Jake Lever
British Museum - acquisition of a ‘Do the Little Things’ boat for their collection
Back in May 2021, I was invited to create an installation for Coventry Cathedral’s Chapel of Gethsemane of Do the Little Things boats, this coincided with a spotlight loan from The British Museum called Crossings: community and refuge. The cross is made from the remnants of a boat which carried refugees that was wrecked near the Italian island of Lampedusa, close to the coast of Tunisia in 2013. It symbolises the plight of refugees across the world. This particular cross was one of many made by the island’s carpenter, Francesco Tuccio, prompted by the tragic death of 311 migrants when the boat sank. Jill Cook, Keeper, Department of Britain, Europe & Prehistory at the British Museum received the small cross in the post from Tuccio, and it became the final acquisition by the museum before Neil McGregor retired as Director in 2015. Jill wrote in a blog in 2021 that the crosses “serve as a reminder of all the histories that are lost and of the thousands of people who are not otherwise commemorated, as well as a major moment in world history.”
Jill Cook was in the cathedral to oversee the installation of the Lampesuda Cross when she decided to acquire one of the ‘Do the Little Things’ boats for the permanent collection of the British Museum. The museum have collected objects that reveal how we navigated the Covid-19 pandemic. She felt that the ‘Do the Little Things’ project, involving the posting of tiny vessels to destinations around the globe, told an important story of the human connection in extraordinary times. You can see the boat in their online collection here.
Gillian Lever
ART FIRST - ‘February’s Feast’
Thursday 2nd February - Friday 3rd March 2023
‘February’s Feast’ is an exhibition of work by a group of gallery artists - Kevin Laycock, Gillian Lever, Simon Lewty, Alex Lowery, Bridget Macdonald, Jack Milroy, Simon Morley, Donald Teskey, Mimei Thompson and Graeme Williams.
Gallery hours: Wednesday - Friday 11am - 6 pm, and by appointment.
ART FIRST, The Forge, 15 St Mary’s Walk, London, SE11 4UA
www.artfirst.co.uk
+44(0)7711945098
It is a joyful thing to be part of ‘February’s Feast’, ART FIRST’s new exhibition for 2023 bringing gallery artists together in the new Lambeth gallery space. The new space is well worth discovering - a few minutes walk from the ‘Imperial War Museum’ it is very easy to find. The exhibition will include recent oil paintings on canvas and board.
Jake Lever
Seeing the hidden and the overlooked
‘Art does not reproduce what we see; rather it makes us see.’
Paul Klee
As an artist I have always loved looking closely at the natural world but since Christmas I have been looking even more closely with the help of a small magnifying glass. Inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and also a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, I have been taking a magnifying glass out on walks. Robin is an expert in moss - a bryologist - she describes mosses as the ‘Coral reefs of the forest’, a beautiful description. Her writing in ‘Braiding Sweetgrass - Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants’ and ‘Gathering Moss - a Natural and Cultural History of Mosses’ is transformational. She is a champion for the magnifying glass and has a gift for opening up a sense of wonder and humility for the intelligence in life forms we can so easily dismiss.
Jake Lever - New Paintings
If we were surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Rainer Maria Rilke from How Surely Gravity’s Law
In this new series of small paintings on paper I wanted simply to play with materials, to experiment freely and respond intuitively to my surroundings. They were all made outside in the heat of last summer, under the shade of bushes, in a field in the depths of rural Wales. The tangled web of undergrowth was a frequent starting point, the wax crayon darting around the paper, resisting the subsequent layers of watery gouache. Silver leaf applied in squares provided a geometric counterpoint to this random mark making, setting up a dialogue and providing ‘quieter’ spaces amidst the busy tangle of web-like marks. The titles (below each image) reflect my joy at reconnection with the land and sea, the latter providing a welcome sanctuary from the intense afternoon heat. All the paintings are available for sale in the shop.
