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I first came encountered David Stuart as a writer on garden history many years ago and was delighted to discover last year that he has now taken to paint . As a result I’m happy to announce that the summer exhibition at Town House shows recent work by David – botanist, author and now artist. Much of his work uses plants as a central motif and though treated with great expression, all are based on an intense knowledge of plant design and an equally intense love of their beauty.

David has always loved plants. After frequent painting trips to Kew Gardens as a child, he became a botanist studying plant structure and relationships and has a PhD from Edinburgh University, working at the Royal Botanic Garden. Thereafter, he spent many years as a writer and journalist specialising in gardens, garden history, plants and their influence on all our lives.

He has had columns in national newspapers and has published fifteen books, many hugely well reviewed. They include Georgian Gardens, Plants that Shaped our Gardens, Dangerous Garden, and Classic Garden Plans. Recently though, he has returned to painting and print making.

Exhibition runs at Town House 18th May – 8th September

An exhibition of some of Adam Dant’s maps giving his unique view of our history and life today, to accompany publication of the book of the same name published by Batsford in conjunction with Spitalfields Life.

Artist and cartographer Adam Dant surveys London’s past, present and future from his studio in the East End. Beautiful, witty and subversive, his astonishing maps offer a compelling view of history, lore, language and life in the capital and beyond. Traversed by a plethora of colourful characters including William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Mary Wollstonecraft and Barbara Windsor, Adam Dant’s maps extend from the shipwrecks on the bed of the Thames to the stars in the sky over Soho. Along the way, he captures all the rich traditions in the capital, from brawls and buried treasure to gin and gentlemen’s clubs.

Adam Dant studied at the Royal College of Art, London and the MS University Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, India. He creates elaborate narrative drawings that examine and depict public contemporary life, space, mythologies and histories. Extensively researched and wittily perceptive, these works of art draw on a deep well of historical and visual sources. Adam Dant was the official election artist in 2015 and he lives and works in London.

Exhibition runs 5th – 22nd July 2018 at Town House

Doreen Fletcher arrived in the East End of London in the early 1980s and was immediately aware that the dilapidated buildings and small businesses in the streets around her were about to disappear. The sense of community in the area reminded her of her Midlands childhood and, inspired by the excitement of being somewhere new, she started a series of paintings of the East End that continued for the next twenty years.

Aware that she was documenting an urban landscape that would be lost forever, she regularly contacted galleries and magazines to promote not only her paintings, but also an awareness of what was happening in the East End. The negative response reflected the wider attitude at the time and was the culmination of centuries of neglect of an area that had long been regarded as a vast slum. Dispirited by the rejections and the overwhelming changes to the area, Doreen put all her work in the attic and stopped painting in 2003.

A chance contact put Doreen in touch with the the Gentle Author of Spitalfields Life and her paintings were featured on the blog, leading to a storm of interest and the near sell-out exhibition here at Town House in June last year. The sudden interest in Doreen’s work prompted her to start painting again and the latest work, retracing her East End footsteps, reveals how much of the area remains an edgeland balanced between demolition and regeneration, between past and future. It is an intensely human landscape that forms the essential backdrop to the lives of people still struggling to find their place in a built environment that is rapidly changing: an edgeland in between.

In Between, Almost Gone an exhibition of Doreen Fletcher’s latest work 13th – 29th October 2017 at Town House

Stephen Nelson

A workshop in which plantsman and perfumer Stephen Nelson will discuss the shared disciplines of the perfumer and the gin maker – distillation, blending and composition – and will give a potted history of London’s early perfumery and distillery trades and the supply of herbs and spices for it.

You will be able to sample and compare some ‘elixirs’ and perfumes with Stephen, considering the structure and common notes in each and each participant will get the chance to blend some botanicals and essences to take home. This can either be in the traditional form of a sachet powder to scent a space in the home or it can be a blend to make a botanical gin. Each of the audience will choose their own ingredients for whichever they choose with help and direction from Stephen, for example: angelica, cardamom, citrus peel, juniper, liquorice, lovage, orris, rose or tonka bean.

All ingredients and materials will be supplied (but not including the vodka/gin base required for the maceration at home!).

A flower arranging workshop with florists Katie and Terri of Worm London

Join us in the beautiful 18^th century surroundings of Town House Spitalfields for this creative floral workshop in which we’ll be celebrating the coming of summer, using colourful and seasonal British flowers for the table arrangements you’ll be making.  You will learn all you need to know about choosing and preparing your flowers, plus some tricks on how to make an interesting arrangement. Everyone will make their own piece to take home with them in vintage, ceramic marmalade jars and we hope you’ll leave inspired by the arrival of the summer flowers and your new skills to continue what you’ve learnt at home.

To learn more visit www.wormlondon.com

The paintings of Doreen Fletcher and London’s East End

A 48 page catalogue has been written to accompany the exhibition. It includes illustrations of all Doreen’s paintings on show and discusses their context and the history of the locations she painted. The first part of the catalogue looks at the history of the perception of the East End, the community there and the post war re-development of the area.

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An exhibition of work by Doreen Fletcher

10-26 June 2016
Townhouse, 5 Fournier Street, London, E1 6QE

Doreen Fletcher arrived in the East End of London in the early 1980s and was immediately aware that the dilapidated buildings and small businesses in the streets around her were about to disappear. The sense of community in the area reminded her of her Midlands childhood and inspired by the excitement of being somewhere new, she started a series of paintings of the East End that continued for the next twenty years.

Aware that she was documenting an urban landscape that would be lost forever, she regularly contacted galleries and magazines to promote not only her paintings, but also an awareness of what was happening in the East End. Their negative response reflected the wider attitude at the time: a complete lack of interest. It was the culmination of centuries of neglect of an area that had long been regarded as a vast slum and dispirited by the rejections and the overwhelming changes to the area, Doreen stopped painting.

As perceptions have changed and we have come to realise what has been lost, Doreen’s work can now be seen as a poignant record of the time at which so much of the legacy of the East End disappeared. It is not only a record of the built environment of the 19th century and earlier, but also of a community that had survived the bombs of the Second World War. This community was in many ways the last vestiges of a late 19th century, tight knit society, in which life revolved around the streets of one’s birth and around family and friends living nearby.
These paintings depict a lost time that has gone and cannot be recovered, but perhaps this exhibition will encourage us to make up for that lost time and demand a new way of looking at future development in our cities, before it really is too late.