The Unattended Moment was inspired by a little book by Michael Paffard. The title comes from Dry Salvages in T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and Paffard's book is largely an anthology of writings by people who have had what he describes as “...brief flashes of experience...so out of the ordinary as to seem to belong to a dimension other than the quotidian, to be epiphanies of another order of reality: unattended moments in the sense that they do not seem to fit into our ordinary pattern of experience...”. To quote Eliot,

“For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply ..."

Although frequently brief and always transitory it is the intensity of the unattended moments experienced by those quoted in Paffard’s book which has impelled them to try and capture it in prose or verse.

The exhibiting artists sought to express the essence and experience of the unattended moment through sculpture. New to the gallery this year are Nick Durnan, Kim Francis, Peter Furlonger, Lucianne Lassalle, Denis Di Luca, Matt Maddocks, Alain-Marie Parmentier, Jackie Perkins, Ben Russell and Jilly Sutton MRBS.  

Image: Solar (bronze, detail) by Charlotte Mayer FRBS - photo Steve Russell courtesy Gallery Pangolin.

Making a Mark was the gallery's summer exhibition in 2017 - a celebration of craftsmanship. At the Private View the Lettering Arts Trust in Snape had a display about its work and some of the letter carvers exhibiting in Making a Mark gave demonstrations. Sarah Harrison, CEO of the Lettering Arts Trust opened the exhibition.

The exhibition complemented Inspired by the Word, an exhibition held in Winchester Cathedral, Gilbert White's Garden at Selborne, Chawton House Library, Petersfield Physic Garden, Petersfield Museum and the garden at Red House Museum, Christchurch. Inspired by the Word brought together a group of contemporary artists, some of them regular exhibitors at The Garden Gallery, to celebrate the literature of Hampshire writers Jane Austen, Edward Thomas and Gilbert White. 2017 marked the bicentenary of the death of Jane Austen in Winchester, and the centenary of the death of Edward Thomas at Arras.