Please note that as this is a currently a work-in-progress, the images do not represent the finished work. We will update the images as the work evolves.

Barefoot Opera is proud and excited to present a new work by the highly acclaimed sculptor Suzie Zamit. This has been created especially to raise funds for the Bloom Britannia project.

Suzie was inspired to make a portrait of Virginia Woolf to celebrate the first Barefoot Opera art auction taking place at Charleston, the home of the Bloomsbury Group. This will be the first of an edition of 12. (TBC)

Please note that we also have a commission by Suzie Zamit up for auction – please see Lot 18.

Artist’s links:

Website: www.suziezamit.co.uk

Facebook: www.facebook.com/suziezamitsculptor/

Artist’s biography:

Suzie studied Fine Art Sculpture at City & Guilds of London Art School. She has been a Council member of the SOCIETY OF PORTRAIT SCULPTORS since 2007, and has recently been elected Vice President. She exhibits at their annual London FACE show each May, and in 2010, at their critically acclaimed exhibition in WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL – ‘In a Sacred Place’. She was awarded the Society prize in 2013 for her small wax maquette of Barry Flanagan OBE and the Atelier Fine Art Prize for her portrait of Amina Ali – one of the kidnapped Nigerian girls, at FACE 2015.

SINCE 2009 EXHIBITION VENUES INCLUDE:

British Library
Heathrow T5
London Affordable Art Fairs
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
Bedford Street Gallery, Woburn
Caxton Contemporary, Whitstable
Gallery Different, Percy Street W1
Mall Galleries, Threadneedle Prize
Ralph Lauren – London Homestores
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
The OXO Tower, London
Victoria Art Gallery, Bath
The Gallery, Cork St W1
Sladmore Contemporary W1
The Galleria, Pall Mall

She has also designed for the ROYAL MINT including a CHARLES DARWIN bicentenary £2 coin in 2009; and BRITANNIA bullion coins in 2010, and 2016. Commissions include a posthumous portrait of the artist FRANCIS BACON; a gift for the Japanese Buddhist leader President Ikeda, of a small portrait study of CHARLIE CHAPLIN; a high relief of the diabetic doctor R D LAWRENCE for Kings College Hospital; a portrait of JANE AUSTEN; a low relief of Canadian entrepreneur PETER MUNK for Porto Montenegro.

Her portrait of the Victorian MP and founder of the National Secular Society CHARLES BRADLAUGH was unveiled in Parliament Nov 2016 and is now in the Palace of Westminster.

Suzie’s work is in private collections throughout Europe. Her studio is now in St Leonards On Sea; please call to arrange to view more of her work and discuss commissions.

Apart from private tuition, she also teaches Masterclasses at the Art Academy, S E London and will be running regular 1 and 2 day courses at her new studio in St Leonards, East Sussex.

Location photograph

Artist’s links:

www.frithstreetgallery.com/artists/tacita-dean/works

Artist’s bio:

b. 1965, Canterbury, England

The films, drawings and other works by British European artist Tacita Dean are extremely original. Her recent film portraits express something that neither painting nor photography can capture. They are purely film. And while Dean can appreciate the past, her art avoids any kind of academic approach. Dean‘s art is carried by a sense of history, time and place, light quality and the essence of the film itself. The focus of her subtle but ambitious work is the truth of the moment, the film as a medium and the sensibilities of the individual.

Abstract sculpture, carved by hand from a piece of Forest of Dean sandstone mounted on a hardwood base

Artist’s links:

Website: www.bernard-mcguigan.format.com

Instagram: bernard.mcguigan

Artist’s biography:

Bernard McGuigan was born in Britain in 1956, and started making sculpture aged 16. He is entirely self-taught, and as a former associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, his work has been widely exhibited, including The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. His work is featured in a number of private and corporate collections in the UK and abroad.

In the tradition of the 20th century sculptors, such as Moore, Hepworth, Gill and Modigliani, McGuigan uses the same method of direct carving by hand.

His pieces are graceful and deceptively simple, in terms of both their carving style and of their tranquil potency. When first coming across an exhibition of his work, we delight in the perceived tension between stone as a reliable and in relation to our own lives, timeless material, this sensation may be remembered in the mind like a line from a requiem, quietly insistent.