Ferens art Gallery is the main art gallery in Hull, (Kingston-upon-Hull), it has the most resources, the biggest collection, and the best funding. You will see as part of the permanent collection, works by such luminaries as Frans Hals, Antonio Canaletto, Frederick Leighton, Percy Whyndam Lewis, Stanley Spencer ( I like), Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, David Hockney, Peter Blake, Bridget Riley, Helen Chadwick, and others, not bad for a provincial gallery, in a largely culture starved northern city. If you are looking for an oasis of culture in what is a rather rough and uncivilised northern city you can hide out here for a couple of hours. I think Hulls old boy, Phillip Larkin was a bit unkind when he referred to the people of Hull as ‘a cut price crowd, urban yet simple’ and Hull as the ‘back of beyond’, but maybe he meant it in an affectionate way. There is some culture here you just have to look for it. The gallery won the Museum of the year award for best museum of Fine and Applied art in 1993.

I have been visiting Ferens over the years, on and off for about twenty years, through various stages of my art education and just out of interest, to see what is going on in the local art scene. It is always nice to go an see pictures you have become familiar with over the years, and to go back and always find them there just where they were twenty years ago. I went in only yesterday, and they still have the same Stanley Spencers hanging in the same place, when I first saw them all those years ago, when I first got interested in painting. Continuity is a nice thing sometimes, some places just never seem to change. It has almost become like an old friend, we all have places where we go that we feel familiar with and that evoke certain memories, I think that Ferens is one of those places for me. That is not to say that the Ferens is set in stone, there are always new and contemporary exhibitions going on, every month there is a turn over in the main galleries (other than the permanent collection), where you can see noteworthy contemporary artists exhibiting their work.
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There is a local artists exhibition every year , the winter exhibition, which I try to attend if possible, which is a good place for up and coming local talent to display their work. The quality varies as you would expect, taking into account the wide ranging catchment area of the entrants. there are some graduates, some local professionals , and some local amateurs, I think it is fascinating to have such a ranging collection of local work, sometimes you find some one who is completely untrained out stripping the so called professionals, whose work is often stilted , formalised, and over worked, often a nieve or untrained artist will have a spontaneity of response which has been drummed out of the seasoned professionals over years of art training, this is something I always enjoy, and look forward to with the winter exhibition, the hope that you will find some undiscovered talent exhibiting on a shoe string budget, waiting to be discovered. The unlikely candidates are always the most interesting in my opinion. This is often where the life is. There is always a huge spread of subject matter in the winter exhibition, everything from still life to portraits, to landscapes, and an almost equally innumerable ways of working. You get portraits that people have been working on for six months, that people have been working on in their spare time after work, of a loved one, and they finally decide to give it up to the public, and the more confident graduates are using the exhibition to launch their careers with their more sophisticated and cerebral works. It is a real melting pot of creativity, which contrasts and complements so well with the permanent exhibition hung in the adjoining galleries with their rather lofty status and reverential tone. There are exhibitions like this all over the country, I just happen to know this one particularly well because it is local. It would be worth checking out your own local municipal gallery to see what they have to offer. These exhibitions are usually in the winter when people have nothing better to do than stay in doors out of the cold with their paint brushes.

The current exhibition which is on until 18th April, is Colour Feel, by Sally Greaves Lord. I’m not a particular fan of textiles, but I was stunned by the quality of this exhibition. I have never seen textiles like this before, she really is an original artist. Sally Greaves Lord was formerly the creative director for the Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake and has an international reputation. I am not really familiar with either of these artists, as textiles is not really my field, but the work is stunning. There is a collection of hand painted silk banners and framed painted textiles

Pictures of Ferens Art Gallery (Hull)

Ferens Art Gallery

John Trigg: Painting and Sculptures of 97-04. 24 April-13 June

Drift Works: Will Maclean. 24 April-1August

If you are impressed enough with the organisation you can become a ‘friend of Ferens’ like with many of the big galleries these days. For an annual fee you will be an official member of the gallery and receive several perks such as the news letter, there are also meetings, lectures, guided visits and social events. The aims of the organisation are to promote the appreciate and enjoyment of art. They also provide pictures, sculptures, and other works of art for the permanent collection. They also raise money to support special projects at the gallery and to improve the facilities for families and children.