Future Events
Planned exhibitions for the forthcoming months are listed below. If you would like to discuss exhibiting at the Gallery on the Green, please contact the Curator.
The Jubilee Tree
12 January – 15 March 2019
Our gallery has occupied a space beside the Green in Settle since 2009. It was a telephone box for many decades before that. But long before telephone boxes became a feature of the urban, and indeed the rural landscape, in fact just twenty years after the invention of the telephone, a sycamore tree was planted in the middle of the Green to mark Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee.
The tree is now mature and dominates the Green. It has long fascinated Elaine Sargeson who has lived in Upper Settle for the past 18 years. She has photographed the tree from different angles and in different seasons. Her work forms this exhibition.
“I noticed walkers often stopped and after reading the plaque informing them that the tree was planted in 1897 to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, they would sit beneath it to enjoy the view of Attermire.
“Back then the tree hosted up to fifteen jackdaw/ crow nests each spring. This year, for the first time since I moved here,there were none. Gradually the number of nests has dropped, last year there were just two. This spring’s harsh gales and snow possibly stopped the corvids nesting.
“The Jubliee Tree is a Sycamore. It is late, by most standards, to come into leaf. It appears to lose its leaves overnight in autumn when a sudden wind robs it of its still, green leaves. In winter the tree has a quality of its own, even when the tracery of branches are bare it draws the eye upwards.
“I began to take photos of the tree in January and decided to take at least one a month for a year. Some of the photos are taken from the green and one or two from my bedroom window. One is taken from a friend’s window. I have tried to capture the tree from all angles,in sunshine and in rain, with blue skies and with grey. Sometimes beautiful sunsets have provided the backdrop.
Without the Jubilee Tree the Green would be a different place, everyone loved it.
Let’s hope The Jubliee Tree is still fascinating and pleasing people in another hundred years.”
Beckett in a Box
25 May – 5 July 2019
Sheila Godbolt is an artist and designer who has worked on theatrical productions in many locations over a long career. Along with her partner, Alasdair Burman, she hopes to produce something memorable for the Gallery. Sheila writes:
“Now retired from the physical theatre, I have built a scale model for an imaginary theatre. The play is ‘Endgame’ by Samuel Beckett. The design process, reading the play, thinking, drawing, has always been a great pleasure for me, so this project has been a way of recapturing that pleasure.
“I chose ‘Endgame’ because, apart from ‘Waiting for Godot’ I have never designed one of Beckett’s plays, although his work is very familiar to me. I love his dark humour, his eccentric characters, the nihilism which is somehow full of energy and optimism.
“There is only one set in ‘Endgame’ and not a lot happens, things just take their course. Beckett wrote the play in French and it was performed on 1 April 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre, directed by Roger Blin with a French cast. It was subsequently performed the next month in Paris at the Studio des Champs Élysées. Beckett translated it himself for the first English production at the Royal Court in the early 60s.The opening lines set the scene:
Bare interior.
Grey light.
Left and right back, high up, two small windows, curtains drawn. (These are drawn back and then closed again several times in the play.)
Front right, a door.
Hanging near the door, its face to the wall, a picture.
Front left, touching each other, covered with an old sheet, two ash bins.
Centre, in an armchair on castors, covered with an old sheet, Hamm.
Motionless by the door, his eyes fixed on Hamm, Clov. Very red face.
Brief tableau.
“When it was suggested that I might make an installation in the Gallery, I was both intimidated and exhilarated. I hope that what Alasdair and I have put together will interest and amuse. What it all means I really cannot say.”