Watermarks exhibition launch

Date: 28 Mar 2003

The exhibition commenced with a private viewing at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Exeter, on the evening of Friday 28 March 2003. The exhibition was opened by Duncan Robinson, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

He suggested that, "just as John Ruskin had been passionate about painting Venice, with the result that the public had been inspired to preserve the threatened architectural heritage of the nineteenth century, so in the twenty-first century Tony Foster was passionate about painting the threatened natural heritage in the hope that people would come to celebrate it and value it more."

Tony welcomed about 200 guests, many of whom had flown from distant lands to be there.

Tony had found artefacts for a central tableau from the museum's collection. The tableau was dominated by a magnificent parrot and a display of iridescent butterflies.

In the exhibition catalogue Tony writes: "For twenty years I have drawn my inspiration from the sublime beauty of wilderness. My work is not simply concerned with describing the landscape, but is about travelling slowly, living in wild places, and about encounters with people, artefacts, flora and fauna"

After its appearance in the UK the exhibition toured the United States, showing in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Jackson Hole.

 

Pictures of the exhibition