Curtis Tappenden – 28 June

A Potted History of Circus and Art – mixed media

Methodist Church, Chandlers Ford. 7.30 – 9.30.

We are delighted to have Curtis Tappenden presenting our Demonstration evening on Wednesday 28th June. It will be a talk followed by a Demo.

Curtis is an Artist, Performer, Poet, Writer and Educator based in Brighton and his latest project involves drawing live in Britain’s circuses, making lightning sketches capturing the moment at the ringside. Many of these images are in the V&A museum. He has also illustrated brochures for Zippos circus. 

Curtis writes:

So, I am proposing an entertaining evening beginning with a lively slide presentation of the history of the circus and circus as seen through the eyes of artists. 

It relates my work as an artist at the circus and designing circus posters to the theme of drawing live at the circus and capturing the the fleeting moment of artistes in their acts–all the excitement of this extraordinary performance art. This would be fully demonstrated in the second half with me showing how I accomplish results through mixed media–watercolour, crayon, ink, acrylic. 

My circus work was put into the National collection at the V&A 4 years ago, for importance to circus. There are 40 works in the museum which you can view here…

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?q=Curtis%20tappenden