In the stables of a Norfolk stately home famous for its lavish interiors and landscape art, an exhibition features contemporary makers and 60s icons.
Internationally renowned Norfolk pop artist Colin Self is among the exhibitors at the Rock Paper Scissors show in the stables at Houghton Hall.
His album cover for Marianne Faithfull’s latest work is featured, alongside paintings, prints, pottery, sculpture, glass, carpentry and collage created by many more artists and makers with local links.
Rock Paper Scissors is the latest pop-up exhibition from Contemporary and Country. See carved stone bowls, single-sheet paper cuts, poured paintings and wooden bowls - plus glowing flower paintings by Colin Self who lives near Norwich and shot to fame in the 1960s.
His work is in national collections including the Tate, the Victoria and Albert, the Imperial War Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Against the brooding background of the Cold War, Colin produced innovative and powerful prints including Nuclear Bomber No.1, paintings including Waiting Women and Two Nuclear Bombers and the iconic Leopard-skin Nuclear Bomber sculptures.
He also found a gentler inspiration in his native Norfolk. Delicate flowers, surrounded by lush, shadowy vegetation are on show at Houghton, alongside the twilight landscape Colin created for sixties icon Marianne Faithfull, a friend who has loved his work for decades. Marianne reads poetry by Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth, backed by music by Warren Ellis, Brian Eno and Nick Cave, in her new album She Walks in Beauty.
The exhibition includes work by more than 40 artists and makers, many of them local and all working within themes connected to the natural world. See a series of paintings by west Norfolk artist Kate Giles, photographs by Norwich’s Gareth Hacon and woodwork by Tim Plunkett who makes all his pieces from locally sourced wood. Also featured are Great Yarmouth artist Bruer Tidman, Teucer Wilson, who is one of the country's leading letter cutters and stone carvers and shell-encrusted sculptures by Carolyn Brookes-Davies who revived a childhood interest in shell collecting when she moved close to the north Norfolk coast.
Admission to the stables and walled garden to see Contemporary and Country's Rock Paper Scissors is £10, or £18 to see the Tony Cragg sculpture exhibition in the grounds and hall too. Free for under 18s. Rock Paper Scissors in Houghton Hall Stables runs Monday to Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays until September 26. Book tickets online
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