but in some other ways could be difficult to get to know. However I did get to know him and was very glad of it. He was always ready to make fun of the hypocritical art establishment and was part outsider and part insider - a position he loved to be in.
When I went to his wake I realised the extent of his very diverse friendships which included people from most walks of life, most of whom I had never met or knew. This was reflected in his diverse art practices which were consistently underpinned by a keen intellect and understanding of life, the world and indeed Everything.
His favourite strap line was: “One day this may all make sense – we can only hope not".
Keith was born 16 October 1955 in Cottingham near Hull. He was the youngest of three children, with an older brother, Ralph, and sister Lesley. He grew up in Brough, a village 10 miles west of Hull. Stephen Williams
Image: Remedy (Single Chamber) 1993
A large number of used (Rosehip) teabags were used to build, inside a wet and cold cellar, a much larger than life, super-sized teabag which was plunged in a puddle outlined by a linear metal strip on the floor. Simple measures – a change of function, scale and the multiplication of the one-fold element, created an unexpected context which brought to mind the inconsistencies frequently met whilst looking inside a logically shaped structure of everyday life. The impossibility of measures taken by people to ward off the inevitability of death – the large teabag in the cellar being also reminiscent of a house or a tombstone. Professor Andrzej Syska
Do you Speak English: International Artists Centre, Poznan, Poland, a group show curated by Stephen Williams with works by: Keith Ball, Almuth Tebbenhoff, Peter Kennard, Katharine Meynell, Helen Underwood and Stephen Williams
Creative Mile, the Brentford Art Trail
RAG members: Máire Gartland and Natalia Bobrova
Two RAG artists are participating in the Creative Mile, the Brentford Art Trail in collaboration with the Thames Festival. Natalia Bobrova is presenting work related to the Thames and water in the Musical Museum. Máire Gartland will be showing paintings and includes glass clay assemblage found materials and text that represent her journey over 26 years in her studio that she will be leaving at the end of September. You can find her in Studio 8, London Museum of Water and Steam.
Image: Runaway by Máire Gartland, oil on canvas, 50 x 50cm
From: 1-3 September 2023
Various location throughout Brentford, West London
Creative Mile
Grazyna Cydzik
RAG member: Grazyna Cydzik
Grazyna's work Displaced/Found 2 was sold in the Royal Academy London, Summer Exhibition 2023. The artwork is from her series Displaced – objects collected at various locations along the River Thames Foreshore at low tide.
From: 13 June- 20 August 2023
Royal Academy, London
Royal Academy
From 6-10 September 2023 her painting Still Swimming which alludes to issues around migration is part of the SwissArtExpo and will be displayed in digital form on a screen in Main Station, Zurich, Switzerland. And from 9 September - 14 January 2024 By Torchlight 2 from her Series Displaced will be exhibited in the 170th Annual Open Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol.
Kingston Artists Open Studios (KAOS) group show
RAG member: Felicity Swan
Felicity is participating in the Kingston Artists Open Studios (KAOS) group show at the Rose Theatre, Kingston Upon Thames this autumn. The title responds to the mythology of the Lotus Tree, considered to be sacred in many cultures as a symbol of purity and enlightenment. However, in Homer's Odyssey its fruit was the only food eaten by islanders called the Lotus-Eaters (Lotophagi). Eating the fruit induced a pleasant drowsiness and caused people to forget their friends and homes, thus losing their desire to return home in favour of living in idleness.
Image: In search of the Lotus Tree, 2023, Oil on canvas, 100 x 100cm
From: 4 October-4 November 2023
Rose Theatre, 24-26 High Street, Kingston Upon Thames, London KT1 1HL
Kingston Artists Open Studios
Rose Theatre
Sena Shah
RAG member: Sena Shah
Sena has had a busy summer with work selected for the following shows and events:
Riverfront Art Trail - sponsored by the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and delivered by Riverside Studios. He is one of six prize winners selected to have art on the river front August - October 2023
Two artworks displayed in the Riverside Studios Summer Exhibition August - October 2023
Work accepted into The Other Art Fair, Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London E1 6QL 12-15 October 2023
Accepted to exhibit in the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea 19-22 October 2023
In June 2023, Sena was accepted into Artcan and was invited to create a bee postcard for the Bees for Development Summer Show and Auction 14 June 2023
From 4 May - 4 June 2023 his work featured in the Metre Square Exhibition at Tom Cox Gallery
Reflections at the Anna Steinhouse Fine Art Gallery
RAG member: Lucille Dweck
Anna Steinhouse Fine Art Studio, 41 Regent’s Park Road, London NW1 7TU
Coastal Currents Arts Festival, Burton Gallery
RAG member: Brian Deighton
Image: detail from Gothic, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 122 x 76cms
Burton Gallery, 5 Marine Court, St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex TN38 ODX
Burton Gallery
Summer at Bankside Gallery
RAG member: Chloe Freemantle
Chloe is showing four small gouaches in the summer group exhibition of (mostly small ) works by RWS & RE members at Bankside Gallery.
Image: Rudbeckia, Oxford Botanic Gardens, gouache on paper, 10 x 15cm
From: 11 August - 7 September 2023
Bankside Gallery, Hopton Street, near Tate Modern
Bankside Gallery
Richmond Art House Open Studios
RAG member: Felicity Swan
Organised this year by Arts Richmond, artists in Teddington, Fulwell and Hampton area opened their studios to the public. Felicity Swan exhibited new and recent paintings alongside potter Carmela Kantorowicz.
Image: Bird flies in the singing wood, 2023, Oil on canvas 120 x 110cm
From: 15-16 and 22-23 July 2023
62 Clarence Road, Teddington, London TW11 0BQ
Richmond Art House Open Studios
Chloe Fremantle
RAG member: Chloe Fremantle
Founded in 1804, the Watercolour Society (RWS) is the oldest and most prestigious watercolour society in the world. Chloe Fremantle showed four paintings in the RWS Spring Exhibition at Bankside Galley on the theme of 'home'.
Image: Art is the only way to run away without leaving home, 2022, mixed media, 18 x 26 cm
From: 24 March - 22 April 2023
Bankside Gallery
Chloe is also showing watercolours in RWS Now at RWS Gallery.
From: 7-21 June
RWS Gallery
Chelsea Physic Garden: Celebrating 350 Years in Paint and Print.
From: 8-22 June
Bankside Gallery
Bedford Park Summer Exhibition, St Michael’s & All Angel’s Church, Bedford Park, Chiswick, W4 1TT
From: 10-15 June
Chelsea Art Society Open, Chelsea Town Hall
From: 14-19 June
Chelsea Art Society
Regeneration at Hansard Mews Gallery curated by Dr Philippa Beale.
From: 22 June- 15 July
Hansard Mews Gallery
A Tall Order
RAG member: G. Calvert
A Tall Order! is an invigorating look at the artwork made and exhibited in Rochdale Art Gallery during the 1980s by a generation of artists, many of whom were women, young, working class and Black. In a letter from 1987, Jill Morgan, Rochdale Art Galley's Exhibition Officer declared, “Our policy is to encourage new audiences for art . . . To change the domination of art by a white middle-class male audience and producer. A tall order!” Its daring and innovative approach to exhibition and education programming positioned it on the national map.
G. Calvert's work features alongside over 80 other artists including Chila Kumari Burman, Terry Atkinson, Claudette Johnson, Rita Keegan, Patsy Mullan, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Slater, and Keith Piper.
From: 4 February – 6 May 2023
Touchstones was known as Rochdale Art Gallery
Click to read reviews in Art Monthly, Artforum and Touchstones
If I were a house…
RAG member: Helen Scalway
"If you were a house, what house would you be?" asked Helen in her exhibition at London Lighthouse Gallery. With this body of works she explored herself through the visual metaphor of the house, thinking about the self in spatial terms, whereby the house or dwelling becomes a rich metaphor for identity.
Image: A mind in the form of a desk, 2021, watercolour, pencil, wax pastel, crayon on paper, 49.5 x 65.5cm
From: 2 - 28 April 2023
London Lighthouse Gallery & Studio, 18 Lyell Street, London City Island E14 0SZ
Click here to view the catalogue
Catch 23
RAG member: Martin Ireland
To celebrate this years University Boat Race, Putney Pies hosted an exhibition based on this historical rowing race starting near Putney Bridge. Featuring Martin's drawings and paintings along with illustrations by Rachel Hunt, linocuts and original posters of the legendary University race by Anne Hickmott.
From: 23 March - 28 April 2023
Putney Pies, 2 Putney High St, Putney SW15 1SD
Colette Morey de Morand RIP
Sadly, Colette Morey de Morand died on Friday, 9 December 2022 at St Marys Hospital, Paddington.
Colette was one of the original members of RAG when it began in 1986. She exhibited in our first exhibition at Fulham Palace in 1987 and took part in most of our exhibitions since. She was always a willing participant in RAG activities: attending meetings, participating in Artist Talks and making her studio available for group collections of artworks, notably for the Spanish exhibitions. (Image: Colette - central holding glass - at the ‘Stars in your Eyes’ Institute of Physics exhibition, 2012).
A committed abstract painter, who consistently produced vibrant and ambitious work, she was always open to art opportunities, from Open Studios to international residencies. I began to get to know her during the week I spent in Moscow for RAG’s exhibition there in 1988; and then in 1990, working for a month in the Artists Union studios in Cheyuskinskaya, Moscow, with nine other RAG artists and about 60 soviet artists. Various high profile receptions and dinners were laid on for us and, at one of the first, when the dance music started, Colette broke the ice by confidently walking across the floor to ask the director to dance. She was a participant in life, in art, in conversation and in books and culture. As part of the Russian Exchange, RAG hosted 30 soviet artists in London. Colette threw a party for them in her flat in Melbury Road, Kensington (the ex-studio of Holman Hunt) to which she had generously invited a number of well known British artists who she was friends with, including John Hoyland and Patrick Caulfield. She was also a good friend of Paula Rego - they had adjacent studios in Berry Street, Clerkenwell for a number of years. She was, with Paula and G. Calvert, at Victor Willing’s exhibition in 2019 at Hastings Contemporary.
Colette with Graham High, 2015
In 1968 she met Clement Greenberg in New Zealand and later worked in her friend, Anthony Caro’s Triangle Workshop in New York State, where she would steal Larry Poon’s ‘wasted’ paint to make her own work.
She completed residencies in Galicia, Bulgaria, Turkey, India, Berlin, the USA, Ireland, the UK and more.
Colette, with her roots in Paris, Canada, New Zealand, White Russia and the UK operated in an international modernist tradition and maintained a committed practice over decades. In the critical re-evaluation that seems to be taking place at the moment regarding overlooked women and minority artists, Colette deserves a much higher profile and recognition for her contribution to British Abstract Painting over the last 40 years.
But on a more personal note... it was always a delight and a huge pleasure to meet and spend time with Colette, to talk, to look at paintings. We will miss her.
CMdM: “Geometric abstraction has a working space that is not illusionist, but a space created for its own purposes. Made by a kind of intuitive synthesis, my paintings float in infinite space, shifting layers that are neither figure nor ground, or are both figure and ground, ...perceptions are altered and ambushed... And the focus can wander between infinite space and the minute.”
“Certainly, everything I experience is in the work... Painting is a translation into visual language of invisible states of mind engendered by our emotional and intellectual responses to our existence... Translation into painting is beautifully complex, since it is the materiality that carries the ideas forward.” From An Interview with Artist C. Morey de Morand by Julie Karabenick, Geoform, 2005 (booklet and website) www.geoform.net.
“As with all Morey de Morand’s work, the point is not what is known but what is felt, what is left to be imagined.“ Charles Darwent, art critic of the Independent on Sunday, from the introduction to her show at Poussin Gallery, 2010
"Encountering Colette initially during the planning and delivery of the RAG Russian exchanges, was one of the most crucial influences in my life as a woman artist. Her indomitable and relentless focus on painting, the curiosity, honesty and joy with which she met everything else in life, was the example I needed and will always treasure." G. Calvert
To see her paintings view her page on this site, and on www.cmoreydemorand.co.uk and www.thelondongroup.co.uk
Brian Deighton, December 2022
Winter Calendar on Instagram
Twenty eight RAG artists present ‘Drawings’ during the festive month of December. The works, revealed through numbers randomly allocated by Clare Belfield, show a range of drawings that are thought provoking and aesthetically satisfying.
Each artist was asked to give a sentence in response to the question: “What does drawing mean to you?” See their answers on Instagram @riversideartistsgroup this December.
All work sold will donate 50% to West London Welcome
West London Welcome is a local charity that runs a community centre for and with refugees, migrants, people seeking asylum, and other locals. It works together with local people to provide a safe, positive experience of community, to reduce isolation, build inclusion and confidence, and challenge injustice.
From: Thursday 1 - Friday 31 December
Daily postings: @riversideartistsgroup throughout December
RAG members: Mike Abrahams, Susan Bazin, Clare Belfield, Peter Blegvad, Natalia Bobrova, Joanna Brendon, G Calvert, Stephen Carter, Peter Charalambides, Emma Davis, Josie Deighton, Lucille Dweck, Shona Elrick, Chloe Fremantle, Maire Gartland, Aude Grasset, Sarah Granville, Janey Hagger, Anton Harding, Martin Ireland, Seil Lien, Marianne Moore, Jane Oldfield, Felicity Swan, Celia Toler, Greta Wakil, Miles Watson and Stephen Williams
Click here to read the press release.
Many Rivers to Cross
As part of the Totally Thames Festival 2022, we are delighted to announce a new exhibition - Many Rivers to Cross. Member artists will be showing new work themed on the River Thames, or as a metaphorical interpretation of the nature and influence of rivers. The exhibition will take place in the gallery spaces at Riverside Studios, opening Friday 2 September and running daily until Sunday 2 October. Each artist is collaborating with another maker, poet, object or app to create work ranging from visual media to performance, poetry and sound.
Exhibiting artists: Mike Abrahams, Susan Bazin, Lynne Beel, Clare Belfield, Peter Blegvad, Natalia Bobrova, G Calvert, Stephen Carter, Grazyna Cydzik, Brian Deighton, Josie Deighton, Lucille Dweck, Shona Elrick, Chloe Fremantle, Máire Gartland, Saadeh George, Sarah Granville, Aude Grasset, Janey Hagger, Anton Harding, Martin Ireland, Seil Lien, C Morey de Morand, Jane Oldfield, Dee Semple, Sena Shah, Felicity Swan, Celia Toler, Miles Watson, Stephen Williams
Collaborating partners include: Heather Allan, Clive Barger, Frans van den Boogaard, Saul Boyer, Cathy Dineen, Joe Cang, Francesca Giuliano, John Greaves, Pauline Harding, Simon Hiscock, Jackson Holmes, Langston Hughes, Geoff Lee, Shepherd Manyika, Madeleine Marsh, Belinda McKenna-Bicknell, Vanessa Nova Nassar, Araba Ocran, Rita Parniczky, Giacomo Pini, Pam Toler
From: Friday 2 September - Sunday 2 October daily
Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London W6 9BN
Riverside Studios
Daily postings: @riversideartistsgroup throughout September
Free workshop programme: supported by Arts Council England, will run throughout September, for further details, click here
Light Seeking Light
RAG members: Chloe Fremantle and Peter Blegvad
Light Seeking Light is an exhibition of works by the artist couple in the beautiful new RWS Galleries, just next to the National Gallery. The show is curated by Jenny Blyth Fine Art, and will show a selection of Chloe's luminous abstract acrylics and gouaches from recent years and Peter's 'flightless kites' – 3D mixed media constructions begun during the pandemic, plus prints and drawings.
Image: Wing Kite by Peter Blegvad, Acrylic, collage and mixed media on wood, 24 X 24 cm
From: 1 - 12 November 2022
RWS Galleries, 3-5 Whitcomb St, London WC2H 7HA
Email: Jenny Blyth
Jenny Blyth Fine Art
Bankside Gallery and Awards
RAG member: Sarah Granville
One of three limited edition prints, exhibited at Bankside Gallery show Summer at Bankside, home to the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers and the Royal Watercolour Society.
Image: Bath 2, Aquatint etching, 19 x 26 cm
From: 5 August - 11 September 2022
Bankside Gallery, Thames Riverside, 48 Hopton Street, London SE1 9JH
Bankside Gallery
Sarah's work, Neighbours (Gouache 21 x 31 cm) featured in the Federation of British Artists show Winners: Award Winning Artists 2020-2022, at the Mall Galleries in July and August 2022. She has also received the St Cuthberts Mill Award for works on Paper presented by the Chelsea Art Society 73rd Annual Open Exhibition on 16-20 June 2022.
Licoricia of Winchester
RAG member: Lucille Dweck
The painting will be exhibited at the Jewish Museum to publicise the work of the Licoricia of Winchester Appeal. It has also been published in a book about Licoricia of Winchester by Rebecca Abrams, click here for more.
Image: Licoricia of Winchester, Oil on linen, 40 x 30 cm
On other news, Lucille's painting Liz and Emma, Hampstead Ponds (Oil on linen, 211 x130 cm) for the private collection of Mark and Liz AstaireIt, has arrived in LA to be installed in its final resting place where it will be on permanent exhibition.