Group meetings at The Chapel, Park Lane, Norwich NR2 3EF from 7.30pm

Tuesday 3 October – New Licentiate members

Thanks for giving a great welcome to our recent graduates from Norwich University of the Arts who have been invited to join the group for a two year period, talking about their art practice.

Thanks to everyone who made our first meeting of the Autumn on Tuesday 5 September such a lively evening, with plenty of art to see, from group members and others.

Please note that everyone is welcome to bring art among to open meetings.

All are welcome come along to meetings in months of January – April, also June, and September – December

May is for members and proposed members only, and there are no meetings in July and August.

2024 meetings – these are usually the first Tuesday of the month.

Very pleased that artist Simon Bill gave a talk, as a joint event with Norfolk Contemporary Art Society – the venue for this was the Undercroft, during our group exhibition in June:

The subject of Visual Perception featured strongly in the teaching of art until the 80s, when it was dropped because it was not commensurate with Critical Theory. The orthodoxy of Critical Theory is in decline, whilst the study of perception as a branch of neuroscience has advanced rapidly. The response to these developments has been slow in art schools – this talk offered an introduction to Visual Perception and a survey of the subject as it stands today.

Simon with two images from his Op Art murals on Great Yarmouth seafront:

Tuesday 6 June – The role of arts to engage people with the Earth crisis

Thanks to Bridget McKenzie and Jennie Pedley for introducing their practice and ideas, and for thoughts on how the visual arts can engage people with climate and biodiversity issues to enable Norwich and Norfolk to be more liveable, safe and healthy in future.

Bridget McKenzie is an artist, researcher and creative curator focused on culture’s response to the Earth crisis. She is the founder of Climate Museum UK and of Culture Declares Emergency. She is working on links between the local arts and environment sectors, and creating a base for the Climate Museum in the City. Jennie Pedley is a co-founder of Edible East Community Interest Company, which promotes a healthy and sustainable future for everyone through creative workshops, community gardening and cultural events, all informed by the latest research.

Bridget McKenzie http://bridgetmckenzie.uk/

Jennie Pedley https://www.jenniepedley.co.uk/

May – Welcome to our two new members, Natasha Day (former licentiate member) and Rachel Furze.

Tuesday 4 April
Thanks to everyone who came along to a busy evening at the chapel for an open meeting format – with plenty of artwork brought along to display and discuss.

(Photo from a previous open meeting)

For more information about meetings and membership: www.norwich20group.co.uk/about

For ‘open’ meetings – all are welcome to bring artwork along – we advise bringing something that you can easily carry, and can be displayed on a table or leaning on a side table or chair against a wall.

Tuesday 7 March

Another ‘open’ meeting, where artists – both group members and not – shared ideas and showed both work in progress and recent art.

Tuesday 7 February, which had a Q & A format, thanks to Christine Allman and Jos Wickham – group members who each talked about their work, with questions posed by Peter Baldwin and Martin Battye.

Tuesday 3 January 2023 – Good to see old faces and new at our first meeting of the year with plenty of artwork displayed and discussed.

Tuesday 6 December – our annual party celebration!

Tuesday 1 November

Thanks to everyone who came to our meeting, where four recent NUA Fine Art graduates gave talks about their art practice.

A priviledge to hear from Jo Bellamy, Carl Durban, Catherine Swain and Luke Underwood, our new licentiate members:

Tuesday 4 October

Format – an ‘open’ meeting – with works in progress brought along to display and discuss.

Good to see a mix of familiar faces and new, thanks to all for attending.

Thanks to everyone who came along to our September meeting too, also an ‘open’ meeting, noting all are welcome – with or without artwork.

Please check here for updates and our newsletter for any changes to dates.

All are welcome to our meetings, noting that the May meetings are for members and proposed prospective members only.

Thanks very much to artists who brought their work along in May 2022.

We’re very pleased to welcome four new members:

Christine Allman, Craig Frost, Sally Hirst and Helen Ireland.

Thanks to members and visitors for making a successful return to meetings this year, here’s a photo from Tuesday 1 March.

2021: Lovely to hold our festive party meeting on Thursday 9 December.

Thanks to everyone who came along on Tuesday 2 November – with talks about their art practice by recent NUA graduates, Jennifer Lovatt and Natasha Day.

With thanks to Natasha, giving her talk in the photo below here, and Jennifer too!

Poster image – David Woods, Blue without green

Thanks to so many visitors for coming to the opening of our first group exhibition of the year, in the Yare Gallery, Great Yarmouth.

Plus to all those who visited over the almost four weeks which the show ran – with work on show from more than 50 group members, in six rooms over three floors of the beautiful gallery space.

Here are a few images from the opening night:

Huge thanks to artist Jayne Ivimey , who gave a wonderful talk about her art practice for our June meeting – this talk was postponed due to the pandemic back in April 2020.

Jayne Ivimey with David Jones at the meeting:

Thanks to everyone who visited our group exhibition, with dates of Monday 13 – Saturday 25 June.

Here are just a few views of the many artworks in the show, about 130 in all.

Horizon

After the group’s first show at this venue three years ago, the group returned for an exhibition at the Hostry, Norwich Cathedral, from Wednesday 22 December 2021 – Saturday 15 January 2022.

Here are some views of the exhibition, many thanks to

Julia Cameron and Rosie Winn for sharing photographs.

Many thanks to all those who visited, with positive comments received, we’re very pleased that so many came to see the exhibition.

Norfolk Arts Awards – Pleased that both Norwich 20 Group and group member Gennadiy Ivanov are Visual Art category nominees!

Nominees for Norfolk Arts Award, Visual Arts Category.
Representing Norwich 20 Group are Brigitte Hague and Julia Cameron, while Gena Ivanov was nominated as an individual.

The group was pipped to the post by Gena (centre):

Congratulations to Gennadiy Ivanov, award winner.
It was still an honour to have been nominated so there were no losers here!

Norwich 20 Group has also been nominated in the EDP People’s Choice Awards, and was a finalist in this category too:

Thanks to everyone who voted for us, with the awards taking place on 23 October.

Brigitte Hague and Julia Cameron, previous and current group chairs

The next group show followed fast on the footsteps of the end June/July 2021 annual exhibition – N2021G

– with a return to the bright and airy St Margaret’s church, for Outside the box, where 60 artworks by 35 members were shown.

Thanks to everyone who came to the opening night and who visited over the 13 days of the exhibition.

Exhibition dates – from Monday 20 September until Saturday 2 October.

Some views of the exhibition:

Thanks to all who visited our exhibition, with artworks from our weekly life workshop!

We haven’t been able to resume the workshop, works shown were created from the previous two terms – before the March 2020 lockdown, plus artworks created since then.

The exhibition was a celebration of the group’s life workshop, with 28 artists’ works included, life drawings and more – with works from 13 Norwich 20 Group members.

The exhibition also includes a selection of artworks by our much missed life workshop regular, Martin Ayres RIP.

With two of his sculptures shown here, and another on the poster below:

Local press coverage – a link to online EDP article with great images:

https://www.edp24.co.uk/things-to-do/norwich-20-group-at-st-margarets-church-8192994

The exhibition ended with an open drawing event from clothed models posing in the church – great to see many attending, with some distance between participants – and enjoying the chance to draw!

We do not yet know when the life workshop will return, as soon as we have any update we will post here and via the group’s social media accounts.

John Midgley obituary

John Midgley at work in his studio in Norfolk. He specialised in designing posters and banners for trade unions

My husband, John Midgley, who has died aged 85, was an artist who specialised in creating posters and banners for trade unions.

He got into designing for trade unions following a period of his own workplace activism in the early 1960s, when he was sacked as a tutor at the Camden Arts Institute in London for supporting staff and students in a labour dispute.

He then set up a studio with a group of other artists in Brent in north-west London, and began to create political posters and banners for several trade unions, in particular for the National Union of Mineworkers, as well as for various community groups. He also created panels for the TUC’s Congress House in London. To see his many banners moving along the streets during the Durham Miners’ galas made him immensely proud.

Born in Leeds to Sidney Midgley, a butcher, and Grace (nee Lupton), a teacher, John went to Ilkley grammar school and after national service trained in fine art at Harrogate Art School.

September Song, painting by John Midgley — September Song, by John Midgley

From 1965 to 1980, he lived in London, working for a couple of years as an arts adviser for the London borough of Haringey, helping the council to set up art exhibitions and encouraging local artists to show their work around the borough – while also continuing his private art work. He then taught at Camden Arts Institute before setting up studios in Brent for artists, film-makers, craftspeople, sculptors etc. It was during this period – in 1969 – that he and I met at the Railway Tavern in Hampstead.

In 1980 we moved to Aylsham in Norfolk, where we were married in 1981, then, shortly afterwards, to Plumstead, also in Norfolk, where John ran a small business making his banners and posters from a purpose-built studio. Aside from that work, he was excellent at drawing people and scenes; around 2010, John became a member of the Norwich 20 Group of artists. We moved to Mundesley in 2013, not long after he sold his business, and John did some of his best paintings there.

Over the years his work was shown at a number of galleries, including at Whitechapel Art Gallery in London and at the Anteros Arts Foundation in Norwich.

John was a kind and generous man, and will missed by his many friends and past colleagues.

He is survived by me and by his sister, Christine.

Maggie Midgley

Wiveton Bridge

Road To Southrepps

Oil on canvas – 50 x 70cm

Back Road

Oil on canvas – 50 x 70cm

By Road

Oil on canvas – 50 x 70cm

Farm Road

Oil on canvas – 50 x 70cm

Forgotten Road

Oil on canvas – 50 x 70cm

Very sorry to write that John died in November 2020, RIP.

From John: ‘One of many paintings of a single ‘motif’. The value of restricting work to one single image like this, from nature, is that the fundamental changes that happen as work progresses, force the artist to constantly reassess his role in the creative process.

This is a quote from a discussion about the impulse to create coming from some mysterious external location…which I don’t really go along with BUT I do know that the harder you consciously will yourself to create something, the less creative you are actually likely to be. You have to ‘get out of your own way’ somehow.’

Thanks to all the almost 1200 visitors to N2021G, our annual exhibition, at St Margaret’s Church of Art, St Benedict’s Street, Norwich!

Dates were Tuesday 22 June, open daily until Saturday 3 July.

We will confirm information about group events, including meetings and the life workshop when we can.

Group Chair Brigitte Hague (2019-2021) at group exhibition N20G in 2020, in December at Mandell’s Gallery