Previous Exhibitions
Over the years since we opened in 2009, we have had almost 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. And 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.
12 January – 17 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 formed this exhibition.
Elaine writes: “The Jubilee Tree has interested me since I became aware of its magestic beauty the first summer I moved to the green.
“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.”
10 November 2018 – 11 January 2019
Many walkers know Ingleborough as the last and most challenging of the Yorkshire Three Peaks.
But there is much more to this hill than the average walker sees.
The collection of photographs that made up this exhibition illustrate how people live, enjoy and work on and around the peak.
The photographs, taken by resident Hilary Fenten, were a snapshot in time of the area’s social history, showing how people – locals and visitors – connect to the land and its communities.
The collection included a wide representation of jobs, trades, characters and events throughout the Ingleborough area and through the changing seasons.
A number of historical images, from the Back in Settle and Capturing the Past collections, were displayed alongside the portraits, to show how some things clearly change while others seem to remain constant.
This exhibition was funded through the Ingleborough Dales Landscape Partnership, led by Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust, and supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The exhibition at the Gallery completed a series of showings across North Craven that began at the Folly in Settle in September 2018 and included displays at both Ribblehead and Horton in Ribblesdale railway stations. The display at the Gallery was specially designed to ensure that the story of the area’s big hill fits into our own small gallery.
8 September 2018 – 9 November 2018
Canadian mixed media artist Carol Howard Donati works with fabric, paint, print, and recycled household materials.
An anthropologist by training, the focus of her art is everyday life and how it provides the framework for our human experience.
This mixed media collage installation aimed to connect the artist to our local community from a continent away. The show was a 16-card display celebrating the people of Canada.
Each of the 16, 4 X 6 cards was comprised of two hand-made surfaces stitched together, back to back: One side collaged and the other printed.
The collage side featured an abstract pattern of painted and found papers, commercial packaging, and appliquéd plastics. The print side featured telephone area codes from coast to coast across Canada hand-stamped in red and black ink.
The viewer was invited to interact and contribute to the ever-changing nature of this diversity by moving the cards to create new arrangements in the display.
Carol said: “The world is an increasingly small place: We are drawn together, not just by technology and travel, but also by our common human interests, daily activities, and overlapping histories and cultures.”
“I am inspired by connections of heritage, culture and commonwealth and the opportunity to provide a personal presence in your community”.
“A phone box makes an ideal gallery because it is familiar as an active space. I think it is wonderful. People step in ready to engage in a conversation with what they see. As I see it, this phone box is still taking calls!”
For more about Carol and her work visit
www.carolhowarddonati.ca
Carol Howard Donati
8 July 2018 – 8 September 2018
An installation by Aberdeenshire artist Ingrid Stephenson formed this exhibition.
Titled ARCHAOS II, the exhibition was about the evolutionary process, exploring creation and decay. It drew on Ingrid’s experience as the recording artist at archaeological digs.
The first weekend of the exhibition formed part of the Three Peaks Art Trail, featuring artists at 30 different locations across an area from Settle to Ingleton.
Ingrid Stephenson was born in the north of Scotland and is half-Dutch. Though her degree was in Fine Art she was always fascinated by archaeology, and has regularly been employed at digs all over Scotland and England.
She said –“My subject-matter tends to be bleak because my materials include dead things, bone, metals, and things in the process of decaying. Sometimes there is a dark humour in decay. I like to look forensically at a found object and identify what processes it has undergone; whether it has been hammered or worn. I like to see how things degrade.”
This exhibition followed on from a successful show, Archaos I at the renowned Bingley Gallery and formed stage two of a tour introducing Stephenson’s work to England for the first time.
Ingrid Stephenson
Ingrid opens the exhibition on July 8 as part of the Three Peaks Art Trail
26 May – 6 July 2018
Women of the world gallop through the Dales in a set of vibrant oil paintings that formed this exhibition.
The Yorkshire landscape’s beauty was joyously expressed by artist Lois Brothwell who said: “Hiking in The Yorkshire Dales is a joyous and liberating experience. The question for me as an artist is how to communicate such a heady sensation? My answer is by painting ecstatic women galloping on horseback, tossing their garments and inhibitions to the wind!”
In its final week the exhibition formed part of the Three Peaks Arts Trail that featured 16 venues between Settle, Ribblehead and Ingleton.
Lois’s exposure to art began in her late teens when she left Canada, where she grew up. After a year working in England then a tour of Europe, she returned to the UK, moving to Yorkshire where she fell under the spell of the landscape’s beauty. She took up drawing and painting, training with nationally reputed artists including Helen Peyton and Tom Wood.
Lois enjoys figurative and narrative painting “with a bit of abstract thrown in”. She loves colour and “plucks from several triads for a single canvas. I’m impulsive with colour… if I suddenly fancy some lime green or blazing-hot orange I use them. I don’t care if they upset the picture’s cohesion…I want to have fun.”
Lois Brothwell
