The Courgette Shop is Now Open!

The Courgette Shop started it's journey in April 2012 in the North Cornish town of Bude.

The accumulation of cardboard toilet rolls began with collection boxes amd notices being placed in schools, cafes, village shops and places of work in Bude and the surrounding villages.

Once enough cardboard toilet rolls had been collected and catalogued the painting process began. A handmade printing jig was assembled to create 5 painting stations. Each courgette started with a layer of green, then two thick dark green stripes, followed by 8 painted lines, then pencil lines in 3 different colours, and finally a series of yellow painted dots.

There are 100 hand assembled, screen printed boxes complete with handmade labels each containing 28 courgettes, weighing in at 425-445g.

It took 90 seconds to grow and harvest each of the 2800 courgettes culminating in a 3D print installation which sits somewhere between a fruit shop and a recycling centre. 

The Exhibition runs until Friday 3rd August. Visit helenmurgatroyd.co.uk for more homemade printing jigs, fruit and veg!

Mark Hayward's 'Little People'

For his first solo show at NancyVictor, Mark Hayward will be showing existing works including animations, screen prints and paintings alongside new works.

Through painting, animation and print Mark explores themes of identity and the individual using his faceless comic characters to construct fantasies that are at once both strange and familiar. With a sense of the documentary his on going body of work builds into a catalogue of characters and comic situations that heavily reference the world around him. Within this basic framework there are themes that Mark returns to, feeling drawn to the military, childhood, national pride and uniform, all of which give a strong visual identity for the artist to play with. His latest paintings are inspired by the Queen's Jubilee celebrations and the ongoing Falkland Islands dispute. 

Private View: Thursday 9th August 6 - 8pm

Show: Friday 10th - 31st August 2012

The Pomp of Circumstances by Chris Agnew

Chris Agnew's first solo exhibition is currently in its second week at Nancy Victor. The show has recieved very high attention and some great reviews. 

Each original drawing is completed by using a mechanical pencil and a nail file to achieve that precise and exquisite detail. Giclee and risograph prints are also available for a very affordable price.

The exhibition presents a series of works that operate on the understanding that belief systems – be they philosophical, ideological or religious – are largely based on a labyrinth of accidents, mistranslations, pseudo-scientific reasoning and dogmatic entrapment. 

More images can be found here. 

The show runs until Friday 6th July.

Helen Murgatroyd's Home Harvesting

The video above shows an assembly line of home made printing jigs to duplicate an image of a bowl of fruit. Set across 5 tabletops the prints were moved individually through each workstation in a large batch of 120.

In july Helen Murgatroyd will be presenting us with a home grown installation involving toilet rolls, a hand made printing jig and a mass of corgeuttes! Repetition and small-scale mass production is a central theme in Helen's practise which explores self-sufficient printing techniques and fruit & vegetables.

 
Courgette Harvest, Friday 13th July - 3rd August

Private View: Thursday 12th July 6 - 8pm.

Charlotte Place Festival, 5th June

To celebrate the Queens Jubilee there will be a street festival taking place along Charlotte Place on Tuesday 5th June from 12pm onwards. There will be royal games, raffles, some  freebies and all things British. Come along for a fun, free, Fitzrovian Quirkier Jubilee.

Upcoming Solo Show by Chris Agnew, 8th June - 6th July

                                                                        The road we took to avoid it, pencil on paper, 2012

 

'The Pomp of Circumstances' presents a series of works that operate on the understanding that belief systems – be they philosophical, ideological or religious – are largely based on a labyrinth of accidents, mistranslations, pseudo-scientific reasoning and dogmatic entrapment.  

In his first solo show at Nancy Victor, Agnew employs the tools of polemical hindsight and sceptical foresight with a collection of drawings, etchings and paintings. With multiple references to apocalyptic prophecies and absurd theories, the exhibition pays homage to these seemingly inconsequential components of civilization and insists that they are of paramount importance to a free thinking society.

Private View: Thursday 7th June, 6-8pm

Lesley Hilling Private View, 3rd May

Under the Sign of the Hour Glass kicked off to a great start at the opening last night and recieved very high attention. This is a fantastic show which utilisies the space creatively and really engages with the ethos of Nancy Victor. This truely is a 'must see' show.

Under the Sign of the Hour Glass ends 5th June / www.nancyvictor. com / www.lesleyhilling.co.uk