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Painted Quartets on tour!

3 months
1 week ago

Updated with new touring exhibition venues and dates below.

b-w-violin

Following on from the success of the Painted Quartets exhibition at the 2009 Cheltenham Music Festival, our instruments are now off on their travels around the UK.

Salthouse Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall

www.salthousegallery.co.uk
12 December – 9 January 2010
Opening times: 10.30am–5.30pm Monday to Saturday (contact the gallery for opening times over Christmas).

Trereife Gallery, Newlyn and Penzance, Cornwall

www.trereifepark.co.uk
Monday 8 February – Sunday 7 March
Opening times: 10am–5pm daily.

Bate Collection, Oxford

www.bate.ox.ac.uk
18 December – 30 June 2010
Visit the Bate Collection website for more information and opening times.

Royal West of England Academy, Bristol

www.rwa.org.uk
Sunday 28 March – Sunday 9 May
Opening times: Mon–Sat 10am–5.30pm, Sun 2–5pm (last admission is half an hour before closing).

The first stop on the Painted Quartets tour is the Salthouse Gallery in St Ives, Cornwall. The instruments are being displayed by Bob Devereux, one of the artists involved in this project – see his violin displayed alongside fellow local artist Anthony Frost’s viola, and a whole host of other instruments by artists from across the UK.

The exhibition then lands at the Bate Collection in Oxford, one of the most magnificent collections of musical instruments in the world. Our Painted Quartets, including a violin by designer Cath Kidston and cello by Lincoln Seligman, will sit alongside instruments made by world-renowned makers and from pre-eminent collectors.

We’ve tagged this post with , , on Thursday 3 December 2009.

Matt Lucas is Gerard Hoffnung in Radio 4 play

5 months
1 week ago

hoffnung-gallery

Whether or not you managed to see the 50th anniversary Hoffnung exhibition at the Summerfield Gallery during the 2009 HSBC Cheltenham Music Festival, you may be interested to know that Radio 4 broadcast a play on Hoffnung on Monday 28 September – and you can Listen Again here until Sunday 3 October.

One tubby British comic genius – Little Britain’s Matt Lucas – plays that other tubby British comic genius from another age, Gerard Hoffnung, in a play that also features Gina McKee (as Hoffnung’s wife Annetta), Hugh Bonneville and – playing herself in the present day – Annetta Hoffnung.

Hear the play on BBC Radio 4 →

Elephant

We’ve tagged this post with , , , , on Wednesday 30 September 2009.

Harry Enfield at the Summerfield Gallery — photos

8 months
1 week ago

Harry Enfield opening the Hoffnung and Painted Quartets, two unique exhibitions at the Summerfield Gallery, Pittville Campus, University of Gloucestershire running for the duration of the HSBC Cheltenham Music Festival.

what’s on today | tomorrow | all music events

Harry Enfield opening the Hoffnung and Painted Quartets exhibition Hoffnung and Painted Quartets exhibition Hoffnung and Painted Quartets exhibition Hoffnung and Painted Quartets exhibition

We’ve tagged this post with , , , , on Friday 3 July 2009.

Hoffnung and Painted Quartets exhibition

8 months
2 weeks ago

Two unique exhibitions running for the duration of the HSBC Cheltenham Music Festival — at the Summerfield Gallery, Pittville Campus, University of Gloucestershire.

Hoffnung

Gerard Hoffnung

Unique to Cheltenham in the 50th anniversary year of his death, this is a rare chance to see the full range of Hoffnung’s comic and artistic genius — childhood drawings, illustrative water colours, bespoke musical instruments and the originals of all his beloved musical cartoons.

Gerard Hoffnung died tragically young at the age of 34 in 1959. His precocious talents for drawing and charicture led to enormous success throughout the 1950s as an artist, cartoonist, broadcaster and musician.

Painted Quartets

Painted Quartets honours Haydn, the ‘father of the string quartet’ with 20 violins, violas and cellos like you’ve never seen before. Leading artists from Cheltenham and around the UK are joined in this project by figures from the world of politics, design and music.

Hoffnung and Painted Quartets opening times

Cello by PJ Crook

Summerfield Gallery, Pittville Campus, University of Gloucestershire

  • Saturday 4 July — 10am–6pm
  • Sunday 5 July — 10am–6.15pm
  • Monday 6 July — 10am–4pm
  • Tuesday 7 July — 10am–7.15 pm
  • Wednesday 8 July — 10am–4pm
  • Thursday 9 July — 10am–8.15pm
  • Friday 10 July — 10am–6.45pm
  • Saturday 11 July — 10am–5pm
  • Sunday 12 July — 10am–4.15pm
  • Monday 13 July — 10am–4pm
  • Tuesday 14 July — 10am–7.15pm
  • Wednesday 15 July — 10am–4pm
  • Thursday 16 July — 10am–7.15pm
  • Friday 17 July — 10am–5pm
  • Saturday 18 July — 10am–6pm
Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum University of Gloucestershire

We’ve tagged this post with , , , on Monday 29 June 2009.

Bowen Blog #5 — an unusual photo-shoot

8 months
3 weeks ago

From Meurig Bowen
Music Festival Director

Update: Visit our Painted Quartets page for more information

Like sheep being herded into a pen, we gathered all the painted instruments together for the first time on Saturday morning, and took them to Bishops Cleeve for a photo-shoot (at least they didn’t need to go into Hair & Make-Up first). It was an unusual cargo — violin and viola cases almost as sorry-looking as the instruments they’d contained crammed into the car boot, a couple of loose ones sheathed in bubble-wrap, two cellos spread out on the back seat and one in between legs (where a cello should be, after all) in the passenger seat.

Painted-Quartets-3

I say ‘all’ the instruments, but I mean ‘all the instruments we’ve had back so far’. In the last week or so, with the end of June deadline approaching, a good few more have arrived back from the artists. If you commission articles or programme notes — as I have been recently, for our programme book which is just about to head off to the printers — the commissioned work gets delivered in an e-mailed attachment. These instruments have different ways of making themselves known. The first time I caught sight of Gillian Lever’s richly-coloured and layered viola was as an impromptu exhibit in last weekend’s superb Cheltenham Open Studios, sitting with a strange beauty on another artist’s living-room bookshelf.

Ana Bianchi’s beautiful Lilly violin was handed over to me at the entrance to the magnificent Fresh Air 2009 sculpture show in Quenington — which Ana has expertly curated. Paul McKee’s broodingly dark violin arrived in the office in a plastic bag (more bubble wrap of course). And with some trepidation I collected Mila Judge-Furstova’s cello (pictured) from her Cheltenham flat. Mila’s remarkable instrument is unwrappable. Not only has she cut out panels from the cello’s belly; she has adorned the fingerboard with intricate, swirling paper sculpture. No cello case could contain or protect that.

…continue reading →

We’ve tagged this post with , , , on Monday 22 June 2009.

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