Saturday 27th April, 1-2pm
Connecting Form was the first major retrospective of the work of Matt Rugg (1935 – 2020), a highly regarded British artist and teacher who was at the forefront of radical changes in art education in the UK during the second half of the 20th century.
Matt Rugg’s work occupies a distinctive place, somewhere between abstract sculpture, painting and drawing, with a language that is uniquely its own. Continuously experimental and often rendered in found industrial materials, there is a simple and effortless beauty to Rugg’s work, which belies the subtle sophistication with which he created pictorial image objects rather than sculptural form.
This retrospective presented more than 70 sculptures, paintings and drawings made over six decades, including many previously unexhibited works with several loans from major public collections, including Tate, Arts Council, the British Council, Leeds City Art Gallery and the Hatton Gallery. The talk will charter Sutcliffe’s approach, and journey of discovery into Rugg’s life and practice of an artist she greatly admired.
Harriet is an artist, curator and researcher. She is an Associate Lecturer at Newcastle University, where she completed her PhD in 2021, focused on the Basic Course at King’s College. Recent projects include A Continuing Process, Hatton Gallery (2019), Undutiful Spirit, a Baltic Artist’s Archive Residency (2022), and Matt Rugg: Notations, Passages, Intervals, Cut Gallery (2022).
If you are interested in attending this talk, please email josephinecousin@googlemail.com
All talks are free for members and £5 for non-members. All talks, workshops and events are held in the Learning Room at the gallery unless stated otherwise.
Friends of the Hatton 