I discovered the Adzak museum in Paris (2014) thanks to meeting a
poetical IT woman called Sina , in a poetry reading evening . It was a Sunday afternoon and when the poetry
reading was over , she said she was going to take some people to a private museum and did i want to come
with her? I was very happy to go along
because i would see Paris from the view point of an artist who had actually
made his dream come true .
Roy Wright was born in the UK (1927) and had studied civil engineering there. Later in
'49 he had started to travel and had gone to art school in Sydney . He had
worked in Australia and New Zealand .....his discovery of this new world
inspired him with ideas which were to form and influence his art later on . He
continued to travel , going through Asia and trying to reach Europe via the
middle east .... travelling through and
staying in India, Persia (Iran) ,
Afghanistan (where he worked as an archeologist and took the artists name
Adzak) .... also in Jordan, Syria etc......
Adzak was
inspired to chose this name in art
because he had worked as an archeologist in Afghanistan for some months .......
the story goes that he chose this name because during his stay in an Afghan
city he had fallen ill and not having money to go back home and not having
received help from the consulate .......
he had been given hospitality by an Afghan farmer for some months . He
was eventually cured of his ailment due to this Afghan families kindness
.....for this reason he had adopted the
name Adzak which was the farmers family name .......
Meeting Margaret Crowther who has been
managing the Adzak Art Space for the last thirty years was very interesting
..... Margaret was a personal friend of
Roy's and has kept the art space going after his death . Thanks to Margaret and Roy's family ,ie the
Wright family keeping the doors open to artists from all over the world ....
Roy's dream of helping other artists has come true .
In fact I want to thank them myself because
Margaret kindly allowed me to be an Artist in Residence for a while at
the art space . This was a very fruitful period mainly because I met a lot of other
artists who have known Margaret through the years . Speaking little french and mainly English I
managed to connect to other artists who were living and working in Paris, most
of them being English speakers like myself .....
Right now there is a permanent exhibition of
his pencil drawings which are on the current question of The Environment
......called SOS Trees In Distress 1983 - 1984
Some artists are on view there
permanently ( most
artworks can be bought for very reasonable prices !!!!) ;
One of
the main artists on show there is Nicholas Wright (Roy's nephew)whose ceramic
birds, animals and other subjects and creations animate the art-space
..... some of them are ceramics on the
subject of a people interacting with
animals , a sort of drama and story communicates itself to the viewer .....
which reminds me of the surreal world of folk tales .... Nicholas has his
ceramics installed in a precious inner
court yard full of leafy trees and potted plants . This garden was created by
Margaret in the 1983 .
Some
painters showing there are for instance John Stratford (who is Parisian from Quebec)
who does Oriental style Bonsai's (watercolours in black ink) which I
think are extraordinary in that he has mastered a technique which requires much
study and application ..... but one can see the individual soul and spirit of
the subject shining through . He was one
of the people (along with Margaret) who recommended the exhibition held of
ZaoWou-ki's work at the Chinese Cultural Institut in Paris last summer.
ZaoWou-ki( a very well known artist) whose house is on the same street at no 19
(on the same pavement), he was a close
friend as Roy Wright had a studio there
for many years (since 1972). Margaret
and Roy knew him as their neighbour
since he was very faithful to local buisnesses around rue Jonquoy.
Arnaud Prinstet is a portrait artist who has a
studio in the Pantin area ....he is a Parisien, an It expert who prefers painting
to anything else and went to art school in
New York . Arnaud's portraits of himself and other people remind me of
what I do in my watercolours ie the
variations on a theme which gives different results everytime .....
Marianne Fraser is another painter who lives in
Brittany but is a prolific producer of surreal canvases with cosmic subjects. I
met Marianne and her husband on the occasion of a Fashion show in Saint
Germain, presented by Pascal Mallen who produced the entire happening together with his designer Vignesh , a young Indian student (studying in Mr Mallen's French Language classes)
This
fashion show was wholy organized by Pascal Mallen and friends who in collaboration with the Town hall of the 14th arrondisment , had the show in a prestigious hall right next to the Saint Germain Church.
Bayaluce is a university prof who has been
teaching engraving at the Sorbonne for
30 years, she has a studio in the Pantin area as well . Once a
year there is an open door event when you can go and visit the artists in their
atelier. I went to visit her once and
she had a workshop which was open to people in the neighbourhood .....from
there we went to visit other events in the area.... Baya has a rich life-
history. She has studied in Russia and therefore Russian is one of the
languages she knows well. She has also
lived and worked in Japan . Her engravings remind me of expressionist artists
.....
Other artists present in the art space are
..... Herminie Nougaret is a Parisien
lady who paints with a strong expressionistic palet .....
Miron Agafitei is a painter who has lived in Italy for some years before settling down in Paris .
Miron Agafitei is a painter who has lived in Italy for some years before settling down in Paris .
David Bruce is a well known and established
Art- Photographer, who has participated in many exhibitions and is living
outside Paris ....he has some photoghraphs in exhibition at the art-space.
Françoise Lafont is a Parisien lady
Photographer who is regularly participating in the exhibitions around Paris.
Other painters ; Robert Rey; who died in the
summer , was a well known Art Brut artist who has known Roy right from when he
had opened up his art space in no 3 rue Jonquoy. Colin Wild too is one of the old friends of
Roys who is on exposition.
Guilliome ....... and Clement Thompson participate in the
atelier as prescious aides to Margaret and her projects.( as well as a lot of
other people who i will eventually ad to the list of the people i have met )
Margaret's Journalistic group of people
.....in a sense everyone in the 14th arrondisment knows Margaret because she
has kept Roy Adzak's art-space alive for the past thirty
years. I told her that she is every
artists dream .....because usually artists worry about their life's work disintegrating
when they are not around anymore ..... and they would love for a friend to keep their spirit going when they are not around.
There have also been special uses of the art
space for instance there have been musicians from Bangladesh accompanying the
singer- artist IffatDevanAra who sang some of her repetoire for an
audience .
There has also been the Jazz musicien Michael Grossman
performing his own compilation live (in streaming) together with Sofie who is an actress while she read some poems written by the
russian poet Premiakov titled "The Pianist".
One of the reasons I believe that
Art and creativity will increase prosperity in the world is because Roy
and the people of his generation did work in Creativity and fullfilled the dream .
My favorite surrealist artist Salvador Dali' for example was living in the Saint Germain area in a top notch hotel while preparing for a theatrical presentation. This is where Margaret met him. I admire Dali' Art and his created Persona and Ms Crowther had the opportunity to meet and talk to the artist himself in the exciting 70's . I dont know if he said this , but some surrealist did say that " when there is a musical sound of water flowing then the river itself is not far away and ...... somewhere in the background. The sounds we hear are proof
that "the river" actually exists. and the source we were looking for is close at hand ....
I had been to spain earlier in the year …. i was talking to Ms Crowther about my friend Chigo the African woman from Nigeria who was living in my house with
her two boys . She asked me if Chigo was renting the place and i explained to
her that she wasn't able to pay a rent. I was considering it a charitable act
on my part to allow her to stay there for free. Chigo was a trained dentist but
right now she was running a charity shop in one of the back streets in the
center of Torrevieja. The economic crisis in Spain had led to the creation of
many such charity shops where people mainly tourists who had come to spend some weeks enjoying the Spanish sun , donated their furniture and belongings
which would then be sold at low prices to the public.
The times of austerity now a days don't leave
any room for promoters of Art at all .....
Here is a picture of one capable woman who
promoted artists art work by putting them on show in truck galleries in the 60's and 70's ..... Iris Clair was a Greek lady who was a very entreprising Gallerist and was successful for some years in organizing and presenting her artists works to the wealthy collecters of Art visiting Paris .
.....
Margerete's story about how she met Roy
reminded me of my student life in Italy …...
Perhaps in the same years when Roy was making
his professional art in his studio in Paris, Axel who was an actor from Berlin
had come to visit with his girlfriend , They were making a video about women
artists and had come over for a film festival. Our flat was a good place to
receive people and we could put people up for a few days . It was the 1980's ,
the Berlin Wall was still intact and i shared the flat with two other girls ;
Nadia and Verena.
We were aspiring painters and
hung out with a group of artists . I knew some people who went to the same
private art school "the Cecil Daniel School " which is now called "the cecilSchool" and 2The Daniel School" I had known this art shool since some one from my book
group was working there .Tal was a student and working as a model for painters and in my group we painted and liked the idea of
getting some artists together and doing something culturally intersting …..
like contributing to the world in a positive way. While we waited for the
future ; when we would make this happen we had parties and went to some
ourselves.
I had wanted to travel to France for many
years now and since i could leave the flat with my girl friends i finally had
the opportunity of going off on a trip to Paris. A group of students who were
studying art history with me at the university had organized this trip.
Comments
Post a Comment