As we prepare for the reopening of the main Gallery spaces in October, Prelude… is a reintroduction to what we do best: curated exhibitions showcasing talented artists.
Alfred East Gallery is proud to be hosting Prelude…, our first exhibition since 2020. Six local artists from Northants & Rutland Open Studios bring painting, printmaking, collage and photography to the Garden Room.
A varied exhibition with something for everyone. Entry is FREE and all artworks are for sale
Dates: Saturday 5th September – Friday 2nd October
Opening Times:
- Tuesday – Saturday: 10am – 5pm
- Sundays 6th and 13th September: 10am – 4pm
Location: Garden Room.
- Located within the Gallery’s extension and accessible through the rear doors.
Evening Launch Event: Saturday 12th September: 6pm – 8pm
- Join the artists and celebrate the launch of Prelude…
Meet the Artists:
- On selected Saturdays during the exhibition, meet the artists in the Garden Room to discuss their methods and inspirations.
- Saturday 19th September: Samantha and Rosie.
- Saturday 26th September: Charlotte, Serena, Rosie, and Teresa.
For further information, contact the team at AEG at alfredeastgallery@northnorthants.co.uk
Charlotte Ashman
Charlotte makes linocuts that reflect her interest in the stories that everyday thoughts can make when translated into an image. The canals feature widely in her art as she has spent the last 15 years living on a boat, paying particular attention to women’s contributions to life on the water.
Website: www.charlotteashman.co.uk
Instagram: charlottes_arts
Samantha Brockway
An artist and illustrator living in Northamptonshire, Samantha works in many mediums but loves watercolour and dry point etching.
Her work is a response to the landscape and people around her. Her images often have a narrative or sense of stillness in a moment. She often uses mark making to build up the image.
Graduating from the University of the West of England, she joined the greetings card industry in Northamptonshire where she remained for 15 years. Now freelance, she has rediscovered her individual style and, with the help of the local Art Society’s printing press, Intaglio print.
A prize winner at 2023, 2024 and 2025 NROS Central Exhibitions and awarded first prize in 2024 and 2026 KDAS Annual Exhibition.
An active member of Kettering and District Art Society and Northants and Rutland Open Studios, she was also elected a member of Northampton Town and County Art Society this year.
Other recent selected exhibitions include among others the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists ‘Watercolour Prize Exhibition’ and Green and Stone’s ‘Works on Paper exhibition’
Commissions taken and artwork available.
Website: samanthabrockway.com
Email: samanthabrockway@icloud.com
Instagram: sam_brockway
Serena Durgheu
Serena Durgheu grew up in an artistic family, studied art, and works as a graphic designer. Her work is driven by a search for the right balance of light, colour, and form, reducing each element to its simplest expression.
She works with oil and graphic pencil on canvas. Her recent paintings are inspired by the idea of flight, using birds as symbols of our desire to keep moving, searching, and aspiring. The birds are reduced to simple, almost symbolic forms, where shape and movement become more important than detail.
Her style sits between abstraction and minimalism, combining a delicate palette of soft, muted tones with organic forms and fine pencil lines. Thin layers of paint create a sense of lightness, while negative space becomes as important as the painted forms themselves. Through simplicity, balance, and subtle movement, her paintings offer a quiet visual language that leaves space for feeling and reflection.
Website: www.serenadurgheu.com
Email: samdarts@gmail.com
Instagram: serenadurgheu
Rosie Jarvis
Since 2013, landscape has been at the heart of my practice. While my work has long been rooted in the patchwork fields of my local surroundings, a recent residency in Andalusia introduced me to a strikingly different landscape and colour palette, prompting a new direction in my painting.
Inspired by the residency during the almond blossom season, my painting explores the space between observation and memory. Through a reduced palette and simplified forms, I shape almond orchards, olive groves, dusty tracks and mountain contours into a rhythmic composition, creating a dialogue between horizon, landscape and recollection.
Within this arid landscape, I became increasingly aware of the abundance it sustains; almond trees in blossom, ancient olive groves and the vivid fruits of orange and lemon. This contrast between apparent barrenness and rich provision became an important thread in the work, leading me to introduce still life into the landscapes under the recurring theme “A Table in the Wilderness”, capturing sustenance and peace in an unexpected place. From there, the paintings became increasingly distilled, with the colours of an Andalusian spring emerging as bands of colour that carry the memory of the landscape beyond representation.
Instagram: @rosiejarvisartist
Email: rosiejarvis@btinternet.com
Simon Loach
To me a photograph isn’t necessarily proof that something existed, only that it mattered.
Photographs can capture what sometimes go unseen and unnoticed. If something isn’t recorded it can fade and disappear. I photograph people and places, trying to document the feelings they evoke rather than simply how they looked.
Instagram: side_pr0ject
Website: www.side-project.art/
Teresa Williams
I create digital and analogue works, often combining my own photographs with stitch and found materials. My photographs provide the foundation for digitally constructed and hand-embellished pieces, with stitch and found materials adding texture and detail.
According to Greek mythology, Nereus, otherwise known as the Old Man of the Sea, had fifty daughters. These beautiful creatures are said to protect those in, or on, the sea. They are usually depicted wearing robes of shimmering sea foam, transparent, windswept
garments, or mermaid-like fish tails.
My Nereids are adorned with beach debris and fishing line that I have collected following cliff falls. They are all situated on Pakefield Beach, Lowestoft, where cliff erosion happens at a rapid pace. I capture their beauty by adding stitching and, occasionally, splinters of sea glass and sand. They continue to look out to sea, ever protecting.
A Day by the Sea is a digital painting inspired by another theme I often return to: the passing of time. It brings together real people who are connected by place but separated by time. The same is true of the landscape. Different aspects of Pakefield Beach from the past one hundred years are layered together into a single image.
Alongside my work exploring the Suffolk coast, I also create playful collages using vintage magazines. These explore the stereotypical ways women are portrayed in fashion.
Surrealism and Dada continue to influence my practice, and references to these movements often find their way into my finished work.
Instagram: teresa_williams__
Website: www.teresawilliamsart.com
Main Image: “Gold Top” by Teresa Williams (detail)