Galleries - June 2010

last home in Aldeburgh, will be well aware, and the main show in the Peter Pears Gallery is aiming to recreate the 1987 exhibition which his friend John Piper chose from Pears's personal collection. With works by Walter Sickert, Gwen John, Sidney Nolan, Max Ernst, Mary Potter and Piper himself among the treasures here, this promises to be a rare delight. Pears the man is also the subject of a show at the Red House itself which explores both the inspir- ation he gave Britten and the wide-ranging nature of his enthus- iasms. And, indirectly, his pre- sence is also felt in the exhibitions being given to young landscape painter Kate Giles in the Concert Hall and Pond Galleries at Snape Maltings, where an attributed landscape by John Constable (the first work Pears ever bought) is the inspiration for four new works that follow the seasons and respond to it. (Full details of all these shows on our East Anglia pages.) There are always some inter- esting 'fringe' shows on in the town during the Festival of course, one of the most promising this year being Piers Feetham 's exhibition of the paintings and drawings of the late East Anglian based artist Elisabeth Vellacott at the Cinema Gallery. This closes at his London gallery on 9 June and opens here, along with Aaron Kasmin's still-life drawings, from 11 to 17 June. GOING STRONG Currently celebrating its 11th year in business, Lemon Street Gallery in Truro is still going from strength to strength, its dynamic director, Louise Jones, not only having per- suaded veteran British abstrac- tionist John Hoyland to put on a major show of 30 or so pieces this June but also, at the same time, helping to organise a major fund- raising exhibition/auction (for Greenpeace) of the paintings and watercolours that gallery artist Kurt Jackson made during a residency he undertook at the 2009 Glas- tonbury Festival. The works are being shown at the Bargehouse in Oxo Tower Wharf right up to the night of the auction itself, which takes place on the evening of 3rd June. Full details on www.green peace.org.uk/kurtjackson PEARS’S EYE Famous principally for its music, Suffolk's Aldeburgh Festival does in fact always put on a surprisingly rich and varied visual arts pro- gramme and this year is no ex- ception, taking as its focus the centenary celebrations of its much-loved co-founder, Peter Pears. He was, of course, an enthusiastic and perceptive coll- ector, as anyone who has visited the Red House, his and Britten's ANTENNAE MOVING ON Working on a magazine like this with 400 listings, it's very much part of one's professionalism not to get too attached to certain galleries – even though subjective tastes in art are always hard to subdue even at the best of times. But that said, it was hard to resist a real feeling of sadness on learning of Edna and Waj Mirecki's recent decision, after 24 years in business, to close the Chappel Galleries. A visit to the charming 19th C. gallery, carved out of part of their home and tucked almost under the magnificent Victorian railway arches of the Chappel Viaduct in Essex, had a warmth and intimacy about it that is rarer to find than you might expect, but the good news is that Waj's painting career has really begun to take off (he won a prize recently at the Painter Stainers) so now he and Edna will have more time to concentrate on that without having to worry so much about economic ups and downs. One other quick bit of gallery news meanwhile, is that the for- mer Rowley Fine Art in Winchester has both a new owner and a new name, the Minster Gallery . However, Antennae understands that the aim is to continue very much where the former left off both in terms of artists and 'feel'. John Hoyland ‘Zenist’ 2008, acrylic on cotton duck, 60 x 55cm at the Lemon Sreet Gallery