BAKER MAMONOVA GALLERY
CloseUp and FarAway:
British Portraits- Russian Landscape

This year’s Winter Exhibition is Russell Baker’s new portrait series of the creatives of St.Leonards/Hastings and friends of Kino-Teatr featuring alongside diverse landscapes of 20th century Russia. Almost 40 portraits of local artists, designers, musicians, writers, film makers, lawyers, shop keepers and entrepreneurs who enjoy visiting Kino-Teatr as a venue with strong Russian cultural links, will be exhibited in our upstairs gallery. 

Olga Mamonova, the venue’s Artistic Director, has worked on international and Russian art exhibitions in Russia and the UK, and Russell Baker, the venue’s owner, has run galleries in London & America, including a fine art printing studio, is a landscape painter who has specialised in the icebergs and the images of the Far North. 

Over recent years, Kino-Teatr has held several exhibitions that connected Russia and Britain: an exhibition of Russian/British artist Oleg Prokofiev (1928-1998); photographs of the Russian Far North by renowned British photographer Simon Roberts; landscapes by Rostislav Romanov - a Sussex artist of Russian Romanovs descent; an exhibition of paintings and photography ‘Fire and Ice’, where iceberg paintings coexisted with the photographs local artist Chloe Dewe Mathews made in Russia. 

Last year’s exhibition at Baker Mamonova Gallery - The Portrait:Tradition and Modernity - Portraits by local, international and Russian artists, has reinforced this inner connection between local creative spirit and the vast, inspiring landscapes of Russia, the landscapes which for many years have been the heart of this gallery. 

Russell Baker, who is originally from Lancaster and studied at the Slade School of Art in London, has lived in St.Leonards for 27 years. Having been working on snowscapes for the last 15 years, Russell has taken a short break to produce this series of portraits in the upstairs gallery, thus transforming the area into a creative, open studio space.

The exhibition opens on December 17th and continues until January 30th.