Outpost: Contemporary Art in North Devon
15th November – 20th December 2025
Open: Tuesdays to Saturdays, 12:00-17:00
‘Outpost: Contemporary Art in North Devon’ brings together some of our best-loved and most exciting artists working in North Devon today. Many of the work in the exhibition takes inspiration from the unique area of Northern Devon, and the rich geographical and cultural landscape of our area, and this is an opportunity to discover some new work being made locally by artists who are gaining recognition from around the country.
Artists:
Bill Stewart, Carysella Wilson, Geoff Strainthorp, Ginette Mitchell, Helen Tranckle, Hester Berry, Merlyn Chesterman, Niamh Birch, Peter Stiles, Richard Stevens, StevieRay Latham, Stuart Edmundson
Photography Series by Susan Luciani (22 x 30 cm) oil on board
I’m really pleased to have had three paintings selected for this show, where I share wallspace with some artists I really admire.
Frosty School Walk is an older work in which I look very objectively at light. The subject isn’t really a wintery school or village scene, but simply light and colour. Abstract Landscape, Pink and Green is a new painting which comprises colours used within one of my landscape paintings, and marks which form my language for expressing the landscape. However that is as close as this painting gets to a real “landscape”. It doesn’t refer to any particular view or experience, but I wanted to play with a couple of components from my work to see what would happen if they were employed with no subject or source material. Vulva was a an image from a project with artist/film maker Susan Luciani.
“I had the idea to shoot Vulva Landscapes after filming and photographing a water birth. I was 30 weeks pregnant at the time and had no idea what I was in for! At WOMAN FEST I hoped to create a safe space for women to celebrate their most intimate selves. Women came to the shoot for different reasons; curiosity, to feel accepting of themselves, magnificent even about a part of them that had experienced cultural/social shaming and violence by strangers and their partners. One woman who had recently had a baby said she wanted to stop feeling broken. After their portrait the women told me they felt
‘happy… surprised… growing… independent… empowered… womanly… proud.’ ” Susan Luciani
Susan’s beautiful photos were shot in black and white, but I recreated this one in oil paint and used colours I found within a forest, rather than a figure.
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