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Chris and Evelyn Rutter and Bennett

Faversham
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Christopher Rutter and Evelyn Bennett have worked closely together since 1994. In collaboration they have made large-scale sculpture for a number of locations including Chichester, Hastings and Swindon Hospitals and ‘Sculpture at Goodwood’. They have been commissioned by property developers such as Lovells and made work for Royal Caribbean cruise liner ‘Brilliance of the Seas’.

Principally they have been interested in working within an architectural and large-scale environment, but find outlets for their work in a wide variety of media and situations, for instance mixed media collages and Artists’ books. (They exhibited at the London Artists Book Fair at the ICA in 2007 and subsequently in 2008/9 and 11).

They have been awarded a South East Arts Direct Support Grant for incorporating digital technology into their work, which has seen expression in large-scale digital prints for Moat Housing Association, Hastings Hospital, Brompton Westbrook and Minterne Junior Schools and Gosport Discovery Centre, as well as in publications and music (including a performance of their sculptural Theremin at the V&A Museum in 2011).

In 2010 Gosport Discovery Centre commissioned a bespoke ‘Reading Chair’, which incorporated specially designed, digitally printed textiles and electronic lighting elements.

South East Arts also helped financially with the production of the ‘Circus’ show at the De La Warr Pavilion in 1998, which toured to the Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth and Brighton University Gallery. Sculptures from this show have been subsequently seen at Rollo Contemporary Art (under the auspices of the Royal Society of Sculptors) and the Prudential Insurance building, London.

In collaboration with architects Baker-Brown Mackay they worked on a proposal for the new cultural centre at Sittingbourne and have worked with architect Fabio Gonzalez-Calzada on work for an exhibition of digital prints supported by Arts Council England.

In 2006 they received a Merit award from the Beijing Olympics Cultural Olympiad for their sculpture ‘Chase Air’ and were included in an exhibition that subsequently toured to 4 Chinese cities.

In 2005 they were awarded a Leonardo da Vinci Fellowship to work and teach at Cyprus College of Art.

Evelyn trained as a Printed Textiles designer at Winchester College of Art and The Royal College of Art and has since worked as a designer of textiles and ceramics for companies such as Habitat, Esprit, Marks and Spencer, French Connection and George Davies and the BBC. She has worked in Germany, Italy and Zimbabwe in her capacity as a designer. 
She has taught at Norwich College of Art, The Royal College of Art and Kent Institute of Art and Design (now Univ. Creative Arts) and has been awarded The South East Arts Travel Bursary to Mexico.

Christopher Rutter was trained at Wimbledon College of Art and The City and Guilds of London Art School as a Stone Carver and did his M.A. in the School of Architecture at East London University. He has worked as an architectural carver on a wide variety of old and new buildings including Westminster Abbey (where he carved new figures for the West Front), Ely Cathedral, King’s College chapel and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

He has received a Henry Moore Trust Award to work at Portland Sculpture Park, the McColl Arts Foundation Travel Award to Zimbabwe and craftsmanship awards for his stone carving work. Working with Evelyn he has been the recipient of Arts Council awards for research and exhibition funding and has also taught in various Art colleges and Architecture departments including The Bartlett, East London Univ. and Univ. for the Creative Arts. 

 

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