Quiet Revolutions

Work inspired by Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland

22 January – 27 March 2022

Quiet Revolutions, a display of ceramic pieces inspired by the lives of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, will run from 22 January – 27 March 2022 in the Museum’s Artists’ Dorset gallery, coinciding with February’s LGBT+ History month.

The display of five works by Bristol-based artist Amanda Chambers form an ‘intervention’ within a section of the gallery devoted to the artistic and literary Chaldon Herring community. Novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) and poet Valentine Ackland (1906-1969) were part of this community, and it was here that they fell in love and became life partners.

Leading a rich life of literary and political pursuits, Sylvia and Valentine lived through an intense period of the 20th century. However, it is largely the domestic sphere of their lives which inform the six ceramic works being displayed. Living openly together in rural Dorset in the early 1930s, Sylvia and Valentine shared a deep-rooted commitment to each other despite extreme challenges – notably the prospect of a three-way relationship with author Elizabeth Wade White, and Valentine’s struggle with alcoholism, which she endured for several decades in secret. The works highlight the immense resilience shown by both women during their partnership.