New exhibition featuring works from artist Susan Derges, who is internationally renowned for quite literally inventing new ways of making pictures.
Please be advised that The Stables Hospitality will be closed on Monday 12th and Tuesday 13th of January. During this time, refreshments will not be available on site. We appreciate your understanding and we look forward to welcoming you back soon.
This event has ended
Susan Derges: Many Moons is showing across all eight spaces at Hestercombe Gallery from the 22nd July to the 22nd October, 2023.
The show thoughtfully reflects on thirty years of printmaking, whilst also drawing on objects and artworks from Hestercombe’s own collections, as well as through the words of two contemporary poets, Fiona Benson and John Wedgwood Clarke.
Susan Derges’s artistic practice has involved cameraless, lens-based, digital and reinvented photographic processes, encompassing subject matter that is mainly informed by cycles of life in the natural world. Much of the work in this exhibition has been made in the landscapes of the North and South Devon coasts and Dartmoor, where Susan Derges has her studio and darkroom hut.
Susan Derges’s approach to image making has been an attempt to understand the whole by allowing the minutiae to imprint themselves into the various photographic processes she has worked with. Earlier prints like the River Taw, the Streens and Shorelines involved immersing photographic paper directly into bodies of water at night in order to record the traces of movement and forces defining a place; More recent work like the Many Moons and Many Lives or Seed Constellation prints have involved growing and nurturing a subject as it develops over time. Sometimes quite elaborate studio set ups are involved, as in the making of the Tide Pool prints where a large glass tank filled with moving saline water was suspended above the camera in her studio in order to experience the life of a rockpool from within rather than by photographing it from above. Whether working outside at night, or in the studio with more staged events, there has always been a performative element to the making that reaches an audience only once the work has come into existence.
There is opportunity to purchase three new poetry books, printed specifically for the exhibition via the Gallery Shop.
Susan Derges: Many Moons is showing at Hestercombe Gallery from 22nd July 2023 until 22nd October 2023.
Entry is by gardens admission only.
Hestercombe Gallery is open daily from 11am - 5pm.
The first in a series of exhibitions, walks and writings at Hestercombe in 2025-26 by artist and writer Lizzie Philps.
For 2026, pay what you can in Jan (uary)
Join us for Hestercombe's Giant Book Sale. Thousands of quality second hand booksFiction • Non-fiction • Children’sVisit the book lovers paradise to discover your next best read!Free entry via the book shop.
Join us for a series of tutored workshops at the peaceful winter surroundings at Hestercombe Gardens, where we will learn how to capture beautiful botanical subjects through careful observation and sketching methods. Suitable for all levels.
Join us for a series of tutored workshops at the peaceful winter surroundings at Hestercombe Gardens, where we will learn how to capture beautiful botanical subjects through careful observation and sketching methods. Suitable for all levels.
Join us for a series of tutored workshops at the peaceful winter surroundings at Hestercombe Gardens, where we will learn how to capture beautiful botanical subjects through careful observation and sketching methods. Suitable for all levels.
We are excited to team up with Shepton Snowdrops and some of the best snowdrop gardens in Somerset to create the Great Snowdrop Gardens Trail of Somerset.
Do you want to start growing food? We start from step 1 in your food growing journey, including sowing, planting out & watering
