New Gallery Open weekdays 9am to 4pm
John Marshall: An exhibition of Hanging Mobiles
1st April 2014 to 25th April 2014
Open evening 7th April 2014 7-9pm
Displayed at Ripley Arts Centre are the results of my latest obsession, designing and making hanging mobiles, if possible out of recycled stuff. I hope you find them interesting.
After Camberwell Art School and more years ago than I care to mention, my first employment was as a studio junior in a small advertising company specialising in the design and production of advertising mobiles. These were printed on both sides of a sheet of cardboard, pre-cut and strung with nylon and advertised just about anything. They were popular with shopkeepers as they took up no shelf space. All that was required was for the mobile to be pushed out from it surrounding sheet and hung from the shops ceiling. Their demise, I think, partly came because of the spread of supermarkets and the resulting loss of many small independent shops. Thus was the beginning of my career in advertising, mostly as a freelance commercial artist, designing, illustrating, visualizing, lettering,
cardboard engineering and even sometimes a bit of photography.
The Mary Poppins mobile was produced in the early seventies and is one of the few examples of my work that I managed to get a printed copy of, and I’m sure now, after about 40 years, the only one in existence.
I have always had a passion for drawing and painting, especially life and portrait painting and exhibit frequently with the local clubs I belong to. Last year I was delighted to have a painting excepted for The Royal British Artists open exhibition in the Mall galleries and the year before one in The Friends of Dulwich Gallery open exhibition. Also I’m very chuffed that J D Wetherspoons bought one of my portraits, entitled Susan, this is now lavishly reframed and hanging in their splendid new pub The Greyhound in Bromley High Street.
In the last few years I have become interested again in making mobiles, but this time more in the style of Alexander Calder and mostly made from old coat hangers and other recycled stuff.
I hope you think they are interesting.
John Marshall.