EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

A solo exhibition, to coincide with Bridget’s childhood friend Elisabeth Frink’s studio was exhibited in the Barn gallery, The Conference of the Birds included bronze and stone sculptures as well as new two-dimensional works as Bridget returned to drawing as a means of expression. The exhibition catalogue contains full colour photography of her works and an introductory essay by the BBC arts editor and art historian Will Gompertz.

Bridget McCrum (née Bain) was shipped to the west country from a home in London to avoid the war; there she found horses, landscape, art, and above all, a friendship with a young Elisabeth Frink. This exhibition, which is shown against the backdrop of Elisabeth Frink’s studio in the barn gallery, charts her recent work and also looks back at some of her earlier pieces. It considers life through a shifting between shapes and images and looks at how McCrum (like Elisabeth Frink) found ways to free herself from the restraints of figurative precision.

McCrum’s approach to sculpting is a reductive one, removing mass from a block of stone using carving and sanding tools. Now in her eighties, McCrum’s technical ability has not faded and she arrives at stylised shapes that play with light and weightlessness, as with her many birds which may be taking off, alighting or in flight.