The Official Opening of Loweworks

Sculptor Jeff Lowe opens 5000 sq ft of gallery space in The Mall

Words Posy Gentles Photographs Jeff and Monica Lowe

Loweworks is opening for public scrutiny for the first time on 20 February. The sculptor Jeff Lowe and his partner Monica Lowe have created this 5000 sq ft gallery to exhibit his new work alongside a changing selection of past work. Upstairs is the First Floor Gallery, a space for events and for showing the work of invited artists, of whom the first is Iain Robertson, a Scottish abstract painter working in St Ives.

The exhibition is called Putting on Paint and is in two parts running concurrently: Part I is at Loweworks and shows Iain’s earlier work; Part II features contemporary pieces and can be seen at Linden Hall Studio in Deal.

Following their lead, Faversham Life also tells the story of Loweworks in two parts: Part I is about Putting on Paint; Part II is about the restoration of 39a The Mall.

Part I: Putting on Paint

Until Jeff invited Iain to exhibit at Loweworks, they had not met, although they had admired each other’s work and both had made prints with Kip Gresham, the late Cambridge master printmaker.

Jeff says: ‘I first saw Iain’s paintings at the Poussin Gallery in London 15 years ago. I like painters whose work has a sculptural quality and Iain’s paintings seem to be rooted in gravity. You feel their depth, not the rectangular boundaries of the frame or canvas, and you’re drawn into them. You can see the working process in Iain’s paintings – the struggle of the artist to find form. The paintings are arrived at.’

‘People are often surprised by how physical my paintings are,’ says Iain. ‘I contrast thick paint against thinner, more translucent layers. I’m interested in materials – getting beyond the picture plane and trying to create depth within it. The handling of materials is a visceral thing. They have a physical presence and my paintings result from the combination of my intention, chance and what the materials want to do.’

Iain is not afraid of leaving white space in the work, and his colours are thrillingly vivid. He says: ‘People sometimes find abstract art difficult. I usually listen to music, often jazz, while I work – and really there’s no more abstract form of art than music. Jazz musicians – Miles Davies and John Coltrane – touch something fundamental in us. And in the same way, an abstract painting has to transcend its physicality to speak to us.’

Iain is pleased to be showing earlier paintings at Loweworks, alongside more contemporary work at Linden Hall Studio in Deal: ‘It gets a conversation going between the paintings.’ More recent work includes some smaller works on birch panels using oil bar and oil paint, and a selection of prints, made with Kip Gresham.

Iain’s first steps into screenprinting with Kip were enlightening: ‘It was very different from the way I had been working – it’s such a flat graphic process. But that concentrated focus on a more formal abstraction, and the relation between colour and shape, has probably informed subsequent work.’

Based in Scotland and exhibiting and working internationally, Iain and his partner, the artist Clare Wardman, relocated their studio from Edinburgh to St Ives in 1999. After a few years at Sail Loft Studios, they successfully applied to move to Porthmeor Studio 7 in 2007. Porthmeor is one of the oldest working artists’ studios in the country and Iain’s predecessors include such illustrious names as Ben Nicholson, Wilhemina Barns-Graham, Patrick Heron and Francis Bacon.

‘He says: ‘I’ve always liked the St Ives artists but I’ve never felt like a St Ives artist. My Scottish heritage, like Barns-Graham’s, probably brought a different dynamic. Working there may have changed my work a bit – more space has come in; maybe the colours have got brighter. There’s such a huge horizon in St Ives. In Edinburgh our studio was in the middle of the city.’

Part II: 39a The Mall

It is almost two years since large letters, in a rich almost pulsating red, suddenly appeared across the front of 39a The Mall, reading ‘LOWEWORKS Sculpture’. The intention was emblazoned and the building work started.

Anyone driving along the Syndale Valley road over the past few years will have seen Jeff’s remarkable outdoor Sculpture Gallery steadily moving up the hill around The Limeworks. This was all very well for large metal sculptures, but still he lacked the right space to show the work he was doing on paper, and much of his work was in storage – ‘Some things I hadn’t seen for 15 years or more,’ Jeff says. ‘Then the building in The Mall came up for sale and I bought it.’

Not everyone would have seen its potential. 39a The Mall was an unassuming building with a varied past – bits added on here and there when needed, and left to fall to pieces, when not. For almost 50 years, it had been a throbbing centre for motorcyclists. In 1974, Robin Powell Motorcycles moved in, servicing and selling motorbikes and dashing out to serve petrol from the pump at the front, when customers rang the bell. It was renamed, more snazzily, The Bike Shop in 1984 and closed, to the great sadness of its loyal customers, in 2017.

Jeff believes it was a car showroom in the Fifties with two petrol pumps and a long glass display window to press your nose against and admire the latest shiny Triumph TR2 or Humber Super Snipe. During renovations, he found a cobbled floor near the back, and evidence of huge hinges, suggesting access for horses and carriages from the days when it was an undertakers. Its last incarnation was to house a group of antique dealers under the banner Branching Out.

The building was his – with its leaking corrugated roofs, falling ceilings and dangling electrical cables, windowless rooms, battered shopfittings from unglamorous eras, uneven floors and hazard tape. Through all this Jeff, with immutable vision, saw the fine metal staircase leading to a mezzanine area where the motorcycle parts had been stored. He saw the steel beams when ceilings were pulled down. He saw the space. With the backing of Monica Lowe’s unparalleled organisational skills, the vision started to become material.

Jeff says: ‘I wanted to make a gallery that was more than a white box; that almost had a domestic feel.’ There is a lot of white (it is after all a gallery space) but there are sudden intense areas painted rusty red, or a particular shade of bluey green, and the kitchen and bar areas have Lowe-designed tiles. Climbing the metal staircase (now refurbished and entirely industrial chic) to the old motorbike parts storage room, one discovers a pair of very comfortable sofas, upholstered in Jeff Lowe fabrics in brilliant colours.

Among the downlights and skylights, there are vintage light fittings and an old wooden sideboard, rather than a plinth, to display a Jeff Lowe sculpture. Twenty cast iron columns, each weighing half a ton, have been shipped from a library in Switzerland. They don’t serve a structural purpose but do provide a sense of moving from one area to another.

Loweworks is launched and Faversham’s reputation as a place of artistic interest takes a huge leap. We will see exhibitions of new and past works of Jeff Lowe, while the First Floor Gallery will show a programme of exhibitions of invited artists, alongside talks, other events and dinners. With typical attention to detail, Jeff Lowe will produce a fully-illustrated catalogue for each exhibition to create a Loweworks series.

Jeff says the next public opening will be a Jeff Lowe exhibition, and then maybe another artist. ‘I’d like to show artists like Basil Beattie, Lee Tribe or John Walker – painters that a sculptor can appreciate. I’ll also invite sculptors – anything that surprises or interests me.’

Text: Posy Gentles. Photographs: Jeff and Monica Lowe

Further Information

Iain Robertson Putting on Paint – Part I and Part II

Part I Earlier Works at Loweworks, Faversham (20 February to 21 March 2026. Thursday-Saturday 12-4pm and by appointment. Free admission)

Part II  Contemporary Works at Linden Hall Studio, Deal (7-28 February 2026, Tuesday-Saturday 10am-4pm and by appointment. Free admission)

Faversham Life article about Jeff Lowe and The Limeworks