Phil Gillam: Going Dutch with exhibition celebrating Shrewsbury's twin town
Swashbuckling Errol Flynn fighting his way through 1930s movie adventures like Robin Hood and Captain Blood - that's the image I always conjure up whenever I think about that old boy of Shrewsbury School, Sir Philip Sidney.
He was quite a guy, our Sir Philip. For years all I knew about him was that the riverside walk in Castlefields - Sydney Avenue (spelt incorrectly with a 'y' for some reason) - was named after him, and that one of our school 'houses' was named Sidney.
Gradually I discovered he was a poet, courtier, scholar and distinguished soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age.
And it was with Sir Philip that Shrewsbury's long association with Zutphen in Holland (later to become our twin town) began.
In 1586 he was wounded at the Battle of Zutphen while trying to liberate the town from the Spanish occupation.
Fast-forward three-and-a-half centuries and the connection between the two towns was renewed at the end of the Second World War when the population of Shrewsbury sent aid to the people of war-ravaged Zutphen.
It was more than 30 years on from that the official twinning of the two towns came about - on May 6, 1977.
This centuries-old connection between Shrewsbury and Zutphen is to be celebrated in an exhibition at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery which will throw the spotlight upon the work of Dutch artist Jet Rotmans.
On bicycle and on foot, Jet has explored Zutphen and Shrewsbury (and their respective wider areas of Gelderland and Shropshire), and her travels have generated thousands of photographs, drawings and poems.
These impressions formed the foundation of her Artist's Books, and the exhibition - "A Tale of Two Cities" - will reflect her parallel responses to these landscapes.
Jet has grown to love Shrewsbury and Shropshire during her frequent visits to England and has been inspired by the contrasts and connections between the two locations.
She says: "Zutphen echoes Shrewsbury, an attractive market town with a medieval core, situated on the busy River Issel. The exhibition takes place against the background of the many years of twinning exchanges involving thousands of residents from our two communities."
The work exhibited will be largely in the form of Jet's favourite medium, the Artist's Book. Jet currently specialises in this genre, using traditional skills to craft the books themselves which hold, in the form of photographs and related paintings, images of the local landscape she has observed and her responses to them. In addition there will be paintings (acrylic on paper), poetry and films.
A special feature of the exhibition will be Jet's response to the recent discovery of archive material in the form of a scrapbook which records in a very moving way Shrewsbury's amazing post-war efforts, led by Colonel Liddell, a local businessman, to bring relief to the needy people of Zutphen, after the Nazi occupation.
The exhibition at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery opens on September 28. There is also an official opening by the Mayor on October 1, and a talk by the artist on October 7.
* Phil Gillam's gentle novel of family life, Shrewsbury Station Just After Six, is available from Pengwern Books, Fish Street, Shrewsbury, and amazon.co.uk
