There are a number of Abingdon venues open for Oxfordshire Artweeks this week. St Ethelwolds has art from Berlin in an exhibition called ‘For your walls’.

Downstairs the work of Walter Lindner (1936-2007) is being exhibited –

finishing 6pm this Sunday (22nd). Simon, who runs the exhibition, is a fan and wants to make Walter’s work better known.

Upstairs in the Sanctuary are some other Berlin print makers including one by a ‘German Banksy’.

Meanwhile this coming Saturday at  Mind, in the Charter, from 10am – 1pm there is a second chance to see their exhibition on Identify, and even create artwork yourself.

Using sculpture, painting/drawing, photography and the written word, the exhibition looks at who we are, what we know about ourselves, how we acquire our identities and what happens when we lose a positive or coherent sense of self.

On one side of Audlett Drive are fairly modern houses. Along the other side runs an 800 metre long hedge, beyond which are fields, and Wick Hall, nowadays divided into apartments.

Follow the hedge along and you can see things cut in relief into the hedge.

Have a nice day.

Here are a couple of pictures of the Stratton Way underpass at night – at its most atmospheric.

The 1980s mural decorating the Stratton Way underpass was repainted by the original artists, Margaret and Gwynne Jones, in 2007. As well as showing off some important characters in Abingdon’s history, the artwork brightens what would otherwise be a murky underpass.

Night and Day, the sculpture of Mother and Child can be seen near the library in Abingdon.

It is at the intersection of Broad Street and Bury Street.

While walking in Sutton Courtney, a few years ago, I noticed the same familiar Mother and Child sculpture, surrounded by trees, and discovered that is where Franta Belsky, the Czech born sculptor, once had his studio.

Entitled The Lesson, the sculpture in Abingdon bears the inscription ‘In memory of Margaret Belsky‘ . She was a well known newspaper cartoonist in the 1960s, and the wife of the sculptor. The Lesson was one of her favourite works.

It was presented to Abingdon by Franta Belsky, in 1989, the year of his wife’s death, and is the second bronze casting.

The first was unveiled in 1959 in Bethnal Green, London. I presume the verdigris one in Sutton Courtney is a prototype. Franta Belsky died in Abingdon Hospital in July 2000.

(Thanks to an Abingdon Herald article on 21 Sept 1989 called “Sculptor’s memory in Bronze” for some of the original information, and a previous blog post here. It is well worth revisiting.)