Compton Verney announces Mark Hearld Acquisitions
Mark Hearld British Folk Art Collection150.JPG
Compton Verney announces Mark Hearld Acquisitions
Compton Verney Art Gallery and Park in Warwickshire has acquired seven works by artist Mark Hearld
for its renowned British Folk Art Collection, the largest in the UK.
As part of a £100,000 project to reimagine its Folk Art
galleries in 2018, Compton Verney’s curatorial team
worked with Mark Hearld on the re-hanging of its
extensive collection in which he displayed several new
works, not only inspired by objects within the collection
but also by the animals and rural communities
surrounding the Grade 1-listed Georgian mansion and
Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown-landscaped parkland.
One of the objects Hearld created was a mixed media
work, The Compton Verney Collage (left), which features a
patchwork, made in the mid-1800s for the 98 th
Regiment. Mark says: “I felt it would be exciting to make
a large-scale work as a visual foil for the military quilt at
the far end of the gallery, something that had graphic
impact and scale – in effect a paper collage quilt. I
decided that a large-scale work made up of a series of
individual pieces would be an interesting way to
respond. I’ve attempted to create my own folk art
world, with motifs that echo objects and images in the
Collection and draw upon a cast of characters from my
own menagerie of birds and beasts.”
He also produced six cut-out metal silhouettes of animals and birds, all of which directly refer to specific
objects and paintings in the collection, and which will now be permanently housed in Compton Verney.
These are Cockerel, Hare and Partridges, Swan, Pigeon Flight, Owl and Ratter, which depicts a terrier
pursuing a rat. All were made in 2018, from either brass or steel sheet, for Mark by Dave Trigwell in
Cornwall.
Again, these works were created as a direct response to the British Folk Art Collection, as Mark describes:
“The graphic quality of the cut metal silhouettes and weathervanes in the collection relates directly to the
shapes I cut out wit