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The Old Stlll: Historic new home for Peterborough's artistic talent
Yesterday, The ET revealed that, after standing empty for more than 18 months, The Old Stlll in the Westgate Arcade in Peterborough has been temporarily given a new lease of life, thanks to five enterprising artists.
Yesterday, The ET revealed that, after standing empty for more than 18 months, The Old Stlll in the Westgate Arcade in Peterborough has been temporarily given a new lease of life, thanks to five enterprising artists.Features writer Hannah Gray went along to find out more.
YOU may not be able to get a pint in the Old Still any more, but what you can get instead is a piece of unique art from some home-grown talent.
Last week, five Peterborough artists moved their wares into the historic building for a two-month residency, which will see them displaying their work and also creating new pieces as visitors wander around.
This innovative use of an empty building – The Old Still has been vacant since March last year – came about after the group read about a national campaign to get artists using empty shop units on a temporary basis
The group – which works under the banner View 5 – then approached the management at Queensgate about using some space within the centre.
They originally had in their sights a shop unit, but were delighted with the offer of the former pub.
Textile artist and painter Kathryn Moore said: "When we approached Queensgate they said there was the Still and we jumped at the chance because it's got so much character."
The group, which also includes Anita Bruce, Sue Shields, Julie Reed and Ren Viner, moved in two weeks ago, and are delighted with their new gallery-come- studio.
Kathryn (43) said: "It's got a lot of space for us to have our own separate working areas so we're not on top of each other."
As the artists are only in the building for a short period of time, they are not getting involved in doing any major work to it, but by displaying their pieces, as well as a few artfully placed pieces of material, they have helped to make it less pub-like.
The bars are still standing, but rather than be an inconvenience, they have become a surface on which to display work.
Kathryn, of Crawthorne Road, Peterborough, said: "We've worked with the space. The original features, such as the fireplace, are lovely. We haven't tried to cover up the fact that it was a pub."
She predicts that the gallery will continue to evolve over the coming weeks.
"I will bring my loom along here and we will be doing some sculptures in the courtyard with recycled materials," she said.
The five artists have known each other for years and Kathryn, along with Sue Shields, set up Peterborough Artists' Open Studios together 10 years ago.
The work they will be creating at The Old Still will be going towards an exhibition they are holding in January at the Yarrow Gallery at Oundle School.
This exhibition will have the theme of Costal Drift, and each of the five artists have a unique perspective on this theme.
Kathryn's take on this is to create six three-metre long tapestry weavings.
These weavings have the theme of erosion and decay and Kathryn is using Eastbourne, particularly the town's pier, as inspiration. Both sets of her grandparents lived there and so she chose this place she knows well as her inspiration.
"It was something I was familiar with," she said. "Usually the paintings I tend to do are of remote costal regions, but I particularly wanted to focus on something I was familiar with and that was more domestic."
Kathryn's talents do not just extend to painting and weaving. Having got the wool from local farmers, she spins and dyes it herself, using a mixture of synthetic and natural dyes.
She said: "My mother used to spin and weave down in Somerset, where I originate from, and I just learned it from her. When I moved to Peterborough 17 years ago, I joined the Peterborough Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers and learned a lot more from them too."
For the five artists, using the Still as a gallery and a studio is about more than just getting ready for their exhibition at the Yarrow Gallery.
Kathryn said: "It's really to raise the profile of art, to let people know that there are artists in the city and to make people aware that they can buy original, affordable pieces of artwork.
"You can buy something unique, original, a one-off piece that has a lot of emotional attachment – you buy it because you like it. It's changing people's mindset, that's what we're trying to do. It's also just giving people something nice to look at.."
View 5 will be at the Old Still until Saturday, December 19. The gallery is open Monday to Saturday 10am to 4pm. The Costal Drift exhibition will take place at the Yarrow Gallery from Saturday, January 23 to Saturday, February 13, 2010.
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Anita makes a splash with her knitting style
Sitting a room which, with cream panelled walls, has the feel of a charming costal cottage, Anita Bruce is knitting.
However, she's not rustling up a nice scarf or a pair of booties for a baby, but a fish. And it gets stranger – she's knitting with wire.
Anita (52) is a textile artist and last year she decided she wanted to work on a series of pieces based around the theme of evolution and mutation. She had in her mind she wanted to make small pieces that resembled plankton, but didn't know what to use to create them.
"I knew I wanted to make sculptural pieces and I tried different techniques and the knitting in wire just took off," she said. "I now knit everything in sight. It's opened up lots of possibilities for me."
Anita uses a copper wire, which has an enamelled surface. The result, particularly when it comes to the fish, is very effective. The fish are floppy and yet strong, and feel cool to the touch, just as you might imagine a real fish would.
Anita said: "It's just a good solution for this particular way of working. You get such a nice smooth surface which doesn't detract from the form. You've got a certain degree of transparency as well which works quite well for sea creatures."
Anita's work is a fusion of science and art, as she uses a random number generator to help make the patterns and the shapes. She draws up her own knitting patterns on graph paper, and so what begins as detailed configurations of crosses on squares ends up a fluid, three dimensional shape.
Anita has long had an interest in art, but only turned professional in January this year after being made redundant from her job in IT. Already her artistic career is going well, as her plankton have been exhibited in Los Angeles, as part of an innovative project called the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef.
Here work will also be on display at the Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House, London.
"For such insignificant creatures, they've done well for themselves," Anita said.
The sea and the coast is a big source of inspiration to Anita.
"I spent a lot of my childhood summers in Norfolk and I think the sea has been a big influence on me," she said. "I'm also quite interested in some of the conservation issues around the sea, like over-fishing."
For the exhibition at the Yarrow Gallery, Anita, of Francis Gardens, Peterborough, will continue her work with wire fish, but will also be looking to make fish out of traditional yarn using knitting techniques found around costal areas, such as Shetland, the Fair Isles and Arran.
At the moment though, as she sits on a window seat in what was once the Cathedral Bar of the Old Still, Anita is more than happy with the current exhibition.
"I'm delighted really," she said. "It's fantastic to have such a great location in the centre of town and to have our own space so we can display our work exactly as we want it.
"We can bounce ideas off each other and do some collaborative pieces which I think is going to be really exciting and we're also going to be looking to be involving the public with some public art in the courtyard."
For more information on Anita's work, visit www.anitabruce.co.uk
Sky's the limit for Ren
Pop your head round the door of The Old Still and you can't fail to notice Ren Viner's paintings. Her large, powerful pieces provide a stunning contrast to some of the smaller and more delicate work of her colleagues.
Ren, of Thorpe Lea Road, Pererborough, turned professional as an artist in 2003, after a successful career in advertising.
She paints mainly in acrylic and tends to use strong, bold colours for her richly textured pieces.
Her inspiration is almost always the world around her.
"I'm really fascinated by my surroundings," Rene said. "Here in Peterborough the thing that really inspires me are the skies, because we get fantastic skies. I take my inspiration from nature and then what I'll do is I'll express the way I feel about that.
"Rather than copying what I see I'm expressing how I feel about what I've seen."
For the Yarrow Gallery exhibition, Ren will be continuing to apply her unique vision to the theme of costal drift.
"I will be focusing on the details of the coast," she said. "The way I will express them is inserting them into landscapes that I've created, giving you the feeling of the landscape and the coast but by focusing on the detail."
As Norfolk is the easiest costal region to access from Peterborough, Ren will be drawing her inspiration partly from there, but she will also be using more exotic locations.
"I will have influences from my other experiences of costal areas, which will be in Africa and other parts of the UK," she said.
Sue's ancient craft is inspired by folk tales
IN a light and airy corner of the Old Still, Sue Shields can be found working away at the ancient craft of print making.
Sue, of Broadway, Peterborough, is a print maker and painter, and although the material she uses such as industrial lino are modern, the techniques are deeply historical.
As a painter, Sue tends to stick to landscapes, but through the printing she has started to tell stories.
She said: "Over the last couple of years narrative has started to come into it and that's really because when you got to all these different lovely places, there's always stories connected with them, and you get to know them and so gradually I've started to incorporate them into it.
"I like the folk tale traditional we have in this country which I think is under-utilised."
One of Sue's previous pieces is a print of St Kyneburgha, the saint to whom Castor Church is dedicated.
Sue's print tells the story of this female saint, who legend has it, tried to protect silver belonging to the church which stood in Castor then, from robbers. She ran out of the church with it, and as the robbers ran after her, she dropped the coins, which became flowers in which she hid.
Behind her, the robbers were swallowed up in a chasm which had opened in the ground.
For the Yarrow Gallery exhibition, Sue will continue this exploration of folk tales, but this time with a maritime theme. One of her prints will be of her vision of the story of Jonah and the whale, but there will also be some stories not heard before.
"I make up my own stories as well," she said. "I'll go to the coast and I'll do lots of sketches and I take elements of that and it will be included in the work."
Studio is Julie's former local
AS a teenager and young woman enjoying a drink in The Old Still, Julie Reid could never have imagined that one day it would house her gentle, soothing drawings and paintings.
Julie (46), of Dogsthorpe Road, Peterborough, can remember drinking at The Old Still, and now has started frequenting it again, but for a different purpose.
In a corner of the Courtyard Bar, Julie has created a serene studio for herself, with examples of her work lining the walls, and soft cream fabric on the ceiling.
From being a youngster supping her drink in the city centre pub, Julie went on to become a hairdresser, then a full time mum, and then, six years ago, a professional artist.
While much of her previous work is on a more domestic theme, featuring items such as wine glasses, teapots and draped fabric, for the exhibition at the Yarrow Gallery, she will be looking at seashells, which she will draw before she paints.
For Julie, the theme of costal drift fits in well with her view of her craft.
"Drawing to me is all about really looking and investigating, and so is beachcombing," she said.
Although it is early days of the Old Still exhibition, and all of the artists have had to move away from their usual studios, Julie is enjoying the project.
"I feel quite settled. It's great having us all together because normally you're working at home in your studio, you're quite isolated," she said.
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