Willow Weaving by Windrush Willow
We are thrilled to welcome Windrush Willow to our Marquee Lawn this summer!
New exhibition featuring works from artist Susan Derges, who is internationally renowned for quite literally inventing new ways of making pictures.
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.
We are thrilled to welcome Windrush Willow to our Marquee Lawn this summer!
NEW exhibition exploring landscape and environment.
Shaun the Sheep: Fun with the Flock is coming to life at Hestercombe Gardens during the Summer Holidays.
Get ready for a heart-warming experience as 2nd Chance Petting Farm brings a delightful array of rescue animals to visit us throughout the school holidays!
Join artist Lydia Halcrow for a walking, talking making workshop.
We welcome Folksy Theatre for an evening outside performance of ‘As You Like It’ by William Shakespeare.
Join us for a pawfect day with your four-legged family members at our fun dog show, taking place on our beautiful Orangery Lawn.
A thank you to our members this September.