CHARLESTON FARMHOUSE | HYLTON NEL, BETTY WOODMAN AND GEORGE WOODMAN

Betty Woodman, Night Window, 2016. Photograph by Rowena Easton

Modernist pioneers Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant shared a lifelong artistic dialogue, the fruit of which – from their oil paintings to their funky ceramics – is best seen at their Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex, open to the public since 1986. The house is furnished in the manner it would have been in the 50s, and decorated with bespoke interior designs, and paintings by the pair, and their wider circle. There’s a Marie Celeste feel to the place, like they’ve all popped out for a walk on the Downs, soon to return, and finish off the half-full bottle of Scotch in Duncan’s studio (Grant’s, of course).

In 2018 the Charleston Trust opened a gallery in the grounds to exhibit artists who, in one way or another, were connected to Charleston or reflect the values and artistic vision of Bell and Grant. The building, a smart cubic timber structure, consists of two galleries, which enables the curation team to hold simultaneous exhibitions. Their latest shows opened on March 25.

Betty Woodman and George Woodman features the eponymous American artist-couple who, in 1968, made a Tuscan farmhouse in the hills north of Florence into both a home and studio, where they spent several months a year for five decades, like Grant and Bell sharing the same cultural influences and reviewing and critiquing one another’s work. She was primarily a ceramicist, he a painter.

On a clear day, it seems, you could see the Duomo from the Woodmans’ bedroom window, and both artists, who made frequent visits into Florence, riffed on Renaissance themes. Both were experimental: Betty, who started life as a traditional potter producing practical wares, developed a trademark technique of ‘painting with ceramics’ including the show’s stand-out piece, Wallpaper 19, which she completed in 2017, a year before her death. It is the culmination of a series of ceramic frescoes utilising left-over cut-offs from her vessels, elegantly arranged to resemble a Baroque relief. At the centre sits a shapely bowl, designed to hold flowers (currently a bunch of lilies), thus nodding to the functionality generally associated with the art form.

You can also track the development of George’s work, from the patterned abstract oil paintings of his early career to black and white photographs of classical sculptures and architecture, articulated with brightly coloured geometric embellishments. The visitor gets to meet both George and Betty in a video beamed onto the wall, talking about the importance of their hilltop farmhouse, and its Tuscan location, to their art. George died in 2017.

Hylton Nel, whose work is displayed in the adjacent South Gallery, could also be described as a ceramicist, though he prefers to use the term ‘artist-potter’. He makes plates in his studio in South Africa, and uses them as a medium for expression, painting onto them figures, patterns and words. This is Grant and Bell territory, of course: in the Outer Studio of Charleston Farmhouse you can view a permanent display of the couple’s Famous Women Place Service, commissioned by Kenneth Clark in 1932, featuring fifty ceramic plates decorated with the likenesses of historical females, from Boadicea to Greta Garbo.

Nel’s work, laid out in chronological order and incorporating 200 pieces, covers five decades of his career. The plates are in turn humorous and thought-provoking, at times consciously tawdry, at times powerfully poignant. There’s politics in there, and religion, and moments from his life, be that a trip to the zoo, a New Year’s Eve party, or a visit to the cinema. There are cats, and comedy dragons, and phalluses. Lots of phalluses.

It’s recommendable to visit the two galleries, and then the house – in that order – and there are a couple of nice touches connecting the two. Nel, 84, has chosen a collection of Bell and Grant’s ceramic items – some made in the Omega workshops – which are arranged on a table in the room connecting the two galleries. And, once you are in the farmhouse, guided by an eager volunteer, you will notice some flowers in an exuberantly shapely vase on a table in the library. This was fashioned by Betty Woodman. It looks happily congruous with its Bloomsbury-lot surroundings.

 The two exhibitions run until September 10, and constitute something of a spring/summer must-see. If you really want to make a day of it, book during Charleston’s annual literary festival in May, which features writers, performers and artists, including art-world figures such as Petr Horacek, Will Gompertz and Jeremy Deller.