Location: Art Gallery
When: 3 - 13 July 2024
Time: Wednesday to Saturday 10am - 4pm, Sunday 1pm - 4pm
About This Exhibition:
Working mainly in acrylics, this husband-and-wife exhibition captures glimpses of their two homelands, Southern England and South Island, New Zealand (and in Jenny’s case, South Pacific countries where she lived and worked for most of her career.) There are also images of the journeys they have made between the two hemispheres. This is an exhibition with similar themes but executed in very different styles.
Biographies:
Dr Jennifer Bryant – Jenny – was born and educated in Dunedin, New Zealand, and returned to her hometown about 20 years ago. In between, she has been an academic in universities in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji, as well as working for the United Nations in the South Pacific. She has been a prolific writer on a variety of geopolitical topics, notably on climate change and urban poverty. Now in retirement, she has developed a distinctive style, building on her life-long painting interests. Many of her themes emanate from her life and love of the South Pacific – her son, and grand-daughter still live in Fiji.
Robert Upward – Rob – was born and educated on the Isle of Wight. He spent all of his working life in the world of education; in 1975, he moved down from Southampton with his wife, three daughters, two cats and a dog, to live in Saltdean, and to open a Special School in Brighton. He retired from that post twenty years later and moved all of a mile to Rottingdean in 2018. Throughout his adult life, Rob developed his own styles of painting, and has been fortunate to hold a number of exhibitions of his work in the Brighton area, six of them at The Grange.
Rob and Jenny met when she was on holiday from New Zealand, visiting friends in Rottingdean. They married in 2021, and spend some parts of every year in each of their homes. This is the first time they have held a joint exhibition of their work.
