'OF WALES' - May 12 - July 7, 2024 (images to follow)
The exhibition consists of ceramic 2 dimensional, wall hung, non-utilitarian pieces. The focus is on line/ drawing with movement, colour and texture. Earthenware fired, using traditional techniques such as wax resist [ cuerda seca] drawing, with slips and alkali glazes to create powerful contemporary pieces which impact on the interior space within which they hang.
Trained in drawing and ceramics at Cardiff college of Art and my lifelong enthusiasms for history, landscape, architecture, archaeology, myth, are all drawn into the changing subjects of my work. Colour and materials reflects influences of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern traditions. Land, water, people, history and myth in Wales are all deeply interconnected.
Footprints
Ancient footprints have been found going back to the Mesolithic in Wales [on the coastal mudflats near Newport]. They prove we were here then! The remains of a great petrified forest on what had once been dry lands is to be found at extreme low tides along parts of our Western coast. In the iron and bronze age, and possibly the Neolithic the separation of water and land was seen to reflect our world’s relationship and access with the world of the mythical underworld and the life beyond. The deciding line between, the liminal, was of huge importance. The ancient Welsh legends reflect extraordinary oral memories of the lost land to the West- Cantre’r Gwaelod, the migration of the people from there.
Today we are concerned about global climate change and flooding. We are concerned about migration. Nothing has changed. It is still urgent and immediate thousands of years later.
Patchwork fields
In parts of Wales dense patchworks of tiny fields reflect the ancient traditions of inheritances being divided up equally amongst heirs; to the point at which they could no longer sustain families, many of whom left for other places and jobs. The Welsh tradition of textile patchwork quilts [ exported to America], reflects a reversal of this process, re-joining small fragments of history and inheritance. These 2 strands seemed to belong together.
Flooded valleys
Again people were forced to migrate to new homes. A hugely emotive subject, both, personal and political especially to those who belonged in those valleys. Here too patterns of the past are still marked out when the water recedes.
Legendary beasts
Cattle. Stories in the Mabinogion show their importance. In the Neolithic ,bronze and iron ages through out the early world cattle, this new farming wealth figured large; big, powerful and valuable, given as dowries, diplomatic gifts, stolen and fought over, used in displays of power, or generosity, central in epic feasts and legends. Sea serpents or water horses turn up in the Mabinogion and other tales, as messengers between the 2 worlds magical and real.