DARTMOUTH FIVE
The Dartmouth Five, c.1985. Clockwise, from top right: John Donaldson, Andras Kaldor, John Gillo, simon Drew and Paul Riley. photo by Jeff Waddington
IN OUR AUGUST 2013 ISSUE, WE FEATURED THE NEW BOOK ABOUT DARTMOUTH –
‘DARTmouTH, AN ENCHANTED PlACE’ BY JOSLIN FIENNES. TO COINCIDE WITH DART GALLERIES WEEK, WE PUBLISH AN EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT
- ‘THE DARTMOUTH FIVE’ - ABOUT THE 5 ARTISTS THAT HELPED SHAPE DARTMOUTH’S REPUTATION AS A CENTRE FOR ART.
THE DARTMOUTH FIVE T
wenty-five odd years after the Dartmouth Five came here, Dartmouth has many artists. But in the early 1980s, when John Gillo, then Andras Kaldor, Simon Drew, John Donald-
son and Paul riley first arrived, there were very few. Dartmouth was different then – very quiet, they say. Kaldor remembers Foss Street, where Drew found a place to live and work, as a back alley. On the South Embankment there was a coal merchant and a petrol station with a great crane supporting the fuel pipe. But it always had a solid group of people involved with sailing and/or the navy, and had supported a good bookshop for some thirty years. Bruce and Nicolette Coward, who owned the Harbour Bookshop from 1981, remember hosting the first Gillo-Kaldor exhibition after Andras had come in to chat carrying a big pot of paint. When he dropped it, the lid came off, and the floor was covered in paint. he was so mortified that he returned with a bottle of wine, and the friendship began. This exhibition, says Gillo, sowed the seeds for the group. They promoted their art through joint publicity and exhibitions. Stunts were never far behind. During an exhibition at the Lymington Gallery in Hampshire, celebrated in a restaurant afterwards,
DARTMOUTH An Enchanted Place
Joslin Fiennes
Donaldson played a piano suspended from the ceiling – hoisted up on the chair. They painted a mural at Café Alf Resco’s on Lower Street. It’s partially hidden by an extension, but you can still see it from the other side of the street. They exhibited jointly in Henley, Newmarket, Cowes, and the Country Living Fair in Islington. They did Christmas shows for their children – synchro- nised swimming behind a blue cloth, wearing bathing hats, trunks and clothes pegs on their noses, and a nativity in which Kaldor, the
Above: Carnival by simon Drew
Left:Two Ferries, acrylic on board, by John Gillo, 2012
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