Previous Exhibitions
Over the years since we opened in 2009, we have had more than 70 exhibitions. Some of these are available online. We hope you will enjoy browsing these pages. If you live far from Settle, perhaps it will whet your appetite to pay us a visit. In the summer of 2019 we staged a special tenth anniversary exhibition at the Folly Museum in Settle. It ran from July 6 to September 6 and told the story of how we established the gallery. It listed all the exhibitions; included many of the posters we used to promote them and included tributes from many of our previous exhibitors, including Brian May who has shown some of his fascinating collection of Victorian photographs on two separate occasions. The boards from the exhibition are in the NOW WE ARE TEN section of this page, which you can reach by scrolling back to 2019.
9 January -12 April 2021
John Bentley’s photographic exhibition ‘A Year in Hill Farming’ documented the sheep farming year in the uplands of Yorkshire and Cumbria. The photographs had been taken over the past 6 years by John who is based in Settle and is fascinated by the cycle and traditions of the farming year, the diversity of sheep and hill farming and the dedication of individual farmers and localities to particular breeds.
He said: “To me it is very important to document the industry as it stands and I am very respectful of the history and traditions of sheep farming and its social and economic importance to the Dales and the rural north of England. There are economic and environmental pressures on the industry and this past year has, of course, also seen the impact of Covid-19, meaning that the gatherings for the traditional shows and sales (as depicted in many of the photographs) can no longer take place in the usual way. The photographs in the exhibition document the sheep breeds, the people who rear / buy / sell them, the workings of the farming calendar and the environment and the infrastructure of hill farming. “
John has been a keen photographer for over 40 years. He has a wide range of photographic interests including live concert photography, landscape, travel and documentary photography. While John contributes news and stock photographs to a national press agency he is retired from full-time employment and able to devote his time to his personal photographic projects. In 2016/17 he was a contributor to the ‘Voices from the Land’ exhibition (initially staged at Hawes Countryside Centre), which focussed on interviewing and photographing farmers in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. His wide range of photographic work can be viewed online at-
https://www.flickr.com/photos/john_arc-images/collections
John says: “When I moved to Settle my farming photo project was mainly centred around photographing agricultural shows, livestock markets and sheepdog trials. In particular, sheep shows like Tan Hill and the various Lake District Shepherds’ Meets started to loom large in the coverage. Becoming an ‘addict’ of sorts, I was drawn into photographing the world of hill sheep farming. There is still so much to photograph in the realm of sheep, but in the meantime in this exhibition I’ve tried to paint a picture of how the farming year pans out, including putting the tups with the ewes (or ‘yows’) in autumn, pregnancy testing, spring lambing, fell gathers, shearing, shows and sales and haymaking. I’ve tried to record the people, the animals, the activities, the infrastructure, the landscape and environment and the seasons. I find lots of aspects to photograph, although Covid-19.
A guide giving the background to the exhibition and more about hill farming today can be downloaded here:
The story behind the exhibition
12 December 2020 – 8 January 2021
In the winter of 2020, once again we were delighted to show the famous all-knitted 12 days of Christmas as our contribution to the seasonal spirit in Settle. Featuring lords-a leaping, maids a milking, swans a swimming and all the rest, including of course the partridge in its pear tree, would Christmas be Christmas without this excellent work by our local knitters?
Since their first showing in 2014 the 78 tiny all knitted figures that act out the words of the Twelve Days of Christmas have amazed visitors and set many of them reciting the lines about what their true love gave to them on each of those days of Christmas.
The eight ladies knitting who produced the exhibition are Settle residents: Jeanne Carr, Catherine Holland, Shirley Crosby, Alison Tyas, Joyce Elliot, Jacqui Lewington, Betty Beesley and Janet Lillywhite. Credit is due too to Barbara Rigby who designed the window panels, giving the exhibition a truly festival spirit.
It has long been believed that the words of the Twelve Days of Christmas, did not reflect the rather odd collection of gifts given to a fiancée who would probably have preferred a box of chocolates, but were a device used by 16th century Roman Catholics to convey the basics of their belief without arousing the suspicions of non-Catholics.
In previous years the exhibition has been enhanced by gifts of chocolate left for visitors, but this year Covid restrictions prevented this.
Eight knitters knitting
Drummers drumming
12 September – 12 December 2020
This exhibition honoured the true heroes of the Covid-19 pandemic – the people who put their own safety at risk to look after us all.
The exhibition ran from September 12 and was due to close on November 6, but with a new lockdown introduced from November 4 and set to run until early December it seemed only right to extend this highly relevant exhibition until the start of the Christmas show on December 12.
As in the earlier lockdown the gallery remained open, not least because we physically couldn’t close it, but visitors were requested to observe social distancing ie one visitor at a time and to wash their hands before and after their visit.
Many of the portraits in Frontline faces were of friends and former colleagues of the Settle-based artist Julie Sobczak. Some were local, including a sheep farmer and his dog, but reflecting the fact that this is a global pandemic, they also included people that Julie had met during her extensive travels, that included a spell working as a midwife in the Cayman Islands.
Among the images was one of a group of musicians from New York who entertained neighbours during lockdown – the lead musician James Palmaro, who has been blind for forty years, is a long- time friend of Julie’s. You can read more about him here:
James PalmaroAnother image was of a policeman and his dog from New Zealand: they work with another of Julie’s friends and have been featured in a piece on this exhibition in the New Zealand police magazine (see posting in the Gallery in the News section). Naturally health care workers in their protective gear featured in many of the images. And reflecting Julie’s time as a midwife there was a picture of a family and their new born child with the midwife.
As an artist, Julie has previously worked mainly with watercolours but has more recently has embraced the wizardry of technology to create these digital paintings, based on photographs, that strive not only to capture a likeness – but also give an insight into subject’s personality.
Julie says: “Thank you to all frontline workers. Your tireless efforts are not going unnoticed.” Fifty percent of donations made to the gallery during this exhibition will go to NHS Charities Together.
You can read more about Julie’s work at the website www.digitalartbrush.com
11 July – 11 September 2020
The work on show in this co-authorship exhibition TALKING PINK was created by Alison Medd and Paul Rogers and investigated and explored ideas and images based around the colour PINK..
Interacting with the photography the contemporary art practice of Alison has a different approach and provided contrasting emphasis and vitality to the exhibition in its enquiry around the subject. Stories collected from children and their families were explored and their words made the colour exist invisibly in this space. Dialogue is a contraction from the Greek words for through and words. Today children catalogue and categorise their everyday through a visual frame. Emoji’s and’ likes’ replace the human response; what is read is frequently lost but what is spoken can be passed down through generations. Scientist David Bohm considers dialogue as a kind of creative catalyst for a group so this project TALKING PINK aims to trigger an intergenerational discourse on what the colour pink means to them and their families. As children’s author Lois Lowry said ‘Memories need to be shared.’
The photographic images were collected ‘street photography’ which were meant to complement and balance Alison’s eclectic, investigative approach to pink.
A.C. Grayling says…’ The history of collecting illuminates something striking: the human mind’s unquenchable curiosity, and its love for the wonder of the world’ – in this case TALKING PINK. The images are what most street photography is about – questioning; collecting; creating or snapping the ‘strange and mundane’; developing contexts; encouraging one thing to lead to another and allowing thinking about things we didn’t know or hadn’t seriously thought about. All put into perspective and reinforced in practice by Magidson’s lyrics…’ Enjoy yourself while you’re still in the pink’ and Elizabeth Taylor’s comment about ‘…falling off my pink cloud with a thud’.
Alison Medd is Director of Learning for Expressive Arts at a secondary school in Kent. Alison is new to the Gallery on the Green but has exhibited contemporary art at group shows with rhizoMAATic14 including – 288 NXRd, rhizoMAATic14 Graduate Show’(August 2014); 310 NXRd, ‘Say What?’ (March 2015); The Mali Salon, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Rijeka, Croatia ‘Say What?’ (April 2015). ‘Message on a Bottle’ Ashcroft Arts Centre (May 2016); Utopia Volkspark Friedrichshain (August 2016) and the Islington Arts Factory Summer Show (August 2017).
Paul Rogers was Associate Head of the School of Art and Design and a principal lecturer in applied photography at Blackpool and the Fylde college. He has exhibited previously in the Gallery on the Green and in local and national venues in the UK and the USA.
Alison Medd and Paul Rogers
Here is a photograph of Alison and Paul at the opening of the exhibition together with an overview of the show and some of the images on show in the exhibition.
Overview
March 15 – July 10 2020
This exhibition was due to close on May 15 but was extended until the lifting of coronavirus restrictions made it possible to change shows.
Chris Newson, is a teacher and practitioner in Chinese brush painting based in Settle. This exhibition featured her own work and showed how she teaches this ancient and fascinating art to a variety of different local groups.
Chris’s interest in Chinese brush painting developed following her retirement from full-time work in 2008. She has learned from Chinese masters over one or two days each month for ten years, and is now a member of both the Yorkshire and the national Chinese Brush Painting societies, though such is that nature of the art that she is still technically a beginner.
Chris loves the amazing selection of natural hair brushes, the variety of papers and the Chinese watercolours with seven different reds. She grinds her own ink on a stone slate. She paints on all sorts of surfaces, including lamp shades, silk fans and now pressed cork!
Chris Newson last exhibited at the Gallery on the Green in 2013, in the snow, on her 60th birthday. Since then she has begun to exhibit in other places such as Ilkley Clarke Foley, ManyHands in Silsden, Craven Arts Studio, Skipton Art Trail and recently Le Caveau and Q Workery in Skipton.
She teaches a number of local art groups including Abbeyfield Supported Living, WI groups across Yorkshire, U3A in Craven and Barnsley, Project 6 in Keighley, hen parties, family groups and community interest companies in Silsden and Settle Community Hub. She leads some free classes and has developed publications for charity such as Cancer Support Centre.
Chris has worked in Settle for the Community and Business Hub, teaching at the Quaker Meeting House, the Hub and Victoria Hall Art Days.
She has a studio at home, overlooking fields and teaches talented and beginner pupils.
Chris can be contacted on chrisnewsn@aol.com.
She also has a facebook page chrisnewsonchinnesestylepainting.
