Royal Society of British Artists | Events Programme

The Royal Society of British Artists presents a series of special events to coincide with the RBA Annual Exhibition 2024:

Chinese Ink Painting
Friday 1 March, 1:30pm to 4:30pm

Mosaic Making
Sunday 3 March, 1:30pm to 4:30pm

Guy Portelli RBA will demonstrate the art of mosaic making.

Born in South Africa in 1957, Guy is a member of the Royal Society of British Artists and a Fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. He is a well known figure in the art world and has exhibited throughout the UK and internationally, having work in many private and public art collections. 

Guy was already a renowned and successful sculptor with an impressive reputation when in 2008 he appeared on BBC television's 'Dragons’ Den' and walked away with three dragons and a larger investment than he had asked for. The investment was to fund a long term project which Guy had been working on for over thirty years - his Pop Icon series. Here Guy has visited the icons of each decade and produced sculptures that are not portraits in the traditional sense, but which explore the celebrity persona, its influences on society and the society that produced it.

Show & Tell: Sketchbooks
Monday 4 March, 1:30pm to 4:30pm

President of the Society, Mick Davies, and Past President Nick Tidnam will be in the gallery to show and talk about their very different ways of using sketchbooks and the ways they employ different materials. Visitors are encouraged to bring their own sketchbooks and materials and will have the opportunity to do some sketching and also to share their own sketchbooks with Mick and Nick!

Mick is a painter and printmaker who says, 'Humour plays an important part in my work, whether it is painting or a print.' Born in 1947 in South Wales, Mick lives and works in London. He has won numerous awards and prizes over the years and his work is held in the Wimbledon Tennis Museum, The National Football Museum and the National Museum of Wales, as well as being held in public and private collections all over the world.

Nick lives in Rochester where he has a studio opening into the garden which together with walking and looking at people and places both here and abroad are very inspirational in his work. Nick is one of those rare artists who are constantly seeking new and different ways of expressing themselves through their work. His painting is never formulaic and always surprises the viewer.

Painting Demonstration
Tuesday 5 March, 1:30pm to 4:30pm

Chris Aggs RBA will be demonstrating his work in the gallery.

Chris is a realist painter and prefers to work directly from observation. He is endlessly fascinated with the task of translating what he sees into paint and considers that the world in front of his easel contains more wonderful variety than anything he could ever dream up himself. Ideas for paintings present themselves constantly in the landscape, among objects in the studio and recently while observing musicians absorbed in the activity of music making.

Painting Demonstration
Wednesday 6 March, 10:30am to 1pm

Chris Aggs RBA returns to the gallery for another demonstration of his techniques.

Drawing Demonstration
Saturday 9 March, 1pm to 4:30pm

Join Kirsten van Schreven RBA for a drawing demonstration.

Kirsten van Schreven is an award winning printmaker with a Master’s Degree in Fine Art Printmaking from Chelsea School of Art. She was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 2022 and works from her studios in East Sussex and South West France.

Her work is inspired by skeletal, partially built and abandoned structures. The structures are man-made with unusual purposes - pieces of a previous time and remnants of history.