Darkness and Light 2021. Collaborative exhibition, The Bleddfa Centre, Bleddfa, Powys.
A celebration of the weather systems of the Earth, the passage of day into night. A celebration of the oceans, sky and forests. A lament for the changing climate, for the shadows cast.
Darkness and Light evolved over three years. Working with Don Braisby and Jane Harding, sharing ideas and techniques but each making our own work, we wanted to create a space for imaginative reflection. Themes of water and movement run through the exhibition and the fragility of the Earth is reflected in the fragility of the materials used.
A skeletal suspended house is flooded with found and transformed elements from the sea. All the elements were found on beaches in Wales and the Outer Hebrides.
“The gallery space within the Hall Barn at Bleddfa contains a haunting sculptural installation, 'Full Fathom Five', comprising an emblematic house structure made with slender aluminium tubes and nylon thread within and around which are suspended multiple remnants of marine life, gathered on the beaches of the Hebrides and Wales – seaweed, algae, and egg cases of shark, skate and ray, some left in their natural dried colour, some painted and some copper plated and patinated. This last technique is based on the research of Don Braisby, with whom this artist shared her studies. The scale of the work is such that it occupies the centre of the hall, with the air currents causing the suspended remnants to move and turn, creating a mesmerising vision of marine life dried and stranded in the moving air. The installation is by turns deeply melancholic, mysterious and enchanting, underlined by the artist's choice of Ariel's song from Shakespeare's The Tempest”
From the review by Richard Noyce Wales Arts Review August 2021.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Sea-salvage
Poem by Chris Kinsey in response to the exhibition.
A house of air
suspended
on a held breath.
Sighs release
small waves stir
floating cuttlefish
mermaid’s purses sway.
Calligraphies of kelp
sign off
from a distant shore.
Black bladderwrack
coils like a rosary
prayer beads
to keep ocean currents circulating
as polar ice melts.
Westerley Cradle Song, burnt heather and blackthorn pins. Hall Barn.
A complex web structure describes the form of an archetypal boat, just big enough for one person. Pinned together with thorns gathered from blackthorn hedgerows, a few fragments of heather have been gilded. There are fairy tales woven into this work; the idea of the impossible task, by morning you will construct an entire boat from fragments of heather and it will become gold.
The idea first came from an account* of the work of Angus McPhee from Uist in the Outer Hebrides. Silent and ill for many years he found solace in weaving extraordinary garments from grass and heather entirely with his hands. They were ephemeral works of great imagination.
* “The Silent Weaver” by Roger Hutchinson.
Falling Light
Three woodcuts and three copper plated blackthorn sculptures.
Falling Light is a series of works that chart the falling light and the rising tide. For this work I explored the Dwryd estuary on the North Wales coast. From a tiny island, Ynys Gifftan in the middle of the estuary and only accessible at low tide, you can gaze a huge distance, far out to sea. As the light falls, the fresh water meets the salt and the patterns of sand, water and salt constantly shift.
Leaf Vessels
A series of vessels made from horse chestnut leaves and heather.
Shelter
Set in the Orchard Garden next to the Hall Barn buildings, Shelter is a delicate large scale work made from coloured aluminium straws. The long curved rods cross and intersect with each other, strung together in a leaping rhythm to form a spiral around a small tree.
The orchard is surrounded by folded hills, protecting hedges and two sentinel trees. A theatrical space, like an arena or a stage, it is also a space of peacefulness, quietness and contemplation. A space of memory.
As you walk the spiral to the little tree and back again, the rods describe changing shapes. They form irregular apertures that frame the trees, hedges and hills. In turn the trees and hedges frame the sculpture. And all around the landscape shelters.
Darkness and Light Etchings
Full captions and further details of these prints can be seen on the Printmaking page.