Norman Ackroyd's St Kilda Revisted at Brook Gallery

St Kilda Revisited, an exhibition at the Brook Gallery, Budleigh Salterton to celebrate the release of the box set 2010 of etchings by Norman Ackroyd, ties in with the 80 year anniversary of the evacuation of the St Kilda community in 1930.

St Kilda, the remotest part of the British Isles in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, is an archipelago once home to a small group of hardy Scots who lived off all that nature meagerly had to offer. This exhibition celebrates and commemorates islands which some once called ‘home’.

Angela Yarwood, owner of the Brook, said: “Norman’s work evokes an incredibly powerful resonance. It’s just as if you’re looking back for the last time, with your boat buffeted by the wind. It’s an exhibition that is extraordinary in many ways.”

Norman Ackroyd  is a mainstay at the Brook – his work is part of the backbone of the Brook’s collection. The Box Set 2010: St Kilda Revisited, typifies one of Ackroyd’s favourite subjects showing off his skills to their upmost. Much of his work is acid etched on copper plate, often from a small boat tossed by the sea, a print taken from the intricately worked plate creates atmosphere and life. It’s a skill that’s brought Norman Ackroyd celebrated status as one of the foremost British contemporary artists in the world.

Born in 1938 in Leeds, Ackroyd attended the Leeds School of Art from 1956 to 1961 and subsequently the Royal College of Art to 1964. He quickly followed with many solo exhibitions, both here and abroad and the public collections in which his work is held is a roll call of the great and the good, in the UK and worldwide – the British Museum, Tate Gallery, the V&A in London; Museum of Modern Art, New York and the National Gallery, Washington DC and in Europe, the Stedelijk and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, among others.

The exhibition also includes two of Ackroyd’s rare watercolours and a selection of work from the last 15 years; a privilege for the Brook and its customers.

St Kilda Revisited at the Brook Gallery, Budleigh Salterton runs from Saturday, October 16 to Saturday, November 13

(image: Norman Ackroyd’s Storay Stacs)