Dame Judi Dench; actor, writer and director Mark Gatiss; The Repair Shop’s Suzie Fletcher; comedian and TV presenter Mel Giedroyc, British actor Paul Chahidi and Irish actor and TV personality Siobhán McSweeney have all submitted artwork for Sobell House Hospice‘s new exhibition My Lovely Postcards. (See here http://My Lovely Postcards online auction site)
Running at SJE arts on Iffley Road from May 20-28 as part of Oxfordshire Artweeks, all the postcards on show are being auctioned to raise money for Beth’s Bursary Fund to help train nurses at Sobell House in Oxfordshire.
Beth’s Bursary Fund was set up by the family of Beth Foreman from Oxford who died of bowel cancer at 32 years old.
Dame Judi Dench said: “Sobell House were so wonderful to my friend Joanne Hope who died last year. I visited her there and I know how comfortable she was and how much easier they made it for her. I thank them very much indeed and hope this project raises a huge amount of money.”
She is one of 180 artists – from budding creatives to award winners – to submit original artwork the size of a postcard, and 412 postcards have now been submitted and up at SJE in the exhibition, curated by local British artist and paint specialist Annie Sloane.
You can bid for Dame Judi Dench’s painting, and more than 400 pieces of artwork, online until May 28 at https://uk.givergy.com/SobellHospiceOnlineAuction2023/
Woodstock artist Mary Blackshaw grew up with Beth and has created a trilogy of special local places embellished with golden butterflies. “Each postcard is a memory of Beth. The first is her treehouse, the second postcard is eating chips under the town hall as teenagers and the last postcard remembers all the festivals we frequented. Beth liked butterflies on everything!”
To add to the excitement, across the county, in Kingham near Chipping Norton, John Lennon’s The Psychedelic Eye is ensconced at Kingham Lodge for its sculpture park exhibition opening on Saturday, also as part of Oxfordshire Artweeks.
The Psychedelic Eye recently returned from a world tour as part of the major V&A exhibition ‘You say you want a revolution, records and rebels 1966-1970’ and is being sold at auction at Bonhams in the autumn… potentially never to be seen in public again. For more details go to http://www.sculptureatkinghamlodge.com
Sculpture at Kingham runs from May 20-29. Full feature to follow. https://www.sculptureatkinghamlodge.com
Oxfordshire Artweeks runs across Oxfordshire until May 29. https://www.artweeks.org
The Sobell House auction runs online until May 28 at https://uk.givergy.com/SobellHospiceOnlineAuction2023/
