PAST EVENTS
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RAW edge
29 May 13 June 2010 Vibrant & passionate Oil Paintings by Stephen Bishop
Open 10am to 5pm Admission is free - Guests welcome.
Bold contemporary oil paintings with a thought provoking quality, created outdoors along the Dorset coast. Exhibition includes Flamenco and other studio works. 50 new paintings from 200 to 3,000. Work complemented by the stunning Church venue and sea views.
Professional artist Stephen Bishop is represented in London galleries and his paintings are held in collections in the UK and abroad.
Stephen now exhibits every year at Eype Church Centre for the Arts, for 2 weeks from May Spring Bank Holiday weekend. See his website for more images and news. Visits to the artist's studio in Purbeck by appointment.
Dorset Arts Week
Saturday May 29th – Sunday June 13th
Stephen Bishop returns for his third Dorset Arts Weeks at St. Peter’s where he has enjoyed ever increasing popularity with his colourful and distinctive style of painting.
Mi Tierra Flamenca
SATURDAY JUNE 5TH 2010 AT 7.30PM – A VIBRANT EVENING OF FLAMENCO WITH MI TIERRA FLAMENCA
As a lead-up to their forthcoming theatre tour this is a chance to catch a spectacular glimpse of some of the cast of International Flamenco Company, Mi Tierra Flamenca, with their fiery, passionate flamenco performance. Largely based in Jerez de la Frontera, the birthplace of flamenco, this professional group of artists bring an authentic, raw and breathtakingly entertaining show that is a sell-out in venues throughout the country.
Patric Morrisey Lectures
During this period local Arts and Architecture historian Patric Morrissey will give his series of Spring 2010 Lectures starting on Wednesday March 3rd and running for a further seven weeks each Wednesday at his home in Higher Eype. This year he concentrates on Greece and its art from the pre-history of Mycene to Sinan and Ottoman architecture. The series intends to make visits to Greece, the British Museum and the new Ashmolean Museum in Oxford more enjoyable. Tickets for these lectures are available on the door at £5.00 each and include refreshments. Read more...
Easter Art Exhibition with Andrew Leppard and John Rabbetts
Well-known Bridport artists Andrew Leppard and John Rabetts host a two-man show of their figurative and landscape oil paintings.
Click on the images below for a larger view.
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This will run from Good Friday April 2nd for one week until Sunday April 11th and will be open from 10.30am until 4.30pm. Admission is free.
Book ‘n Author Week – a Literary Festival
The Eype spring programme continues in April with the Eype Spring 2010 ‘Book ‘n Author’ Week – a Literary Festival. The dates are from Monday 19th April to Friday 23rd April. So far confirmed authors are Sir Ghillean Prance, Christopher Booker, 
Jennifer Kavanagh (The O of Home), Simon Hall (www.thetvdetective.com) , Sarah Bakewell, Blake Morrison (www.blakemorrison.com) and Mario Petrucci (www.mariopetrucci.com) . Mario Petrucci won the 1999 Bridport Prize for Poetry and is currently the Poet in Residence at BBC Radio 3, and formerly the Poet in Residence at the Imperial War Museum. We will also be showing the award winning film Heavy Water; a Film for Chernobyl, which accompanies by his poetry. Read more...
Spring Concert
The week ends with a Spring Concert of classical and modern compositions on Saturday April 24th featuring Viennese musicians Florian Kitt and Rita Medjimorec. Read more...
It is fair to say that in any venture of this kind there are some notable successes and failures. I am delighted to say that the successes have far outweighed the failures! Successes are guaranteed with ‘big names’ but we aim to provide an eclectic mix of events and it is a consolation to say that even when such events have not attracted big audiences, at least the audiences have been extremely appreciative and keen to return. The fact that our mailing list has grown enormously from audiences wanting to join in the past six years is a testament to this.
In its early establishment as an Arts Centre jazz singer Jackie Dankworth and actor James Fox (reading T S Elliott’s Four Quartets) performed to packed houses and standing room only as did Robert Powell and Joanna David in A Christmas Cracker in 2004. The art exhibition of 2003 also saw some remarkable sales of paintings by Fred Cuming RA and the late Richard Eurich RA.
Unfortunately this was not to be repeated in 2004 when not one major painting by the same artists sold to a public who were more interested in lower priced pictures with a local flavour. This led to the inauguration in 2005 of our first Artists of the Jurassic Coast concentrating on local talent and affordable art and which has proved an ever growing success over the past four years.
Local resident and Antiques Roadshow presenter Paul Atterbury has also drawn big crowds in several performances based on the highly popular television series. Soprano Laura Bursey who is a regular visitor to Eype has drawn much acclaim in her performances with trumpeter Crispian Steele-Perkins and during the Christmas Carol Service. On the more popular music front Steve Knightley has always packed out St. Peter’s with his ‘Show of Hands’. Perhaps the greatest disappointment in the music programme has been an evening of Hugo Wolf Leiders by William Hancox and Rachel Vermont, when the audience barely crept up into the teens. In consolation the audience that did come contained a number of highly exacting music lovers who said the performance had been outstanding.
We have hosted performances by the late John Mortimer in his Mortimer's Miscellany and numerous theatrical events including brilliant performances by Rohan McCullough in her one-woman performances of Testament of Youth (based on the book by Vera Brittain) and The Tale of Beatrix Potter, both scripted by her husband Hugh Whitemore. The more flamboyant evenings of Flamenco have also proved very popular.
Our most recent success on the music front has been this year’s Summer Operatic Evening with local Soprano Virginia King, Mezo Maria Jones, Tenor Amos Christie and Pianist Arwel Treharne Morgan. During the extended interval the audience were able to enjoy picnics overlooking the sea and cliffs of the Jurassic Coast and went away crying for more of the same. This is the third year that Virginia King organised this concert and we aim to make it a yearly event.
Dope Under Thorncombe
Eype dope smugglers start the arts season at The Eype Centre for the Arts in the melodramatic film Dope Under Thorncombe Made by local Bridport and West Bay people in 1939 the film about dope smuggling on the coast around West Bay and Eype has all the classic ingredients of the theme: glamorous heroine, handsome hero, rough matelots, evil gang boss from London, cadish behaviour, pursuit, kidnap, fisticuffs and escape. There is a gunfight and the hero is thrown from a cliff, but right triumphs in the end.
The Trevett family were amongst the main people behind the film and the story was specially created by Andrew Spiller a local thriller writer. Trilith who are bringing the showing to St. Peter’s arranged for a new score to accompany the action. This is by Rachel Leach a young composer fast making a name for herself through her expressive music. It is the first time the film has had music and this will be the second public showing in the film’s new guise.
ARTISTS OF THE JURASSIC COAST 2009
The exhibition is in its fourth year and we are particularly priviledged that Michael J Chappell, a well-known and award-winning local artist and art teacher, is again curating the exhibition for us.
The theme of the exhibition has been artists’ inspiration from the topography and scenery of the spectacular Jurassic Coast (www.jurassiccoast.com) and its seascapes. Michael J Chappell and Billie Willcox are permanent exhibitors and we rotate other artists on a yearly or biannual basis to retain the freshness of the works in the exhibition. We were joined last year by Hugh Woodeson, a brilliant new architectural artist, who was very popular and highly sought after.
The works encompass all the visual arts including photography, ceramics and pottery as well as paintings. Our painters’ line-up this year is
- Michael J Chappell (www.chappellstudio.co.uk)
- Billie Willcocks (www.dorsetvisualarts.org)
- Marnie Shaw (www.marnieshaw.com)
- Hugh Woodeson
We exhibited Marnie Shaw’s work during the events we hosted as part of the Bridport Literary Festival in November 2008 which proved a worthwhile and profitable exercise for Marnie who sold several of her paintings.
Rosemarie James (www.studio-ceramics.co.uk) will again be showing her outstanding ceramics whilst Sally Davies and her ground-breaking photography represent what is becoming a fascinating and versatile medium (www.photoartbysally.co.uk).
Our potter and sculptor is this year is David Metcalf who replaces Bill Crumbleholme.
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AUTUMN PIANO RECITAL WITH SOPHIA LISOVSKAYA
SOPHIA LISOVSKAYA tashmina.co.uk/artists/sophia-lisovskaya/ returns to St. Peter’s in between a string of international engagements to give a recital from her wide repertoire. Born in Moscow into a family of professional musicians Sophia gave her first performance at the age of six in Moscow’s Museum of Fine Art, one of Sviatoslav Richter’s favourite venues. She has continued to follow the grand tradition of the old Russian School with a lineage of professors leading directly back to the great figures of Neuhaus, Sofronitzky and Scriabin. Indeed, her playing has been described by The American Record Guide as, “…coming close to the standard set by Sofronitzky and Richter for these pieces. These are outstanding performances.”
She obtained a scholarship from London’s Royal College of Music in 1994 and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra in 1996. Sophia’s live performances have invariably been described as original and powerful, with particular praise reserved for her ability to make a strong impact on audiences with her unique, recognisable sound. Maestro Vladimir Fedeseev, the Music Director of the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Zurich Opera House, refers to Sophia as, ”A pianist with a special poetic gift”.
Her new programme for October 3rd will include works by Scarlatti, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, and Scriabin.
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Bridport Literary Festival 2009
We played a formative role in establishing the Bridport Literary Festival with the Bridport Arts Centre in 2005 and again big literary figures appearing at St. Peter’s drew big crowds. Of note were Louis de Bernières and Elizabeth Jane Howard, Julian Fellowes, Claire Tomalin, Victoria Glendinning, Sir Max Hastings, Katharine Whitehorn, Sir Roy Strong, Kate Summerscale and Ann Leslie DBE.
The Bridport Arts Centre has since decided to concentrate on holding the Bridport Literary Festival within the confines of Bridport Town and we have therefore started our own festivals under the banner of ‘Book ‘n Author’ weeks in April and October.
In our more educative programme local resident Art and Architecture Historian Patric Morrissey has continue his twice-yearly lecture series on art and architectural subjects and his two sets of eight illustrated lectures have been a popular mid-week attraction to lovers of the subject and a major source of income for the Eype Centre for the Arts for which we are immensely grateful.
Artists of the Jurassic Coast
An annual art sale and exhibition of artists from the area.
- 2008 exhibition poster [PDF]
- 2007 exhibition poster [PDF]
Coming Events...