Victoria Art Gallery – The Art of Mosaic

The Art of Mosaic

 

In March 2011 the Bath & North East Somerset Council-run Victoria Art Gallery will present a series of three lectures on The Art of Mosaic.

 

The talks coincide with an exhibition by Cleo Mussi, a leading contemporary mosaic artist, whose exhibition at the Gallery will run from February 12 – April 3, 2011.

 

The series begins on Wednesday March 2, with a lecture called My Mosaics in which Cleo talks about her own work. She will describe the ideas and inspiration behind her work in her Victoria Art Gallery show, which is simply called ‘Mosaics’.

 

On Thursday March 10, the subject will be Micromosaics. The talk will be given by Heicke Zeck, a Curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, responsible for the Micromosaics in the Gilbert Collection.

 

Micromosaic is an art form developed under the patronage of the Vatican in which large scale works were created with very fine coloured glass rods. The technique was employed for several hundred years and flourished particularly in the 19th century. Some of the finest examples in the world are now in the V&A.

 

The third talk takes place on Thursday March 17, and is entitled Illustrating Roman Mosaics. This will be given by Stephen Cosh, co-author of one of the greatest archaeological catalogues ever produced in Britain. The fourth and final volume of The Mosaics of Roman Britain was published by the Society of Antiquaries in December 2010 and includes every mosaic ever recorded from Roman Britain.

 

An accomplished artist Stephen recorded many of these mosaics personally, sometimes reconstructing them from old perspective photographs. The volumes will be available for inspection at the lecture.

 

The Council’s Cabinet Member for Tourism, Leisure & Culture Cllr Terry Gazzard (Conservative, Abbey) said: “Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Victoria Art Gallery has lined up some fascinating, expert speakers for this series which traces the development of mosaic as an art form over 2,000 years.”

 

All three talks start at 7.30pm and tickets - which must be pre-booked - are £6; tickets for all three events can be bought for £15. They are available from the gallery or by calling 01225 477233.