ONLY CONNECT
5 – 15 JUNE 2024
The 2023 – 4 Fine Art Practice Development Exhibition
In association with The Bridge Art School and Sevenoaks Visual Arts Forum
FAPD Exhibiting Artists: Elaine Almond, Rosalind Barker, Peps Barkhan, Chrissie Hunt, Sarah Cliff, Jane Cordery, Louisa Crispin, Ola Dajani, Jennifer Dalton, Sue Evans, Debbie Farquharson, Leila Goden, Anna Goodwin, Cathy Gough, Sonia Griffin, Christine Highland, Lizzie Hill, Erica Hooton, Amanda Hopkins, Frederique Jones, Samantha King, Siana Kohler, Elaine Leslie, Jim Marshall, Rowena McWilliams, Paula Morgan, Sheila Nash, Hildegard Pax, Jane Sandoe, Franny Swann, Alison Sweidan, Jennifer Thomas, Maria Turner, Venetia Nevill, Peter Waters, Birgitta Wilson. Curator Samuel L Herbert
Thirty six SVAF members who have completed the Fine Art Professional Development course for the academic year 2023- 24 respond to the title ONLY CONNECT.
The show is the culmination of a year’s meeting, critiquing, reading and following ideas, references and recommended artists/movements led by course leader Sam Herbert.
This elegant show celebrates the artists diverse work developed during the course as paintings, sculpture, textiles, drawing, photography, printing, installation, glass and ceramics.
ARTISTS IN CONVERSATION Wednesday 5 June 6-8
This is the monthly SVAF meeting but you are all welcome to join us.
Refreshments from 6. Conversation by the exhibiting artists from 6:30
PREVIEW THURSDAY 6 JUNE 6-8
You are welcome to join us for drinks at the FAPD PV.
Course leader Sam Herbert will be in the Gallery for this event.
“Only Connect is the summative exhibition of this year’s Fine Art Practice Development course (FAPD) and is the second year that it has been run in partnership with SVAF. Over the previous nine months the member artists have met fortnightly for a series of seminars, where they have developed and discussed specific areas of their art practice.
The title of the show, ‘Only Connect’, was given to the group at the first session in September. This title is neither a brief or a theme, but rather an idea that the members are free to interpret in any way they wish. Despite the heterogeneity of their respective practices, it is always a welcome surprise to see how clearly their finished work ‘connects’ with the title and the other artworks in the exhibition. This year, with an unprecedented thirty six artists across three groups, connections, both social and spatial, were of the utmost importance, hence my choice of the title, which comes from EM Forster’s epigraph to ‘Howard’s End’. Forster’s words encourage us to connect both the head and the heart, our thoughts and feelings. His words struck me as a good description of the state that artists must inhabit if they are to make work that resonates with both themselves and an audience. Each artist in this exhibition has found their own way of making this connection, and, in some cases, the structure provided by the FAPD course has been the catalyst.
Despite the fact that the work for this show has been developed in response to the feedback of myself and the other members, there is no sign of a ‘house style’ or flattening out of individual voices. In my role as curator, I have placed the artworks to create a variety of relationships: Some are harmonious, others dissonant, but all are (I hope) constructive. My intention was to highlight the vital importance of connections, from the daily micro-connections of recognition to the larger connections of artists to a community and society as a whole. This exhibition is a vital and timely reminder of art’s power to connect. Samuel L. Herbert”
