Southampton culture

Above: The Maritime Museum

Above: Andrea Sheppard

Above: Alastair Arnott

Above: The Turner Sims

Above: The gallery's curator

Above: Art on show

Above: The Mayflower Theatre

Art for our sake
Early morning, midweek, Southampton City Art Gallery is buzzing with ladies who cappuccino in the café, and parties of excitable schoolchildren in the foyer – perhaps going on to use the education room that’s an explosion of colour.

The person responsible for this vibrant, inviting space is the unassuming Tim Craven – artist and art conservationist by training, curator by title, and art hero to many (this is the man who acquired Bridget Riley’s Red Movement 2005 for the Gallery at a knock-down price).
Southampton City Art Gallery has the finest collection of art south of London and the most important collection of contemporary British work outside the Tate. And free entrance, too.

Tim has been curator for six years, but joined the Gallery 28 years ago, working as conservation officer and collections manager. On a tour of the Gallery he can point out with quiet pride paintings he has restored or cleaned, including the Gallery’s last old master purchase, a Monet.

“The collection spans eight centuries and tells the story of Western art, which is a wonderful thing for a regional gallery to do,” he explains.
It’s a quirk of fate that the Gallery is here at all. Robert Chipperfield was London born, but moved to Southampton in 1842 where he was a successful pharmacist and a councillor. In 1911 he left his adopted city his collection of paintings, a bequest for the building of an art school and gallery, and a trust fund for the purchase of works of art.
“And wisely stipulated they should use the advice of the director of the National Gallery no less!” adds Tim. So it was that Baron Clark, director of the National Gallery, wrote the focused and succinct acquisitions policy to which they still adhere and which included, unusually for the time, a collection of British modern art.

Three further bequests followed, (“Most galleries rely on public money, but we don’t,” comments Tim) including one from Dr David Brown, born near Romsey, who became curator of modern art at the Tate and advised the Gallery.
The Gallery’s core strength is 20th century British and Contemporary art with four strands: Camden Town group, Surrealism, St Ives School and British Contemporary (including
Turner Prize winners and nominees bought before they became famous).
Tim has helped develop all four strands, but says his proudest achievement is the conservation work ensuring a very good collection for the future. Closest to his heart are the number of exhibitions he has instigated with schools and colleges – letting children choose, theme and respond to works of art. And, going through the staff-only door back into the gallery, scattered over the gallery parquet with crayons and paper, is a class of schoolchildren – our artists of the future are being inspired right now, right here.

Southampton Art Gallery:
Art of Water: Open exhibition for local artists, until September 7
Robert Bevan and the Cumberland Market Group, September 26-December 7. Southampton holds one of the finest collections of Camden Town Group work in the world, outside the Tate.

For more information, tel: 02380 832277

Music maestro
The Turner Sims is the concert hall equivalent of the shuffle mode on an MP3 player: with its juxtapositioning of folk and classical, contemporary jazz and world music, you’re never quite sure what is coming next. It makes for an exciting and extensive programme comprising 60 concerts a year. And it is Kevin Appleby, Turner Sim’s ebullient concert hall manager and artistic director since 2000 who is responsible for the intriguing music mix of that programme.
“There are very few musical venues in the country like us,” Kevin explains. It is also a venue that generates as much loyalty among its nationally and internationally renowned artists as among its audience.

So what’s so special about the Turner Sims? It is one of the finest music venues in the south of England – a unique building, located within the gardens of the University of Southampton and built in 1974. In effect it’s a hole in the ground constructed from local Michelmersh brick and natural pine with a copper clad roof, creating what Kevin describes as “extraordinary acoustics for music”. It’s also an atmospheric and intimate space with an unexpected ‘wow’ factor – probably because you enter the concert hall at its highest level, looking down, rather than up towards the stage.

“Thousands of people have immense affection for The Turner Sims, partly because so many have played here with the Southampton Youth Orchestra,” continues Kevin, “And it’s a very different space for people to perform in and hear concerts in. We’re a key venue on the UK circuit with London, Birmingham, Manchester… attracting artists like John Williams.
“John Williams likes the space here, even though he can play huge venues elsewhere. He can sell out at the Royal Festival Hall and be here two nights later. The audience appreciates that and they’re very responsive.

“The audience are so close to the performer that there’s nowhere to hide the audience from the artist or vice versa. It’s a real test for the artist – some say it’s scary!”
Other performers include Courtney Pine, Jamie Cullum and Alfred Brendel. Big names for a small space.Kevin smiles, “I like to think I’m a guardian of the Turner Sims. I get a huge amount of job satisfaction from what I do – I have the opportunity to be immersed in such a great quantity of music.”

For information on the autumn season, tel: 02380 595151

It’s showtime
There are four pigs outside Andrea Sheppard’s office at the Mayflower Theatre. Not real ones. Apparently this is because Dr Doolittle (starring Tommy Steele) is currently ‘on’, so they’re not due to any eccentricity on Andrea’s part – although as a member of the Rollercoaster Club of Great Britain, and with ambitions to go bungee-jumping and wing-walking, Andrea is cookie enough without the pigs.

Andrea has the pizzazz and presence of a performer, but is actually sales and development manager responsible for box office, business development, audience development and educational work. Previously at The Point in Eastleigh, Andrea has been with The Mayflower since March last year.

“It’s like coming home really. It’s quite bizarre,” she explains. “This is the place that inspired me as a child and now here I am hoping to inspire others.
“My father was stage crew here and I used to come to rehearsals as a small child. The Mayflower is in my blood. I grew up with Southampton Musical Society, switching to being stage crew, rigging and operating the lights, when I realised I was happier not performing on stage.”

She can recall working with Tommy Steele back when he was starring in Hans Christian Anderson.“West End theatre didn’t tour in those days, so Hans Christian Anderson was a really big event. Now the theatre starts off in the West End and the quality is phenomenal; it’s really good to get that quality of theatre out into the regions.”

The Mayflower offers a popular mix of shows, musicals and comedy alongside opera and ballet. Some, like High School Musical, are a complete sell-out, filling not only the 2,208 seats, but the 128 standing places in the Neo-Grecian standing boxes. In fact this is the biggest theatre in the south of England. It is also a rather glamorous confection of marble, gilt, rose and aquamarine and this year celebrates 21 years as The Mayflower (it was built in 1928 as The Empire Theatre).

Andrea has an exuberance and enthusiasm for performance and theatre that’s infectious.
“I’m equally happy going to a poetry session or watching contemporary dance. But I’m very passionate about what we put on here. This is where I want to be and what I want to do.”

The history man
Although surrounded by Southampton’s past, Alastair Arnott is looking to the future.
“Southampton has so many stories to tell and not the space to do it,” explains Alastair, curator of local collections.
He came to Southampton 20 years ago to devise a replacement for the Maritime Museum. That never happened, but the collections continued to grow, and now he is working towards a new museum, provisionally entitled the Story of Southampton.
“It would be nice if it were up and running by the 100th anniversary of the sailing of the Titanic, but that’s only four years hence.”

In the meantime, much of Southampton’s history is packed and stacked in an unprepossessing warehouse by the town’s docks. The main storeroom is reminiscent of a provincial auction room – except for the nearly restored tram (a unique vehicle with a domed roof to allow it to pass under the Bargate) and numerous model boats (about 200 altogether, some up to 20 feet long). In a humidity-controlled room are amassed drawings, paintings and shipping ephemera. In another are piled boxes of costumes. And in an inner locked and alarmed room, jewellery, swords and blunderbusses are stored. I’m shown a lady’s muff pistol and duelling pistols, and wonder if they’ve ever been used.

“I look after everything in the museums that isn’t archaeology, which is a real mixture. In terms of size we’ve got everything from hat pins to steam engines.
 “We’ve got some strengths that make us unique and mark us out – such as furniture and panelling from the great liners. We’ve also a very strong costume collection – when Southampton was a holiday resort for the well-to-do, lots of milliners and costumiers migrated to Southampton, and we’ve digressed into occupational costume with a strong bias towards the garb of seafarers.”

There’s also an extensive selection of watercolours and drawings by amateur artist Arthur Cozens, a clerk in the docks, about the time of the Boer War. His finished works and notebooks show a vibrant, colourful Southampton.
In the main storeroom, an old cooker is a reminder of a very different legacy – as it was James Sharp, manager of the local gas works, who first thought of using gas for cooking, and the first cookers were manufactured by William Lankester & Son of Southampton.
“The disappointment is that Southampton hides its light under a bushel. Southampton was the Silicon Valley of its day, very pioneering.” And it still is, it really is. I just hope we start shouting about it more.