SILENCE - THE MESSENGER AND THE METAPHOR
A solo exhibition showing painting, botanical colour, textile, installation, photography, clothing. 20th May - 1st July 2023 at Elysium Gallery in Swansea, Wales, UK.
Silence - The Messenger And The Metaphor grown over five years, is a large exhibition which has five main parts, spanning four gallery spaces, each evoking a sense of time.
Part of the process is working with seasons and cycles, of nature and of my own. Some processes take days, weeks, months, years even, and in that, a deeper sense of time is engendered. Much of the work was made simultaneously.
I think of the flat panel paintings as portals in present time, to timelessness and infinite possibility, to oceanic states. In the main painting room I have also included fragments of text in a manner of Concrete Poetry, from Notebooks Of Eurydice by late painter Partou Zia, a text I have been ‘in conversation’ with throughout the project. (1)
(1) Several years ago, just after I left Cornwall, painter Richard Cook, in Newlyn, gave me a copy of the manuscript (since part published in a compendium) by his late wife, Persian painter, Partou Zia. It has been a companion, a conversation, over the last few years. I have found it beautiful and profound, of a kind of truth and of human experience. I also found that it has helped deepen my understanding of my own work. The similarities of approach to practice and the sacred drew me to want to collaborate with it - Zia lived by the sea and its magic, light and energy come out clearly in her work.
To view individual pieces please go to the navigation title WORK and click on Painting Work On Paper Moon Drawing
Portal series
The two installation pieces, Forest and Shape Shifter - Bird Lover, have grown from a context of painting but they're in that realm of time and space, where the viewer can walk through, become a part of the work. It can create a sentient experience. Forest, a hanging canvas installation has a mass to it, yet you can enter, get body to body with it, find different view-points and become a part of it. It's like an immersion in an environment where for example, there is no horizon line in particular, there is sensation and hopefully connection. Cloth has so much inherent potential, so I've hung them together or made clothes or put them on a line - the washing line for me evokes a domestic safe space, a place of timelessness, meditation and potential.
Forest
Shape Shifter - Bird Lover has it’s own gallery space and is to be viewed as a whole, rather than individual pieces. I call these 3-D paintings and they came about when I lived in a woodland and would look for the light in the negative spaces.
Shape Shifter : Bird Lover
The final room shows collage with painted botanical colour on paper or panel with Moon Drawings. These photographic drawings I make during a full moon, using a long exposure with the moon as a light source. Here, night and day lie shoulder to shoulder - the small pieces are from a numbered series and are titled Night Watch or Moon Drawing. The large panel diptychs are titled Satellite and State.
night watch / Moon drawing
A selection from a clothing mini collection, natural dyed with painted marks inspired by the paintings.
Photography by Ric Bower
For more information see Artist text and also individual works in Painting Work on paper & Moon Drawing.
Film by Huw Richards Photography
A studio documentary made in 2023 in conjunction with Sarah Poland’s solo exhibition at Elysium Gallery, Swansea, UK.
Film by Huw Richards Photography
Silence - The Messenger And The Metaphor was generously supported with a Create Grant from Arts Council Wales and National Lottery UK.
Please do Get in touch regarding availability, prices and galleries, we can discuss what you might like and I can send out further details..