We have had the pleasure of being part of a fantastic project called Travelling Stories at the start of this year, in collaboration with Buxton Museum & Art Gallery and Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery. This is a national project involving artists from around the country, where we were able to digitally facilitate our part with two of our participant artists, Jonathan and Harvey through a period of lockdown.
These two artists have previously worked with Tullie House as part of the Cultures Collide project and were asked to create for another project where artists respond to items in their collection. The items for the Travelling Stories project were two cherry blossom prints by a 20th century Japanese artist, Toshi Yoshida, which will be coming new into the Tullie House collection. These pieces of artwork have come from Buxton Museum as they were required to find new custodians, with the help of the Esmee Fairbairn Collections Fund and the Museums Association.
Toshi Yoshida Cherry Blossom and White Plum woodblock print 1971
Our delivery team had weekly zoom sessions with Jonathan and Harvey for the duration of the project to talk about their progress and ideas, help with creative technical processes as well as keeping in contact, chatting about going for walks and films we have watched!
The development artwork was featured in the following blog post by the project organiser, https://creepingtoad.blogspot.com/2021/02/honey-for-soul.html
Jonathan Harkins development work, Portrait
Harvey Tye development work, Landscape
Harvey and Jonathan’s creative responses were very different from each other and wonderfully reflected their own creative practises and interests, to create very personal and high impact artwork. These can be seen below as well as part of the online gallery on the Buxton Museum website.
https://buxtonmuseumandartgallery.wordpress.com/2021/04/13/travelling-stories-part-one/
Harvey Tye, Harvey’s Temples, pen on paper 2021
Harvey Tye, Harvey’s Temples, pencil on paper 2021
“I found out about new facts and cultures, finding different designs for buildings, having fun and doing my artwork. And it has given me something to focus on during lockdown” – Harvey
Harvey was inspired by the architecture featured in the blossom prints. In his distinctive, bold graphic style Harvey explored the buildings of Japan and how people use them, to create two large scale (A2) pieces.
Jonathon Harkins, Kept Apart But Still Tolerant, mixed media 2021
“I know this art project is good and will enrich both mine and Harv’s future. As I said before: ‘Art is milk for the eyes. And honey for the Soul” – Jonathan
Jonathon created a mixed media triptych to ‘create unity in humanity’, bringing together both Christianity and Shinto religious quotes. Jonathan looked at works by Winifred Nicholson and Van Gogh as part of his research.
We are very excited to announce as well that the artwork has been invited to be part of the permanent collection at Tullie House, to live with the Japanese blocks that inspired it.
