Before completing the Drawing Year in 2021, Otis Blease studied Drawing and Printmaking at Bristol’s University of the West of England, where he was awarded the Dumfries House residency upon graduation. Having grown up in rural Cornwall, the move to London to study at The Royal Drawing School had a considerable impact on his work and the city’s constant state of motion added an energy and spontaneity to his practice. Working with mixed media materials, often onto paper he explores feelings of excitement and anxiety in his work, interested in the way life can seem both thrilling and mundane sim ..read more

Olly Williamson was born in 1994 and grew up in a village just outside of Preston.  He completed the Drawing ear at the Royal Drawing School in 2023, after graduating from Manchester School of Art with a first-class honours in Fine Art in 2016. Olly makes work about quiet situations in life, utilising intense observation and experimental structures of composition. His images reflect the underlying rhythms of the people and the world he sees around him, hoping to make the everyday feel monumental. This conversation was during our current Voices in Drawing exhibition. The exhibition showcas ..read more

Originally from Cambridge, Felix Higham studied at Central St Martin’s before completing The Drawing Year in 2021. His artistic focus centres on the intricate study of people and the dynamics of life within the spaces we construct for our use. His observational drawings conducted in pubs and cafés provide material from which Felix constructs narrative works back in the studio. Through the placement of doorways and positioning of light sources, structural interiors become pivotal in dictating the viewer’s perspective within these spaces. This conversation with emerging artist Felix Higham was ..read more

This conversation was recorded with emerging artist Ellie Lonsdale who is currently exhibiting at Fen Ditton Gallery as part our Voices in Drawing exhibition. The exhibition showcases the work of six recent graduates and alumni from The Royal Drawing School and is open until Sunday 25th February 2024. You can find out more and view the exhibition online at ⁠⁠fendittongallery.com⁠⁠ Ellie Lonsdale graduated from Falmouth University with a first-class degree in Illustration, before joining The Drawing Year in 2022. Her practice is driven by narrative, where drawings act as windows into obser ..read more

Hello and welcome to the Fen Ditton Gallery podcast, with me Hannah Munby. This conversation was recorded with emerging artist Euan Evans on my recent visit to his studio in Stoke Newington, to collect the paintings and drawings that are currently on show at Fen Ditton Gallery as part our Voices in Drawing exhibition. The exhibition showcases the work of six recent graduates and alumni from The Royal Drawing School and is open until Sunday 25th February 2024. Euan Evans was born in Cornwall in 1996, and originally studied Jazz at Leeds Conservatoire before completing the Drawing Year in 2022 ..read more

Agnes Treherne was born in Sussex in 1987. She studied Fine Art and History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, and went on to complete The Drawing Year at The Royal Drawing School, graduating in 2021. In was in the September following her graduation that Agnes first exhibited at Fen Ditton Gallery.  Agnes’ work is concerned with how our thoughts and articulations are informed by the environments in which we live. She works from the premise that the act of drawing, and the attention it gives to what is being drawn, is fruitful both to the artist and the subject, so that the existence ..read more

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Fen Ditton Gallery podcast, with me, Hannah Munby.   My conversation today is with textile artist Ptolemy Mann, whose exquisite bold woven works will be shown in our upcoming exhibition ‘Going Yellow’. In this conversation, Ptolemy and I discuss her bohemian upbringing; how her extensive colour theory training allows her to break the rules, how she has owned the phrase ‘Chromatic minimalism’, and why textile artists should be taken seriously in the contemporary art world.   Going Yellow is a multidisciplinary exhibition at Fen Ditton Gallery f ..read more

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Fen Ditton Gallery podcast that was recorded at the gallery as part of our current exhibition Willard Boepple 'Shards and Sources'. We are very grateful to Elenor Ling and Kip Gresham, both of whom have been incredibly generous with their time and knowledge not just for this exhibition but for other projects at the gallery too – namely the Contemporary Printmaking Prize earlier in the year for which they were both judges. We first had the pleasure of working with Kip Gresham and The Print Studio, Cambridge in January 2022 on an exhibition titled ..read more

Hello and welcome back to the Fen Ditton Gallery podcast, hosted by Hannah Munby. In this episode, I was delighted to interview artist and printmaker Sarah Gillespie who is currently exhibiting at the gallery as part of our Art, Science and the Natural World exhibition. The exhibition brings together three artists who have recently completed an invited residency with the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, focussing on lesser-known IUCN redlist species that are in decline due to environmental change. Sarah Gillespie was born in Winchester in 1963. She studied 16th & 17th century methods and ..read more

In this episode, I’m joined by artist Wycliffe Stutchbury who is currently exhibiting in our Water/Land exhibition. Formerly a furniture maker, Wycliffe has chosen to continue to work with wood in his artistic career too. The works start with a hunt for the timber, whether that be foraging or searching dealers for the piece that will inspire his next project. The piece that we are lucky enough to be showing at the gallery is called ‘Hundred Foot Drain 9’ and has been made from a piece of Bog Oak that was recovered just down the road from us in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. Wycliffe says of his wo ..read more