Anke: Royal Tunbridge Wells

It’s rather handy that Artisan comes around at this time every year because that special day is fast approaching, you know the one, that day we dare not mention until next month, ok it's Christmas (sorry).

The wonderful embroidered art by Gillian Bates.

The Artisan exhibition is in its third year and is getting more and more popular every year. Not only is it a lovely exhibition of local artist's art and crafts, you can also take the pieces home with you, as long as you pay for them first of course. New this year is the Arts Council's ‘Own Art’ scheme which makes it even easier for you to buy with the option of a ten month interest free loan.

My highlight this year, well there are a few but I was immediately taken by the embroidered images of The Pantiles by Gillian Bates. She's an artist from Eastbourne so I may find myself popping down and paying her a visit very shortly.

Go take a look for yourself, Artisan is open until the 6th of January. You can now follow the Art Gallery on Twitter too, which I heartily recommend, find them at @twartyculture.

Well, not really a challenge as such but I really recommend a trip into the Museum's Art Gallery over the next couple of months to see some terrific romantic views of our town.

The exhibition, entitled Tunbridge Wells in Watercolour, showcases beautiful scenes around town painted by amateur and professional painters from the 1700s to 2012. I wanted to buy them all!

Next Tuesday (Tuesday 18th September, 12 noon to 1pm) there is a guided gallery tour so you can find out more about the exhibition. It should be worth sacrificing your lunch hour for because not only can you ask questions and learn something but you also get a nice cuppa with the staff too. Please try and pop along and support your Museum and Art Gallery.

If you are feeling really arty then why not follow that up with a visit to Trinity Art Gallery across the road where there is some local talent displaying their artistic wares. The rather eccentric work of Scott Kingsnorth being one of the highlights, although I rather foolishly missed out Scott's work in the photo below so you'll have to go see it for yourself.

I hope you can go see both exhibitions (Trinity exhibition ends Saturday). If you do I'd love to know what picture you liked best.

It’s not often I can be seen on the wrong side of a camera, well in any serious context anyway, but after being approached by local photographer, Ellen Montelius, who wanted to shoot my portrait for an interesting project she was working on, I couldn’t resist being the model for once.

Ellen’s project, “Being”, is a series of photographs of published writers of Tunbridge Wells in familiar surroundings.

For my “Being” portrait we climbed many tall ladders to the very top of the Assembly Hall building with views reaching miles into the distance to try some ideas. The sun had decided to shine, you remember the sun don’t you? The problem was that the sun was rather too bright that day and consequently keeping my eyes open for a nice image was a bit of a problem. We shot some frames, pulled a few poses, wept a few tears and called it a day.

Ellen called me the next morning, apparently the sun had caused me too many squinting issues, so she asked if I’d like to do an emergency reshoot in the bowels of the museum’s archive where the sun couldn’t reach us. I was there in a heartbeat.

The depths of the museum is a magical place, it’s full of wonderful objects and being surrounded by them just fills you with joy and inspiration, so the brief hour we had flew by and we knew we had some great images.

Thanks to the Cheri and Mikey at the Assembly Hall, Jamie at the museum and of course, Ellen for an entertaining few hours. Ellen’s exhibition runs from Thursday 12th of July until Saturday 4th of August at the Trinity Art Gallery. Please pop along to have a look and see all of the series of images. I’ll blog about the launch in a few days.

Well, what do you think of the picture?

It poured with rain all the way through but that didn't stop families coming out to have fun at the Civic Way Jubilee Street Party.

Even Maj turned up despite the weather.

There was a magician and a great performance by the Little Cauliflower Theatre Company with their Machine. There was also cake and a few brave souls stayed through the downpour to drink champagne and eat their cucumber sandwiches.

Click to see the photographs. Can you spot yourself?

There is a new exhibition on at the Art Gallery to coincide with the the Olympics this summer. As the name suggests though, it's more about the spectators than the sport.

Tonight (Friday) was the launch night and it was also the prize-giving ceremony for the lucky winners of the competition that ran before the exhibition. Myself, Jamie and Jo from the Museum, and Glen from The Courier, all gathered together a few weeks ago to choose the lucky winner and amazingly we were unanimous. You can see their winning entry on the Wall of Fans gallery when you visit.

...including some by the great Martin Parr

I really encourage you to pay this exhibition a visit, there are some wonderful photographs on display, including some by the great Martin Parr. There are also some intriguing sports-related items donated by other museums and local residents for you to enjoy. If the kids get to restless whilst you look around there is also Wii Sports to play with.

When you stop by please take a few moments to read the intro boards scattered around because one of them is mine, and to encourage you to pop along I have reprinted a small fragment of my piece here below:

If there is one name in the world of photography that will polarise opinion more than any other, it’s Martin Parr.
Until a year or so ago the photographic pedant inside me really didn’t appreciate his images, I couldn’t see past the technical imperfections. But I was missing the point. It’s not until I really studied his work that I discovered that his primary objective is capturing moments; he is interested in people and the minutiae of their lives, and he always does it with a healthy dose of affectionate humour.
The images chosen for this exhibition are great examples of his work and perfectly embody what it’s like to be a spectator. Stand in front of these photographs for a few minutes and soak up the emotion emanating from the sports fans. Feel their passion, feel their pain...

All in all a really great exhibition that has obviously taken a lot of hard work to put together and is really well worth you all taking a half an hour out of your day to go along and visit. Let me know what you think when you do.

Click here to see some photographs from the opening night.