In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 festival — from 2nd-25th May — is moving on-line. From the safety of the sofa, you will be able to explore thousands of pictures in our artists’ galleries, showing some of the latest pieces created by painters, potters, silversmiths, textile and glass artists, sculptors and furniture-makers along with video and virtual tours. Visitors will be able to enjoy footage of artists at work, explore ‘walk-through’ exhibitions on-line and delve deeper with ‘Five-minute reads’, daily through-the keyhole-interviews with a variety of artists in different media. We hope this will add some colour and interest to long days in self-isolation or social distancing.
A virtual festival is also the green way to explore! You can travel back and forth across the county in a moment, visiting artists whose studios are on the far side of Oxfordshire without filling the car, and each day of the festival we will present a different themed art trail through Artweeks’ treasures, exploring the local countryside or adventuring around the world, searching out the colourful, the precious and the unusual or celebrating the small things that bring joy to each May day.
Join us too for a social media celebration, using the hashtag #oxfordshireartweeks on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to brighten up long days in self-isolation or lonely evenings social distancing.
Currently, a small number of exhibitions still hope to remain open to visitors including Sculpture at Kingham Lodge which is set in five acres of landscaped gardens with a breath-taking Alhambra-inspired pavilion and blooming rhododendrons & azaleas (venue 276). Other venues are keeping their fingers crossed that social distancing measures will have lifted sufficiently to open their doors so do keep checking the website. Others are planning to postpone their physical exhibitions and will publish their new dates for the autumn in coming weeks, and Artweeks in Watlington (venues 71-120) will run, provisionally, from 29th August until 7th September.
One pair of artists who will now be showcasing their new collaboration later in the year are Lorna Syson and Emma Whyte. Lorna is a fabric and wallpaper designer who specialises in hand drawn designs of Great British flora and fauna which she tailors into bespoke home textiles. These uplifting designs are a favourite of the RSPB. Emma Whyte built on wide-ranging and eclectic talents from picture research to traditional building and decorating techniques and developed her own unique range of extravagantly designed and expertly executed furniture. Her interiors inspired by a love of pattern, vintage books and all things old were described by Conde Nast Traveller Magazine as ‘a blast of sunshine. Recently brought together by equal measures of adversity and serendipity, Lorna and Emma are now collaborating to create a unique collection of sustainable mid-century furniture celebrating British birds and native woodlands. You can read more about their Artweeks plans in glorious technicolour here.
Another exhibition that is now rescheduled (for next Spring) has been inspired by treasures from the past. The HapticArt group of textile artists have each produced sumptuous pieces inspired by items from the Abingdon Museum collection from Victorian glove to an ancient vessel that wended its way to Oxfordshire from Persia with returning crusaders and depicts thirteenth century polo-players. You can read more about the inspiration and the resultant art here.
Whilst in these unusual lock-down circumstances, many Artweeks artists are turning for their inspiration to the everyday items in the home, often overlooked. This month the OX magazine has covered artist Kevin Hinton whose charming daily sketches over the last two years celebrate the familiar and things that are often overlooked. See more on Kevin’s work here.
Read this newsletter with illustrations here.
#stayafe #stayathome #keepsafe
