Paula Rego and Juliet Barker

Two alerts from the UK, for different activities with a Brontë-twist.

A Paula Rego's retrospective exhibition started yesterday, October 9 in the Royal College of Art in London. Of course, her series of lithographs about Jane Eyre is included.

PAULA REGO - PRINTMAKER
9 October – 15 October 2006
Open 10am – 6pm daily
Free admission

The Royal College of Art is pleased to show the first major retrospective exhibition in the UK of the complete graphic works by the extraordinary artist Paula Rego. Comprising over 200 works, this exhibition presents for the first time theremarkable range and wealth of Rego’s printmaking career. The exhibition has been generously supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Rego is one of the most distinguished artists working in Britain today. Celebrated as a draughtswoman of extraordinary range and as a great storyteller, Rego unveils a world of fairytale, nursery rhyme, legend and myth, making them her own. Openly drawing on personal experience, many of the works echo Rego’s childhood, relationships, responsibilities and family life, transformed into works of immense emotional power and intensely erotic psychological drama. Many of Rego’s prints are centred around themes - creating series where one image triggers the inspiration for the next.

The exhibition features several such print series, including the eerily sinister Nursery Rhymes series, with ‘Little Miss Muffet’, ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ and ‘Three Blind Mice’. The exhibition also includes the Peter Pan and Jane Eyre series with the well-known characters acting out dramas of dominance and rebellion with a twist: stereotypes are reversed, gender is questioned and innocence is corrupted.

And the Brontë biographer Juliet Barker will appear today at the Examiner's Literary Luncheon in Huddersfield:

The event, on Tuesday, October 10, is our 21st and will be the biggest yet.

Our line-up offers a varied literary menu - former schools inspector and humorist Gervase Phinn; novelist Lesley Pearse; Brontë historian Juliet Barker, and our own Holme Valley artist Ashley Jackson.

The ticket price of £19.50 includes a three course meal at the Galpharm Stadium, with coffee and the chance to meet our authors.

We don't know if Ms. Barker will talk about the Brontës, but after her appearance on BBC4's Reader, I Married Him and the broadcasting of the new Jane Eyre... probably it will be a popular demand.

Categories: Alert, Art-Exhibitions, Jane_Eyre, Talks