Sculptor to open Palace Art-fest

1:38pm Thursday 7th August 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

THE second Palace Art-fest will be opened at a gala event on August 20 by internationally renowned sculptor Angela Conner, who will also be exhibiting works in the Bishop’s Palace.

The now-annual event grew out of Hereford’s Three Choirs Festival arts exhibition, originally a small-scale event held every three years when Hereford hosted the festival, and proved a great success in its inaugural year.

Work by more than 50 artists, photographers and sculptors will be on display – a total of almost 400 pieces, all of which will be available to purchase – with artists’ commissions donated to the Hereford Cathedral Perpetual Trust and Friends of the Three Choirs Festival.

Organiser Trevor Swindells is delighted that Angela Conner, who lives in Monnington-on-Wye, will not only be exhibiting but is also going to be opening the Art-fest.

“I rang her to ask if, as a Herefordian sculptor, she would like to take part and she said she’d be delighted,” he says.

Angela is a world-renowned and award-winning sculptor, who last year won an Arts Council/Darlington Council competition with a large scale plaza mobile called Threshold.

The sculpture, made of 12 four-metre high units which move up and down with the weight of water, forming an ever-changing archway through which people can walk, needed two huge trucks to be moved to its permanent home in front of the Arts Centre in Darlington, Yorkshire.

Last year also saw the installation of her sculpture of the late Laurence Olivier, commissioned to mark the centenary of the actor’s birth, outside the theatre that bears his name on London’s South Bank.

The piece being exhibited at the Art-fest, Rocking Lady, was created to honour those killed in the 9/11 disaster. The reclining figure, the top of whose face and body are cut away moves gently in the wind. Rocking Lady is the most expensive work in the exhibition at £28,500, but pieces start at around £50.

“There is something for everyone in the Art-fest,” says Mr Swindells.

Tickets for the Palace Art-fest private view on Wednesday, August 20, are still available, priced at £10, from Palace Art-fest, 35 Harold Street, Hereford HR1 2QU.

Please make cheques payable to Palace Art-Fest. The exhibition runs from Thursday, August 21, to Tuesday, August 26, 10am to 5pm, except Sunday, which is noon to 3pm.