MESSUMS PRODUCTIONS
Short films by Messums Productions to introduce artists and process.
It may sound obvious but creating art is a language as much as speaking or writing.
Making Introductions was conceived in 2019 with seed funding from Jonathan and Lucy Wood
to make those language of creativity more accessible and comprehensible.
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MAKING INTRODUCTIONS: Photography In focus
YAN WANG PRESTON
duration: 5:59 minutes
Dr Yan Wang Preston has created numerous acclaimed series which explore the mercurial relationship between people and place. She has recently exhibited and had work acquired by the V&A. She has also been awarded the inaugural RPS Award for Environmental Responsibility.
JEAN-VINCENT SIMONET
duration: 5:53 minutes
Jean-Vincent’s practice fuses analogue images, digital techniques, collage, montage, sculpture and painting with remarkable fluidity. His work is permeated by a sense of overload and exuberance.
POLLY PENROSE
duration: 6:13 minutes
Polly Penrose has been taking self-portraits on a ten-second timer and more recently a remote for nearly 20 years. Her work is unpremeditated and spontaneous and records her responding to her environment.
JACK MCGARRITY
duration: 5:21 minutes
Jack McGarrity trained at the Glasgow School of Art, close to where he grew up in the West of Scotland, before moving to London to study at the Royal Drawing School.
McGarrity creates new narratives that explore notions of the absurd, stillness and alienation in the modern world. His work relates to the great tradition of narrative painting while is also located within the revival of figurative painting in contemporary practice.
Originally exhibited as part of our Emerging Talents programme, McGarrity has a solo exhibition at Messums London in January 2023.
MARTIN SMITH
duration: 4:56 minutes
A key figure in British ceramics, Martin Smith is an artist who approaches clay with the mindset of an architect. He studied at Bristol Polytechnic Faculty of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art, emerging in the midst of the new ceramics movement in the late 1970s and becoming known for his multi-disciplinary approach to design and practice.
Smith is a Professor Emeritus at the Royal College of Art having been Professor of Ceramics and Glass at the school for 16 years.
TOM WAUGH
duration: 4:54 minutes
Tom Waugh MRSS is a British sculptor who works in stone and marble. He has been an associate member of the Royal Society of Sculptors since 2018.
With a background in classical stone sculpture, Tom Waugh uses traditional materials and techniques to create contemporary works of art. Stone and marble sculptures, carved in minute detail, depict waste objects, discarded in the wake of human consumption.
THIÉBAUT CHAGUÉ
duration: 5:29 minutes
Thiébaut began his career in 1976, training in France, Belgium and in England under Michael Cardew and Richard Batterham. Returning to France in 1981 he set up his first workshop in the Loire Valley and in 1984 built a new studio in the Vosges with a wood-fired kiln.
Thiébaut built a 6metre high kiln in the tithe barn at Messums Wiltshire in Spring 2023.
FRANCESCO POIANA
duration: 10:31 minutes
We began working with Francesco in 2019 with his debut show following a residency at Messums Wiltshire as part of our emerging talents programme. Francesco trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome before studying fine art printing at the Albicocca workshop in Udine and then taking his masters degree at St Martin’s College of Art in London. He now attends the Royal Drawing School.
PETER BROWN
duration: 10:17 minutes
Peter Brown, known as ‘Pete the Street’, has been capturing the urban environment in oil for most of his life. First becoming captivated by the distinct character of urban architecture in Bath in the mid-1980s he returned to the creamy-gold streets of this Georgian city, where he can be seen painting on-site whatever the weather. He now resides in Bath where he paints and lives with his family, who have lately become one of his main subjects.
TUESDAY RIDDELL
duration: 9:49 minutes
Tuesday Riddell was one of the very first on our emerging talents programme. Tuesday studied at the Painter-Stainers Decorative Surface Fellowship at City & Guilds of London Art School – the only Fellowship in the UK that provides specialist training in the craft of decorative surface techniques to ensure that endangered skills are kept alive and vibrant in contemporary practice.
ANTONY WILLIAMS
duration: 13:16 minutes
Williams works almost exclusively in egg tempera – a painstaking, exacting medium in which egg is used instead of linseed oil as the binding medium. While oil allows for a degree of flexibility and manipulation of the painted surface before it dries, many days after initial application, this technique does not easily allow for alteration. All his work is based on intense observation, particularly of human flesh, creating as a result a heightened sense of realism.
KENNEDY MUNTANGA
duration: 11:37 minutes
Kennedy Junior Muntanga is a movement artist born in Ndola, Zambia where he resided until he was 7. The importance of dance was embedded in him through his African heritage and he began to study dance from the age of 12. Kennedy furthered his training and graduated in Ballet and Contemporary Dance at the Rambert School in July 2019. Kennedy performed at Messums Wiltshire in September 2021.
TYGA HELME
duration: 8:15 minutes
Trained at Edinburgh College of Art and The Royal Drawing School in London, where she won the Machin Foundation Prize, Tyga uses nature as a metaphor for feelings of being overwhelmed. She couples minute observation of the teeming forest floor – where the emerald green of a bramble leaf sits in stark juxtaposition to an array of cold blue silver leaves – with the flux and movement of unceasing growth.
