Video: 2020 In Review by Hannah Munby
As 2020 draws to a close, it goes without saying that the landscape of this year was not quite as we expected.
Overcoming the challenges of a pandemic has required adapting to new ways of working and communicating with our audience. I’ve particularly enjoyed engaging in conversations with artists and makers and broadcasting these as a brand-new podcast – something I’ve always wanted to do but never had the time!
Photography has been a key focus of this year and in April we held our inaugural Festival of Photography (virtually, of course).
The festival was a chance to establish us as an organisation known for exhibiting some of the finest examples of black and white handprinted photography, an art form we are all incredibly passionate about. The month-long series of exhibitions welcomed back Paul Hart to the gallery, with a collection of images from his decade-long study of the Fens, coinciding with the launch of the final book in series ‘Reclaimed’. The physical edition of this exhibition took place in September 2020 and a feature on the BBC ‘In Pictures’ saw us receive record numbers through the door and all whilst still ensuring the safety of all our visitors, it proved to be quite a week!
The photography festival also presented the opportunity to welcome new photographers to the gallery. A hark back to 1970’s London, full of fun and fashion included the work of the late Tony Boase, Japanese photojournalist Setsuo Kato and milliner turned fashion photographer, James Wedge. The festival closed with a sensitive documentary of County Mayo by former head of photography at Central St Martin’s, Graham Murrell. The festival was well received
Other art forms became a focus throughout this year too. Yorkshire glassmaking duo Gillies Jones bookended the year, first exhibited in January in Seeing Red and a selection of their plant-inspired limited-edition bowls were shown in both the virtual and physical editions of Plantlife. The art of glass engraving was also highlighted through the work of Katharine Coleman, whose Goosegrass vases and Gingko Leaf Bowl were fine examples in the field.
An annual feature of our programme, Plantlife was the third in a series of exhibitions that raise funds for a conservation project of local importance. This year, the exhibition supported the Road Verges Project from Plantlife charity. An awareness of the cause was catapulted to the forefront of everyone’s minds when our daily walks saw us passing the same verges and hedgerows as the seasons changed - changes that would have perhaps been missed in our busy pre-covid lives. If there’s some good to have come from 2020, we can hope that the appreciation of our environment will continue to be an important consideration for us all.
The exhibition offered a platform to highlight the work of artists, makers and designers whose work draws particular inspiration from the natural world. Some of these works were a direct response to the situation we all found ourselves and were created in the heart of the pandemic. Artists were forced to look a little closer to home for the inspirations and once again, the resilience of creatives excelled.
2020 started with a much-needed Splash of Colour, in Seeing Red, to cure for the January Blues, something we could sure do with now too.
As we see in the new year, we look forward to welcoming you back to the gallery, whenever that may be possible.
Thank you to all the artists who have exhibited with us this year, for putting your trust in us and allowing us the freedom to improvise as we juggled government guidelines.
And lastly, thank you to you, for visiting us when we have been able to open and for following and sharing in our journey.