Longarm Visits the Gallery – and helps raise £4000.0

Twice a year we look forward to opening the doors of Pollyanna’s private gallery to welcome visitors – both familiar faces who attend every event, along with new guests making a first visit to enjoy seeing a collection of Pollyanna’s unique artwork in her own home.

During our Art of Conservation exhibition celebrating 25 years of the Pollyanna Pickering Foundation visitors were greeted at the door by ‘Longarm’ a life size bronze of an orang-utan created by renowned sculptor Casey Banwell.

“It was wonderful to see so many people interacting with Longarm, sitting next to him on the bench to take photographs” Anna-Louise commented “And most importantly reading the information about his personal story – but also the threats facing orang-utans in their natural habitat, especially due to the proliferation of Palm Oil plantations”. Casey visited the gallery on the final day of the exhibitionto film for her documentary (see below), and was pleased to spend time chatting to guests about her work. Longarm was at the exhibition as part of an awareness raising tour starting from Casey’s studio in Buckinghamshire, ultimately finishing when he is installed in The Haven sanctuary in Sumatra, home to the real-life model Leuser.  He is currently in residence in upscale hotel Chewton Glen in the New Forest, and will be travelling onwards to France and Switzerland.

Despite the fact that numbers at the Summer exhibition were slightly down due to extreme heatwave warnings on BOTH weekends we were delighted to raise £2000.00 through a percentage of sales, donations and the prize draw.  This has been matched by Casey through sales of her work, bringing the total generated for the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program to £4000.00. Turn to the next page to find out about the work we will be funding.

To celebrate Longarms’ visit, Anna-Louise released a selection of previously unseen sketches from Pollyanna’s private archive to include in the exhibition.  These were made in the field during her expedition into Borneo to sketch and paint wild orang utans in their natural habitat.