The Gallery

When we first opened the Tea Rooms in July 2005 we realised that we had an opportunity
to use the space we had to exhibit works of art. We decided to choose selected works by
local artist's including watercolours, prints, photography and ceramics.

Details of past and future exhibitions can be found below.

Opening times: From Friday 2nd April to Sunday 26th September 2010
Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays & Bank Holidays, 12 noon to 5:30pm

2010

This year's opening exhibition at the Tea Rooms marks the beginning of our fifth year
with a number of further exhibitions and events planned until the end of September.

Friday 2nd April to Sunday 16th May

Stephen Spraggon

'The Magic of the Levels' A photographic exhibition

Somerset Landscape photographer Stephen Spraggon's latest exhibition, entitled
"The Magic of the Levels," will show photographs made over the past four years
in and around the Somerset Levels.

Stephen says "There are times when the light and the weather seem to work in harmony to create a magical atmosphere on the levels. The pictures in this exhibition were all taken during very brief moments when the light was perfect and all of the elements came together to bring the scene to life. My aim with these pictures is to let the person viewing them experience what it was like to be in my shoes, stood in the landscape, and feeling the atmosphere of the moment."

More information can be found on Stephen’s website at www.spraggonphotography.co.uk

2009

Trevor Allen Abbott

In August and September 2009 we were very proud to be show some of the work of the late Trevor Allen Abbott. He was a much loved and respected friend and neighbour here in the village and hugely instrumental in creating part of the very special magic of our first ever village theatre production of Cinderella in 2003. To have such a great artist working with us on that and other productions was a gift; to have some of his limited edition signed prints on show and for sale here is a privilege.

Trevor studied at Camberwell School of Art and taught printmaking there at Goldsmiths' and Ravensbourne Colleges. One-man shows have been held at Londons Serpentine Gallery and elsewhere, and he has participated in exhibitions in Crakow, Milan, the USA and Ireland. His work was shown in the BBC television series "The Artist in Print" and is represented in public and private collections in Britain, USA, Canada and Europe.

Maker of striking, vivid prints

The printmaker Trevor Allen (1939 - 2008) claimed that there were two major influences upon his work: traditional Japanese printmakers like Kunisada and Utamaro, and the childhood world of the Dandy and Beano and Hergé's Adventures of Tintin. What the images in both prints and comics have in common is a strong outer line and vivid areas of colour. From this improbable combination Allen produced during his career a great number of intelligent, well-made, and extremely striking works of art.
Allen was born in Portsmouth in 1939, as Trevor Abbott. His mother left his father, a seaman, and remarried. He adopted his stepfather's surname, Allen, and only became close to his paternal relations late in life, changing his name to Trevor Allen Abbott a few years before his death. The new family moved several times before coming to London, where Allen was sent to the junior school of art in Camberwell: he claimed afterwards that all he had picked up from the school was a knowledge of old roses and some art history.
After national service in the Royal Anglian Regiment – spent partly in Libya – he studied from 1960 to 1964 at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. During these years he worked with Michael Rothenstein at his studio in Great Bardfield, Essex, where there was a significant artistic community. He was also a studio printer with Editions Alecto, a pioneering print publisher which had been set up in a former factory for non-alcoholic communion wine in Kelso Place in Kensington. Later he worked with the Academician Philip Sutton on his Tahitian blocks.
In 1964 Allen set up a print studio for himself in Balham. By now he had begun teaching at various colleges of art, including Brighton, Ravensbourne in Kent, Bradford and Ipswich, but from 1971 onwards taught full-time at Goldsmiths College in south London. After a year-long sabbatical from 1985 to 1986, during which he made work for a one-man exhibition at the Thumb Gallery, he resumed teaching part-time until his retirement in 1996. Allen was a fine teacher, able to bring out students' individuality and help them with their original ideas.
Allen wrote of his own work: "Relief printing is the best means I have found to express my ideas." He enjoyed the processes of the development of a print, and most of all the cutting of the block and the final colour printing. During his classes he carried out experiments with his students in caustic soda etching onto linoleum. His imagery was highly varied and semi-abstract; his late, experimental screen-prints of flowers – so inspired by the clarity of Japanese print and childhood books – are perhaps his most beautiful.
Allen had several one-man exhibitions: at the London Graphic Arts Associates in Bond Street in London and the Serpentine Gallery in London (1969); the Thumb Gallery (1979, 1982, 1986); Fakenham Arts Festival and Belstead House, Ipswich (1991). The many group exhibitions in which he participated included the Print Biennales at Fredrikstad in Norway and Krakow in Poland; the International Print Exhibition in Milan; the Brighton Festival; the ICA Gallery; and an exhibition, Three Decades of Artists from the London Art Schools, at the Royal Academy.
Some very mildly risqué etchings sent to the US were briefly impounded by the authorities because they had the misfortune to travel at the same time as some more shocking pictures by John Lennon. Examples of Allen's work can be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne, Sheffield City Art Gallery, Northampton Art Gallery and Goldsmiths College, as well as in a number of education authorities. In 1965 Allen was elected to the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. He also contributed to a book, The Complete Printmaker, and to a BBC series Artists in Print in 1981.
Allen spent hours drawing every day. In contrast to his deeply felt, vivid prints, into which he seemed to pour his all sensitivity, he was a moody and intensely shy and private man, who could, as his wife once put it, "get lost if he turned around". On his retirement he and his wife moved from Suffolk to Somerset.

Simon Fenwick
15th March 2008
www.independent.co.uk