A visit to Love & Landscape: Stanley Spencer in Suffolk at Gainsborough's House

 

Event date: 3 December 2025

Review by Janey Bevington

 

Girls Returning from a Bathe, Stanley Spencer

 
 

The recent ncas trip, to Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury Suffolk, was deemed a big success by all those who went.

Emma Boyd (the Keeper of Art and Place at Gainsborough) gave 25 of us an excellent guided tour of the current exhibition “Stanley Spencer, Love and Landscape” a small, but exquisite, show with some unforgettable works reflecting Stanley’s highly complex personal life and incredible artistic dexterity.

 
 

Highly recommended, the exhibition continues until 22 March 2026.

More information is available here

A talk and tour of the recently completed Norwich Castle project, by Erin Davidson, Feilden+Mawson Architects

 

Event date: 15 November 2025

 

New bridge providing step free access into Norwich Castle Keep

 
 

A group of ncas members were given a tour of the recently completed Norwich Castle keep, a five-year project to restore and reimagine the Norman Keep.

The tour was led by project leader Erin Davidson and Dan Towers of Feilden+Mawson Architects and provided an opportunity for those interested to dig into this prominent conservation project.

 
 

The Mike Toll film archive: Mike Chapman, Oliver Creed and David Jones. A joint ncas and Norwich 20 Group event

Event date: 14 October 2025
Review by Danusia Wurm

 

Right to left: Oliver Creed, Mike Chapman, former ncas Chair Keith Roberts and David Jones

 
 

Echoing the 2024 ncas exhibition, Post War: People and Place, that showcased the work of Robert Fox and Leslie Davenport, the evening at Norwich School’s Blake Studio was another brilliant time-capsule, this time transporting us back 35 years to the early 1990s.

Pre-dating a period marked by the rise of youth and popular culture and a shift towards individualism, we witness three artists beautifully captured in Mike Toll’s superb cinematic portraits “just being themselves.”  Even better, all three artists were present to witness their honest, unselfconscious, younger selves to the delight of an enthusiastic ncas and Norwich 20 Group audience.

Eloquently introduced by former ncas chair Keith Roberts (whose excellent notes I have unashamedly plundered) the films were made in1989 and 1990 in VHS format. They were transcribed to a more user-friendly digital format by ncas and the Norwich Twenty Group in 2018. All the films have now been deposited through Dr Nick Warr in the East Anglian Film Archive.

On the films themselves, Keith wryly comments, “Even after only 35 years the films do seem curiously dated…. - it’s hard to pin down why, but even their voices seem to be from a slightly different era - but their key interest is the tight focus that Mike Toll brings to the artist’s materials and methods, about how artists in practice make their stuff”.

 

Mike Chapman in his studio at St Ethelreda’s

“An artist is not joined to his work.  The work has its own integrity and life”
— Mike Chapman
 

Mike Chapman: Thinking With My Hands

Thinking With My Hands, was made in 1989 and follows Mike through the priest’s door and into his studio in the round-towered, St Etheldreda’s artist’s church in King Street. Keith comments: After some great drawings, and he really can draw, he goes on to describe in detail his approach to 3D and to 2D work, a distinction he rejects. In the film, Mike categorically states “I’m not a sculptor or a painter.”

 
 

He goes on to describe his huge appreciation of Van Gogh’s strong, ‘real’ paintings and drawings; Picasso’s sense of ‘fun and abundant inventiveness’; Rodin’s sculptural fluidity and Russian constructivist Tatlin who used new experimental materials such as zinc. To Mike ‘excitement and inquiry’ in the practice of art are very important.

A modest man, but a real artist, Mike continues to follow his ‘Constructivist’ line of enquiry in 3D and 2D art today. 

 

Oliver Creed

 
“Sculpture is a form that describes itself”
— Oliver Creed
 

In this film from 1990, Oliver is three years out of art school as a mature student and looking young and dapper. He talks confidently about his Contact Gallery show, Working an Edge. He covers his earlier work as a boatyard welder before talking in detail about the various considerations he takes before making a work, mostly with cement or plaster but all with a strong emphasis on structure with a capital “S”.  

 
 

He is particularly concerned with how a sculpture exists “outside of itself”; how it connects with another 3D form “stripping away associations to make the object its own thing”. A quintessential object maker and modeller, for the last decade, Oliver has been working exclusively in ceramic stoneware which still maintains its strong architectural flavour.

 

David Jones

“I paint the world immediately around me - from what’s about”
— David Jones
 

The film David Jones covers a lot of ground. Drawings and paintings and prints, but all with a clear central preoccupation with the real world around him, whether it is friends and family, mannequins in a shop window, the urban landscape, allotments, scrapped cars, castles, canals or street plans. David explains “Much of my work is about history. What interests me is how we can see evidence of the past around us.

 

In terms of carrying out the work, drawing is an essential basis together with a strong pictorial style. He is constantly looking for balance. He says, “A painting has to have its own discreet arrangement.”

Colour is also very important. He says, “Colour resonates to create atmosphere like notes or chords in music.” Influenced by, but not “explicitly following” artists including Braque, Matisse, Bonnard and Derain, he continues to be a serious observer of where and how we live.

In all, it was a wonderfully evocative and uplifting evening, which not only explored the aspirations and practices of three wonderful artists but also shone a light on the fascinating social history of the early 1990s.

We remain forever indebted to Mike Toll.

ncas would also like to thank Norwich 20 Group for their enthusiastic partnering in this event and Norwich School for their excellent hosting.

 

Figures in a Landscape: a talk by the artist Daniel & Clara on landscape, place and nature

Event date: 18 September
Review by Danusia Wurm

 
 

Image of Daniel & Clara from their publication Birding

 
 

Touched by Adam and Eve

It’s not often that an artist’s presentation is so eloquent and haunting that it’s hard to describe it in words. Such was the talk delivered by the artist Daniel & Clara to a captivated ncas audience at Norwich School’s Blake Studio.

 
“We are the work and the work is us”
— Daniel & Clara
 

Since meeting in 2010, the artist Daniel & Clara have lived a shared life of creative experimentation across a wide range of media, exploring the nature of human experience, perception and reality. Their art is solely based on their life experience, where they intensely observe the inner and outer landscape of themselves and that around them.

At its core, their practice is a meditation on the human search for meaning and the ways we attempt to make sense of our existence during our brief time on this planet.

Whilst the moving image and performance lie at the heart of their practice (this is how they met), Daniel & Clara also use digital, analogue and lenticular photography, installation and, unconventionally, mail art - correspondence and small images sent by post, originally to complete strangers (in an effort to connect) and latterly to subscribers. The mail art is particularly worthy of comment in that at a time of the “short read”, sound bites and endless scrolling, Daniel & Clara produce the opposite – exquisite often haunting text, that conjure up images of hyper-focussed clarity imbued with an underlying sense of atmosphere and place.

 

Extract from Letter 7 of “The Naturalist Letters”, Daniel & Clara

 

Daniel & Clara do not dictate how the viewer might perceive their work.

“One thing we are always trying to do is to place the viewer or reader at the centre of the work in some way, to not make art that tells them what to think or feel but to create a space where they can become conscious of their own thoughts or feelings”.

The viewer enters very much at the artist’s invitation. Echoing the work of sculptor and environmentalist Sir Richard Long RA (also a previous ncas speaker), their work appears to slow down time. As Amanda Geitner eloquently puts it “There is a hallucinatory intoxication to the body of work”.

 
“Two humans. One artist ”
— Daniel & Clara
 

The quantum leap from the “inner” to the “outer” came from a seminal visit to the Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire in 2017 where the relationship between nature and the human psyche rang out to them like a clarion call. Their “cataclysmic” encounter with Avebury led Daniel & Clara to permanently move to the UK in 2018 and begin make work in response to the British landscape. This period produced, amongst other works The Avebury Letters - letters written from the perspective of the Avebury stones! It was also at this time the artist first appeared in front of the the camera as its subject, transitioning from the “observer” to the “observed”.

 
 

2020 found them in lockdown on Mersea Island, near Colchester in Essex. At a time fraught with tension, isolation and anxiety, they noticed a “turn up” in the volume of nature. This is beautifully captured in On the Island a series of 100” videos “like small notes, sketches or diaries” which document the eerie stillness of the pandemic, interspersed with the insistent calls of nature. Other works at this time include The Yellow Letters (yellow being the colour associated with illness and disease) which describe the artist's isolation during the pandemic.

 
 

Throughout 2022 Daniel & Clara presented Landscape Imaginary, a series of exhibitions and events of their work across the East of England. This was accompanied by the publication of the first monograph about their work. Their continuing fascination with the “observer” and “observed” continued with Birding (2023) a body of work about the human gaze, exploring the optical and psychological processes at play when humans look at nature, and Birds and Beasts a poignant series of hand-painted photos of dead animals encountered in their daily walks. Daniel & Clara say “Painting became a way to have a deeper engagement with the subject and to bring into the photograph… a vitality of life while lived …” The series is ongoing.

 

A Sudden Downpour, The Lost Estate, Daniel & Clara

 

In 2024, commissioned by Norwich Castle Museum & Gallery, Daniel & Clara produced The Lost Estate, a series of six large-scale photographs that explore the sometimes fraught relationship between humans and the natural world through imagined narratives taking place in the gardens of a country estate. The series was conceived in response to the work of the British 19th Century Romantic movement, particularly John Crone.

Going forward, Daniel & Clara’s work continues to focus on the complex relationship between humans and the natural world, particularly exploring the climate crisis as a psychological crisis.

 
“We feel like Adam and Eve at the end of the world confronting the beauty and terror of existing”
— Daniel & Clara
 

Their latest work "ANGELS" (September 2025), is a series of painted photographs of Exeter Cathedral's eroded stone angels. Covered in layers of green paint the angels emerge and dissolve suspended in an absence of absence and presence. For the artist, these fragile weather worn figures have become a powerful metaphor for the erosion of traditional structures and shared myths. “In a world where such guiding narratives have faded, ANGELS expresses a deep sense of disorientation – a longing for meaning, guidance and connection”.

It seems somehow appropriate to close this essay on the subject of angels. Mysterious extensions of a higher power, these otherworldly creatures are often seen to presage momentous events. It calls to mind Daniel & Clara’s practice in response to the ongoing climate crisis.

Their art is inquiring and reflective but also fiercely analytical and visionary. It permeates with a quiet wisdom and space to think.

Our thanks go to Daniel & Clara for their superb presentation, to Lisa Newby, Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery for her excellent introduction and to the Norwich School for their effortless hosting.

ncas Small Grants winners announced

ncas are pleased to announce the two winners of the latest round of Small Grants Awards.

 
 

Being Woman is a touring series of exhibitions that bring together work from a number of intergenerational female artists, who have an affiliation with Norfolk and Suffolk, under the theme ‘Being Woman’.

 

Included in this exhibition will be loaned works including pieces by Paula Rego, Eileen Cooper, Celia Paul, Maggie Hambling and Liorah Tchiprout. The six-week exhibition will take place in Mandell’s Gallery in March/April 2026 and will be curated by Rachel Allen.

Featured poster from Being Woman at Corn Hall, Diss March - May 2025.

More information here

 
 

From Shangrila to Cromer is an exhibition in tribute to the late Derrick Greaves, featuring a body of work inspired by Derrick’s extensive practice, along with works by Derrick himself.

The proposal came from a group of friends, most of whom met during a three-year course at Art Academy East in Norwich, and who now get together regularly in the studio of the late Derrick Greaves hosted by his wife Sally Butler.

The exhibition will be exhibited at Cromer ArtSpace in 2026.

Featured images above (R to L): With the Parrots, Derrick Greaves; Scrambled Woman, Linda Sonntag; Pink and Green, Polly Johnson.

More information here