A Great Disappointment

We went to an exhibition at the Russell-Cotes museum in Bournemouth today. It was by mosaic artist, Cleo Mussi and textile artist, Matthew Harris – a very talented couple. The exhibition showed work inspired by their recent trip to Japan. More on that later.

We were delighted when we arrived to find another great exhibition, also running, with work by one of our favourite artists, Frances Hatch. We have one of her limited edition prints, based on snow studies.

All the work was lovely but one particular piece took our eye and Clive grabbed the catalogue and looked up the price. Affordable, he said and I wasn’t going to argue. It did seem very reasonable and we double checked the price with the girl on the desk.  So we said we would have it and we were delighted when the manager guy  (in charge of taking the money) asked if would like to take it now as they were selling ‘off the wall’. We went to have a cup of coffee and excitedly planned where it would hang.

Then manager guy appeared looking a little shame-faced. He was very sorry, he said but there had been a mistake and a zero had been left off the price, Did we still want it? As this placed it well into the thousands we sadly said no and walked off (in a deflated manner).

We can now see the funny side of it but that bit of wall looks very empty.

Anyway both the exhibitions were good and the Matthew Harris work was great. Here are a few of his pieces. I think the titles are correct but I had forgotten my camera so had to use the iphone. the piece below is called Narita Bloom Cloth.

 This piece is one of Cleo's mosaics - a wonderful depiction of sushi.

I also liked these two figures. Really lovely stuff. The notation on the wall pointed out that although textiles and mosaics appeared to have little in common, they were both built up from scratch. Good point, I thought.

Finally another piece from Matthew. A detail this time. Matthew and Cleo were marooned in Japan when the Icelandic volcano caused all the hassle and it was obviously a very inspirational time.

We had such a great time on Saturday sitting on Bournemouth seafront watching the air festival. The Red Arrows were amazing.

It was unexpectedly hot, with no sea breeze, so desperate measures were called for. Clive hasn’t lost the knack - see below. I resorted to a visor (tasteful) made from the Guardian magazine but I am not going to make a fool of myself by showing you.

All the book-winners were notified by email and the books went off today so should be with you soon. I shall have some more later, as I am still sorting.