Every Day is a New Day 08.09.17

Our first visit to Margate’s Turner Contemporary gallery with exhibits by Phyllida Barlow, Michael Armitage and Jyll Bradley.

North facing Margate is a bit disorientating as it looks back towards the Isle of Sheppey and the Essex coastline beyond. If you look out to sea you’re facing Norway, France is behind you.

We’re seeing a lot of Phyllida Barlow’s work – she’s representing the UK in the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale, has work in Cambridge University group show Sculpture in the Close, and won the Hepworth Gallery’s inaugural Prize for Sculpture last year. Her work is very satisfying – it’s big, distinctive and provides a genuine spectacle, and the inspiring back story of the artist herself offers hope and encouragement to those working on the arts whose practice seems out of step with the prevailing trends.

Michael Armitage ‘Peace Coma’
Beautiful and immediately unsettling paintings by British-Kenyan born artist. His first solo show in a UK public gallery.

Jyll Bradley -‘Dutch/Light (for Agneta Block)’
Earlier this summer Jyll Brandley gave a talk organised by Aid & Abet and Cambridge School of Art. Jyll has produced a new work for the Tamburlaine Hotel – The Tree of Life, as part of the CB1 public art programme. Dutch Light refers to an early greenhouse technology developed in the Netherlands – leaning glass against a south facing wall to maximise light for plants. The horticulturist Agneta Block was the first European to grow and fruit a pineapple from seed.

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