Avon Artists Collective: Gather Round
30th September - 5th October, Open daily: 12am - 6pm (Sun 1pm – 5pm)
Five emerging artists working in the Bath area have come together to form the Avon Artists Collective. Currently in the exciting initial stages, this group formed to showcase their work, explore new ideas and share their skills. Their work is engaging and diverse, shedding new light on traditional techniques and skills. Each artist has a specialist discipline, ranging from Textiles to Fine Art and Illustration, which brings a varied pool of knowledge and skills to the group.
'Gather Round' is a collection of varied and dreamlike narratives that explore yarn-like themes, drawn from Alan Garner’s Book of British Fairy Tales. These folk stories are raw tales of the hardships of life and the strength of our morality, from the beautifully innocent to the bizarrely grotesque. The Avon Artists’ Collective, working in different mediums and styles, bring new perspectives to these inspiring tales, creating a thought-provoking and emotive exhibition.
Bonnie Mari Phillips
Bonnie’s art work is based around the idea of place, both physical and emotional. It has followed the different stages in her life and experiences she has been through. Maps, stories, journeys and an emotional response to these things have played a major role in her work over the years.
Bonnie works in many different materials, using whatever she finds most suitable to express her ideas, be it batik, embroidery, printing, photography, installation or anything else. She believes her ideas to be the threads running through all of her work, rather than the medium with which she works. Her work is honest and aims to shed new light where shadows sometimes fall, opening people’s eyes to another way of viewing things.
Lucy Bell
Maker, Creator, 'Imagine-er'
Lucy creates worlds and scenarios, exploring narrative and characters with all their idiosyncrasies. She mainly uses stitch, drawing, printing and construction to evolve her artwork. She captures fleeting moments and freezes them in time. She loves to work in miniature, creating tiny fragments of a story. Her work is delicate and constantly evolving.
Kat Whelan
Kat is a freelance Illustrator and Designer, working from her and her husband's little cottage tucked away up a quiet lane on the outskirts of the city of Bath. Since leaving university in 2002 she has worked for a variety of companies on many projects ranging from greeting cards through to children's books and soft toys. She also likes to produce her own designs which she sells through her online shop and craft fairs.
Nina Davis
Nina is a Textile Artist and secondary Teacher of Art, based in Wiltshire. Her recent collections have explored a variety of themes from nature to found postcards, each body of work focused on using textiles and fine art materials to interpret design and scale. Interested in layering, as both a process and a concept, her work hinges on the relationship between the two, through using paper, fabric and stitch to communicate the strata of memories. Webs of dialogue from found objects have stimulated Nina’s ideas, and can also allow her to use materials suitable to translate these threads of narrative.