Catalogues
:In 2008 Colchester School of Art took over the running of the Minories Galleries. This is a contemporary art gallery which was open to the public and housed the Colchester School of Art’s Postgraduate programmes. David Jury designed all the promotional material for the gallery and curating several exhibitions.
The Minories and Firstsite galleries
Under Alan Smith’s leadership Colchester School of Art and Design took over the magnificent Minories Art Gallery in 2008, turning its upper floor into studios for three MA courses while keeping the spacious ground floor for exhibitions. Once ensconced Alan gave up his position as Head of the Art School to concentrate on the management of the Minories and for the next wonderful five years until his retirement Alan had what was probably the best time of his career in education. (Incidentally, I have known Alan since we were students on a Pre-Foundation course taking A level Art.) ‘Wonderful’ is certainly how I felt; running my own MA; Art, Design and the Book, designing all the promotional material for the gallery and curating several exhibitions, most important of which were retrospectives for Romek Marber and Abram Games, plus Looking for the Photograph and Graphic Art and the Art of Illustration.
As our time at the Minories was coming to an end Colchester helped to fund the construction of a large, purpose-built and rather spectacular art gallery: Firstsite. It struggled to gain favour initially, but after a couple of difficult years a new director, Sally Shaw, was appointed and the gallery began to attract large number to its exhibitions. One of the ways Sally achieved this was by showing work by artists with links to North Essex such as Grayson Perry, Denis Wirth-Miller (with friends Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud) and photographer Ed Gold.
