This summer’s exhibition at Artists Harbour is Off The Wall … an eclectic mix of mainly maritime-themed paintings and prints by artists from the local area and around the south of England.
It’s running from now until September and the pictures on show include beautiful seascapes by Chris Wood and huge yachts by rising young star Robin Eckardt.

Chris’s acrylic painting on canvas of Portsmouth’s famous Spinnaker Tower has been used for the exhibition poster. It’s the best painting we have seen to date of the iconic south coast landmark. You can see and buy the original or a print.

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REFLECTING ON THE ATLANTIC

If one geographical feature defines Britain more than any other it is the Atlantic Ocean - always both Britain’s fortress wall and its open road to the rest of the world - and with two notable Atlantic anniversaries in the air (25 years since the Falklands War, and 200 since the Royal Navy put down the Atlantic slave trade), the new exhibition at Artists Harbour Gallery in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is Atlantic Reflections.

The exhibition is one of our strongest line-ups of fine paintings and photography, by artists and photographers from the southeast as well as the Midlands, Devon and elsewhere.

The works range from vast and empty oil-painted seas to the trawlers who bring in the nation’s fish, from paintings of naval tugs and yachts boiling the sea with their speed to some stunning photos:

• the mighty American warship USS New Jersey boiling the air with its fearsome broadside in a display of Atlantic alliance power, photographed in mid-ocean by an officer on HMS Invincible
• the Royal Navy warships of the South Atlantic Task Force sailing past the Falklands after freeing the islands from Argentine invasion in 1982
• arguably the best dolphin photo ever taken with no less than 17 of the fun-loving mammals surfing a single wave together off South Africa as the human surfers just watch
• from deep under the North Atlantic, ghostly images of the barnacle-encrusted engine cylinders, propellers and bows of the Titanic as she lies today on the sea bed

In other paintings, mountainous sea shores run down to wave-washed rock ledges, and sandy beaches give way to ocean liners painted by a naval architect who has worked on much of the Royal Navy’s current and future surface fleet.

The Atlantic Reflections exhibition is on show at Artists Harbour Gallery in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard until May 4. Admission to the gallery and the Historic Dockyard is free.

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A monster of the deep rubs shoulders with a monster of the shallows in the latest art exhibition “In the Water” at Artists Harbour Gallery, the fine art gallery in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

The monster of the deep is the legendary RMS Titanic, captured close up through the lens of South Coast photographer Rob Goldsmith. In 2005 Rob was lucky enough to win a competition to dive down and photograph the final resting place of the “unsinkable” luxury liner that met a North Atlantic iceberg and took hundreds of passengers to their deaths on her maiden voyage in 1912. Rob has produced two stunning colour photo prints of the great barnacle-encrusted ship for Artists Harbour.

Pictures of swimmers nervously rub shoulders in the exhibition with a monster of the shallows, a fearsomely toothed 9ft. alligator with jaws like a steel trap … literally. Artist-blacksmith Steve Woodbridge made the impressive reptile from scrap steel. Steve is a member of The Guild of Wrought Ironwork Craftsmen of Wessex and uses forging techniques, flame cutting and welding to produce his stunning one off pieces.

Elsewhere in the exhibition, photographs of a junked bike and tyres in a stream jostle with more sparkling by Justin Parry, sexy textile mermaids by former Portsmouth College of Art and Design teacher Heather Lipscombe and installations of both video art (underwater swimmers by Denise Callender) and the sounds of Mongolian rivers, springs, waterfalls and ice recorded by Simon Whetham, the first time Artists Harbour has exhibited video and sound pieces.

Other featured artists include: Mary Chidlow, Rosy Maguire, Martin Piercy, Sue Oliver, Lyneth Howells, Julien Masson, Tracey Betts, Hilary Barry, Clare Flynn, Shaun Hall, Enzo Marra and Julie Scrivens.

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The Shoreline Threads exhibition at Artists Harbour running from December 11th 2006 to January 31st 2007 has been curated this year after last year’s successful textile exhibition Threads of Trafalgar and our last maritime exhibition Shorelines. The exhibition is a mix of work from emerging and established textile artists who are both local and national.

Traditionally textile groups in history were a way of women expressing their resistance and lack of power in society, however, the pieces in our show have a calm and tranquil feel to them. Indeed the work is made mainly by women who either run workshop groups or are part of textile groups, however, we have one male artist in the exhibition who has used materials associated with masculine fishing traditions.

Jonathan Polkest’s The Pettyfox in the Isles of Scilly and The PZ87 Rosebud are pieces made of textile and gesso with polyethylene (fishing line) thread. Jonathan states “I take objects and regenerate a contemporary meaning in a cyclic revision. Everything I do eventually re-emerges until it is fully complete”.

The piece Thanet Grey Skies by Lorna Dallas Conte is inspired by coastal scapes of land, sea and sky combined with a fascination for colour and an interest in traditional craft skills.

No. 1029 by Margaret Taylor is a wonderful creation sharing beauty inspired by the rhythm and pattern in nature.

Shirley Mundy runs a Craft Group in Portsmouth and Beading Workshops in Bosham and Portsmouth. Her workshops are both private and community based workshops and she has recently had much success and demand for her beading skills in particular.

Frayed Edges is a group of 6 textile artists who formed after meeting each other on a City and Guilds Textile Course. The aim of the group is researching and experimenting with new techniques. The women set each other a challenge on a bi-monthly basis for a new project. Two pieces by Cathy Beach and Margaret Mullice from this group were sold at our Private View but are still on display until the exhibition finishes.

Also on display are John Binet-Fauvel’s fascinating creatures from the sea made of knitted recycled electrical wires.

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Artists Harbour is delighted with the artistic strength of its new Shorelines exhibition, which runs until January 31, 2007.

Starring strongly textured acrylics, the delicate watercolours of a war artist and the strong oils of a member of the Royal West of England Academy, the exhibition celebrates the atmosphere of that in-between zone where land meets sea.

More than 70 works range from pencil figures to laminated glass wave forms, so there’s plenty of choice.

Subject matter ranges from the spray of waves breaking on rocks to the rusting steel hulks of warships awaiting the hammer in a Portsmouth breaker’s yard.

Later, textile artworks (Shoreline Threads) will be added to the mix to maintain the Artists Harbour tradition of first-class textile artworks around Christmas.

The war artist displaying works is Gordon Rushmer, a man with a delicate touch for evening light. The member of the Royal West of England Academy is Gerald Cains, whose many years in Portsmouth are reflected in his robust Portsmouth and Solent shorelines.

Other artists in the show include glass artist Sue Parry, Gillian Arthur who has provided some fabulous seagulls scavenging the shore, Rosemary Miller with her dramatic crashing waves, deckchairs and more, plus Peter Hill and Ross Foster.

It’s definitely worth a visit, and we look forward to seeing you!

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