News
 

SOLO EXHIBITION

Deborah van der Beek will have another solo exhibition at the Campden Gallery in Chipping Campden this autumn, from 5 to 27 November to 2011. A catalogue may be downloaded here.

Campden Gallery, High Street, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire GL55 6AG, t +44 (0)1386 841555, email info@campdengallery.co.uk, www.campdengallery.co.uk
 

PAISNEL GALLERY

Sculpture by Deborah van der Beek is now shown at Paisnel Gallery in Bury Street in St James’s, between Jermyn Street and Pall Mall. They are specialists in post war British art; past exhibitions have included works by Sandra Blow, Alan Davie,  Terry Frost, Patrick Heron and Ivon Hitchens.
Paisnel Gallery, 9 Bury Street, London SW1Y 6AB, tel +44 (0)20 7930 9293, open Monday to Friday,10am until 6pm;
Saturday and other times by appointment.
 

ART AT THE EDGE

Deborah van der Beek was honoured to be commissioned to create a sculpture to celebrate the 2012 Olympics. Her bronze maquette representing Modern Pentathlon is available from Art at the Edge: http://www.artattheedge.org in an edition of 25.
This public Art Sculpture project has commissioned 29 sculptors each to produce a work in bronze representing the different Olympic sports. These will form the basis of a travelling exhibtion in 2012, visiting places such as the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the OxoTower in London. Pentathlon was updated in 1912 to Modern Pentathlon, so 2012 will be the 100th anniversary.
"It was suggested that I might choose one of the equestrian events or Modern Pentathlon, about which I knew nothing. The Britsh team train in Bath, near where I live, so I went to see. I was immediately captivated. Modern Pentathlon comprises : fencing, swimming, shooting, running and riding. And in the riding, the athletes must take a horse they have never ridden before in a timed event round a difficult course of jumps. Shooting alternates with running, so that the athlete shoots as he originally might have done on the battlefields of ancient Greece. I love that. This must be the most truly heroic sport of all!
"Leonardo's famous drawing of The Ideal Man, perfect proportions within the mathematically perfect form of a circle seemed the right place to start. My athlete touches his circle with outstetched hands, as does Leonardo's. Within that circle, the athlete leaps a five-pointed pentagon representing the five MP disciplines. A crazy horse leaps wildly over his shoulder: this is the horse he must tame and bend to his skills. Almost unnoticed is a scattering of tiny fossil five-pointed stars (actually fragments of crinoid stem from the local Jurassic rocks) over both.”