Friends Event: Art in Suffolk - Laurence Edwards and Mary Webb Studio Visit

Our first stop is the studio of sculptor Laurence Edwards in Saxmundham. One of the few sculptors who casts his own work, he is fascinated by human anatomy and the metamorphosis of form and matter that governs the lost-wax process. Edwards studied sculpture at Canterbury College of Art and bronze casting at the Royal College of Art with Sir Antony Caro. After winning a Henry Moore Bursary, the Angeloni Prize for Bronze Casting and an Intach Travelling Scholarship, he studied traditional casting techniques in India and Nepal, an experience that not only influenced his treatment of form and technique, but also gave him the necessary tools to establish his own atelier and foundry.

Uncompromising in his approach to the male form, his sculptures express the raw liquid power of bronze, its versatility, mass and evolution, and the variety of process marks he retains tell the story of how and why each work came to be. After visiting his studio in Saxmundham we will make the short journey to his foundry in Halesworth via a brief stop to see his 26-foot-high sculpture, alongside the A12 highway in Suffolk, called ‘Yoxman’, installed in 2021.

Following our visit to the foundry there will be the opportunity to have lunch at The Cut Arts Centre cafe in Halesworth and take in the Bruce McLean exhibition showing sculpture, painting, prints, ceramics, films, a flag, – all examples, of his extraordinary range of art activity over the last 60 years. For many years Bruce was a friend and collaborator with the artist and writer Mel Gooding who died in 2021 and this exhibition is in part a celebration of their incisive and often humorous interaction.

In the afternoon we will then visit the studio of Mary Webb where in addition to paintings we will see some of the enormous number of silkscreen prints made since 1968 and more recently those made with Kip Gresham at the Print Studio in Toft. Although Mary would not consider herself a “constructivist” artist, her work was recently shown in the recent exhibition ‘Rhythm and Geometry: Constructivist Art in Britain Since 1951’ at the Sainsbury Centre.

Mary has dedicated almost six decades to the exploration of the abstract through painting, printmaking and collage and the relationship between colour and form. Mary studied Fine Art at Newcastle University (1958-63), under the pioneering programme devised by Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton. She studied at postgraduate level at Chelsea School of Art in 1964. Her meeting with Sonia Delaunay in 1962 proved to be an inspiration marked by her 1969 screen print, Hommage a Sonia Delaunay.

Note: The first opportunity for refreshments will be at The Cut Arts Centre in Halesworth, so you may wish to bring a flask.

Journey information

• Depart Trumpington Road coach stop opposite the Botanic Garden at 8.00/NEWMARKET ROAD PARK AND RIDE 8.15
• Return Cambridge: 6.30 approx.

Event Organiser –  John Gray