Zuleika Gallery is delighted to announce the exhibition of River Notes by Rachel Gracey which will take place from 3 September – 10 October in the Woodstock Gallery. The exhibition is a quartet of prints inspired by the River Thames at Port Meadow in Oxford, the the River Cherwell in North Oxford, the River Helford in Cornwall, and the River Stour in Dorset. Rachel Gracey takes the title for her latest exhibition from what she calls ‘a quite extraordinary, quirky book’ that was first published in 1979 called River Notes: The Dance of Herons, by the American author Barry Lopez.  

The exhibition is accompanied by a full catalogue of work with introduction by Oxford based author and curator, David Boyd Haycock (DBH). Of the Port Meadow series, created during lockdown, he comments how the artist saw how important water suddenly was for so many people – ‘as a place of sanctuary, release, freedom’. In contrast, the work based on the River Helford in Cornwall, reflect a very different sort of river, one that is dramatic and powerful, ‘they sing with a different, wilder sort of rhythm’. The Cherwell is the river closest to the artist’s home in North Oxford, and its neighbouring ponds, inspired the gentler third set. ‘The Cherwell series have an extraordinary vibrancy and joy to them’ (DBH). The artists comments on the Cherwell series how ‘the river has been so full of surprises ...’.  

The final set in the exhibition are based upon a brief visit to the River Stour in Dorset earlier this year and are the most deeply personal. Gracey has bound some into a little book she titles ‘Rubato Flow.’ Using just black and white on coloured paper, they are a meditation on the recent death of her father, conveying how, even in the latter stages of his life, he expressed a joy and freedom in living – a desire always to seize life. Though sad and poignant, this final set is, nonetheless, meditative and beautiful.  

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