Since its formation in 1944 the Society had enjoyed a close relationship with the then called Plymouth School of Art. Lewis Duckett, Principal at that time invited a number of artists, practitioners living and working in the city, to exhibit in the City Museum and Art Gallery; the purpose was to celebrate work of a professional standard for the benefit of the people of Plymouth. It was to be a small but important part in the cultural re-birth of the city following the devastation caused by WW2. In those early years a number of the founding members included teachers on the art school staff, some of whom served on the Society’s organisational body.

This was to continue for the next four decades or so, but over time the relationship waned, hastened by inevitable changes to the teaching staff. Despite this the Society continued to flourish and maintain annual exhibition in the City Art Gallery.

Now, more than eighty years since those inaugural years the relationship has been re-established. Significant members of the AUP’s current teaching staff have been accepted into membership of the Society. Though there has been diminished opportunity to exhibit in the City’s art gallery of late, the opening of a new direction has presented itself with the Society’s first showing in the university’s dedicated exhibition space, the Mirror Gallery. More than two years in the planning the Society has secured this opening through the good offices of Vice-Cancellor Paul Feldsend-Danks and Pro Vice-Chancellor Stephen Felmingham, underpinned in the knowledge AUP holds a notable collection of works by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, a much valued Society member from the 1960s.