Big name artists flock to Rye to exhibit

International award-winning artist, illustrator, writer, film-maker, sculptor and photographer Dave McKean will exhibit at the Gallery from September 8 to October 7.

The gallery will be showing mostly drawings by the artist, including from The Gospel of Us, his film version of the National Theatre of Wales astonishing three-day Passion Play in Port Talbot, starring Michael Sheen, and the collaboration with Richard Dawkins on the evolutionary biologist’s book The Magic of Reality.

McKean illustrated the covers for the cult Sandman graphic novel series and has worked extensively with best selling author Neil Gaiman.

Sarah Money, from Rye Art Gallery, said: “This is a show from one of the country’s most polymathic artists - he illustrated Heston Blumenthal’s highly successful The Big Fat Duck Cookbook.”

As well as the Dave McKean exhibition Rye is also set to play host to The Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours from September.

Original paintings from 30 of the country’s leading watercolourists will be on show at Rye Art Gallery including work by the society’s president Ronald Maddox and local artists Andy Wood and the late Neil Meacher whose humorous paintings of Rye life continue to delight

The Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours has its origins in the early years of the 19th century when it was called the New Society of Painters in Watercolours.

It started at a time when the elitist Royal Academy refused to accept watercolours as a medium of serious artistic expression despite its luminous use by one of the greatest painters of all time, Joseph Mallord Turner.

Rye Art Gallery is open from 10am - 1pm and from 2pm - 5pm Monday to Saturday (closed Tuesdays) and from 10am - 4pm Sunday. Admission is free.