Derbyshire town's arts festival launches with 100+ creatives exhibiting their work

This year's artist in residence Jemma Gunning will exhibit her printmaking work at St Mary's Church, Wirksworth (photo: Jack Ford)

Potters, painters, jewellers, actors and musicians will celebrate art in all its guises as Wirksworth Arts Festival returns after two difficult years caused by the pandemic.

Homes, gardens and public spaces will be turned into a gallery during the Art & Architectural Weekend on September 10 and 11.

More than 100 artists will be displaying their work, offering painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, textiles, ceramics and jewellery. Visitors will get the opportunity to meander through the lanes and byways of this historic market town, meet artists, talk about their work and buy affordable art to take home.

Hit singer Judie Tzuke, known the world over for the song Stay With Me Till Dawn, will perform at The Lock-up, Wirksworth on Saturday, September 10.

Jenny Bowden will be displaying her landscape prints.

The popular Gig on the Roof, celebrating local talent will again round off the Art and Architecture Trail Weekend on Sunday, September 11 at The Market Place.

In the following week, from 12 – 18 September, the town is alive with performance, music, exhibitions, workshops and community fun.

Liane Lang, artist in residence from 2021, will have her major exhibition, Touch Stone, at this year’s festival. The exhibition will take place across two historic Wirksworth venues, The Maltings and the Moot Hall.

The installation at The Maltings includes work made during and after the artist’s time living on top of Bolehill as part of her residency. Lang explores ecology, industry and climate change through the lens of deep time, imagining our greatest structures overgrown, from monuments and memories to a thin layer in the fossil record. The display has an element of archaeology, a fragmented story, as yet unfinished and full of ambiguities.

Photographer Jenny Neale's digital print of physalis.

Lang’s additional exhibition at the Moot Hall is an installation of printed lead, stitching together the landscapes and ruins of lead mining and industry. Spectral figures haunt the gritstone boulders and cold chimney stacks

The 2022 artist in residence, Jemma Gunning, is a documentary printmaker specialising in etching and lithographic printmaking processes. Her practice is an investigation into our fading heritage, often exploring and researching sites that have been abandoned that contain narratives that link to our collective industrial past. She will showcase a small taste of her current work at St Mary’s Church.

Mark Gwynne Jones presents Voices From The Peak, combining live performance with archive recordings, film and humorous observation, at Wirksworth Town Hall on Wednesday, September 14.

Daniel Hoffman-Gill will present The Great Almighty Gill, a theatrical production inspired by his father’s life, at the Town Hall on September 15.

Jane Orton's bold designs are shaped by nature's textures and the built environment. This concrete gold ring was made by melting and remodelling in delft clay unwanted gold jewellery.

Classical music will include a concert featuring the Nottingham Chamber Wind Ensemble at St Mary’s Church, Wirksworth, on September 10.

The Derby Chamber Orchestra and Festival Choir will present Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at St Mary’s Church on September 17.

Peak Walking Adventures will lead several guided walks during the festival, leaving the National Stone Centre on September 11, 12 and 15 at 9am.

Northern Light Cinema will present five films during the festival, including Casablanca Beats about aspiring hip-hop artists on September 10, Fire Of Love about a couple’s passion for volcanoes on September 11 and American Utopia looking at former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne’s 2019 Broadway show which will be screened on September 15.

Henry Fothergill's contribution to Wirksworth Festival will include original illustrations inspired in part by the Peak District itself, folk stories, fables and legends.

The cinema is also organising the opening night, an outdoor presentation of FANTASIA, Walt Disney’s ground-breaking 1940 animation film, with a live set from DJ Su-Ki, in the Market Place on September 9.

For more details, go to www.wirksworthfestival.co.uk