"To drive up the half mile, tree-lined avenue that leads to Wolterton Hall in Norfolk is to arrive in style at one of the county’s most beautifully restored stately homes. Set in 500 acres of parkland, it is a piece of 18th century Palladian perfection..."
"While Houghton has long showcased contemporary sculpture each summer (this year, it’s British artist Sebastian Cox), Wolterton is presenting a contemporary art show for the first time. “I wanted to inject some new life into the hall,” says Simon Oldfield, an art adviser and curator from London who has worked on the exhibition with co-curator Gemma Rolls-Bentley. “And to connect the past and present.”
"Now, the Marble Hall is filled with the work of artist Ro Robertson—swirling paintings of the sea and steel sculptures like breaking waves. The Portrait Room has been stripped of all historic artworks and its panelling, and a moving new series of work by Maggi Hambling, made in the wake of the death of her partner of 40 years, is on view for the first time."
"It is, howver, Hambling’s paintings that steal the show. There are roiling sea scapes of the ocean in flux, called Summer Wave Breaking and Wall of Water, in vivid blue and black oils on a white ground, new paintings made earlier this year. And then the series for Tory, her companion, which has at its heart an image of the subject being carried away by death. This is surrounded by 40 small and exquisitely detailed paintings of waves, in heavily layered oils, each one an act of grief and catharsis. To say they are moving is barely to suggest the emotion they evoke. And they are quite beautiful."
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