The Saatchi Gallery at Ipswich Art School
1 Upper High Street, Ipswich, until 9 January 2011, Tuesday to Sunday, 10–5
The town of Ipswich is not known for its art. It has a museum and various art galleries, but it is perhaps more celebrated as a port, as the birthplace of Cardinal Wolsey and the home of the cartoonist Carl Giles. It has some beautiful old buildings — examples of exquisite pargeting can still be seen in Butter Market in the town centre — evidence that Ipswich was in the 16th century one of the richest towns in England. Now it has one of Norman Foster’s first important buildings: the headquarters of marine insurers Willis, a darkly dramatic reflective glass structure built in 1975, and Grade 1 listed. Today the port seems curiously disconnected from the town itself (you almost wouldn’t know it was there) and the various amenities are scattered between roundabouts without real focus. Ipswich is a town in search of an identity.
One new initiative aims to unite and augment the presence of the visual arts in Ipswich, centred upon the Museum and the neighbouring former Art School in the High Street. At once an anomaly arises, for their location may be the High Street, but it is in fact several minutes’ walk away from what is now the main drag of the town. Nevertheless, this slightly isolated position on the hill can be turned to advantage, for here a redevelopment may proceed without too much commercial competition. Walking up the High Street, the visitor first encounters a handsome brick building running back from the road labelled High Street Exhibition Gallery, currently used as a store but all set to be reclaimed as a gallery.
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