From the Pyrenees to the Pennines
From the Pyrenees to the Pennines:
An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings & Sketchbooks
9 September - 1 October 2017
Community Gallery, Saddleworth Museum and Gallery
High Street, Uppermill, OL3 6HS
Judith Alsop Miles grew up in Saddleworth. More recently, she spent a decade living and working in the Languedoc region of southern France. There she pursued two parallel careers, as a professional translator specialising in French and Spanish, and as an artist, sketching and painting the landscape, towns and villages of the Pyrenean foothills where she settled with her family.
On returning to Saddleworth three years ago, Judith turned her eye and her brush to the Pennine hills and villages as well as the urban environment of Greater Manchester.
This exhibition presents paintings and sketchbooks from both periods of her life. They offer a fascinating glimpse into the similarities and differences between these two landscapes and communities. Judith’s work captures the nuances of light and shadow, form and colour, and reveals a deep love and keen eye for the beauty of both of these regions. As with her translating work, her art allows us to move back and forth between two different worlds, and helps us to see and appreciate their unique features.
Exhibition Opening: Saturday 9 September 1-4 pm.
A Past to Draw On
A Past to Draw On: Capturing the Changing Face of Oldham in Line and Colour
19 November 2016 - 14 January 2017
Community Gallery, Gallery Oldham
Cultural Quarter, Greaves St, Oldham OL1 1AL
From its glorious past as the world’s most productive cotton-spinning town during the Industrial Revolution to the ignominy of being named Britain’s most deprived town in the national press, Oldham has tasted both the highs and the lows. In 2016, with the Town Hall redevelopment project nearing completion and the renovation of the old Museum just begun, things are finally looking up for Oldham.
Judith Alsop Miles grew up in Saddleworth and went to school in Uppermill and Oldham in the 1970s, when the town was perhaps at its lowest ebb. Having then lived abroad for many years, she returned to the area in 2014 to find Oldham in the throes of change.
As an Urban Sketcher with a strong interest in our architectural heritage, she set about drawing Oldham’s listed buildings in the context of the changing face of the town – the old bank at Mumps made more visible by the demolition of the railway bridge, the grand façade of the Lyceum with the bright yellow trams flashing past, the newly cleaned, classical columns of the Town Hall side on to the sleek glass wall of the new cinema complex.
This collection of line-and-wash drawings highlights the modest grandeur of Oldham’s Victorian heritage, juxtaposed with the ordinariness of a backstreet scene or a rusty fire escape zigzagging down the crumbling rear of an abandoned building.
Up and Down This Old Moor Parish: Sketches of Ammon Wrigley’s Saddleworth
Saddleworth Museum
High St, Uppermill, Oldham OL3 6HS
17 September 2016 - 12 February 2017
Most Saddleworthians will be aware of the bronze statue of Saddleworth poet and historian Ammon Wrigley that stands near Wade Lock in Uppermill. Many will also be familiar with his writings. But perhaps few know that he was also an accomplished artist and a number of his artworks are held by Saddleworth Museum.
This exhibition marking the 70th anniversary of Ammon Wrigley’s death brings together a series of watercolour paintings and drawings by local artist Judith Alsop Miles, accompanied by some of Wrigley’s own works from the Museum’s collections.
Judith grew up in Delph in the 1970s and two years ago, after a decade in France, returned to live in Saddleworth. Her interest in Ammon Wrigley was aroused when she came across his 1916 book The Wind Among the Heather when researching titles for her paintings. She realised that many of her sketches and paintings were of the places Ammon painted and wrote about, and on her daily rambles around Saddleworth began to feel a close connection with him, almost as if she were looking through his eyes.
The works in this exhibition show Saddleworth as it is today, with the trappings of modern life – cars, wheelie bins, satellite dishes –, set against the backdrop of the Pennine moors and villages, which have changed surprisingly little since Ammon Wrigley’s time.