CLIVE WALLEY
16th Sept to 15th Oct
Exhibition Preview Evening and Meet the Artist on Friday 16th September from 6pm
‘Sticky Fingers’ Is the latest exhibition now showing at Oriel Q in Narberth. Painter and printmaker Carole King is curator for this show of eighty prints. It is a show of original printwork ranging from etchings, through monotype and collagraph to serigraphs, from artists across Wales. Carole is not new to the business of show curating; she has arranged several solo shows, has co-curated the arts and fine crafts shows arranged by ‘the Square Pegs’ and two surveys of Welsh drawing entitled ‘Lines and Strata’.
So where does her interest in printmaking come from?
“I was introduced to silkscreen printing at teacher training college in Cambridge. I produced a series of images based on curtains blowing in the breeze. The process seemed quite magical to me. ” Like so many artists, that first experience developed into a love affair with inky processes.
“I began by working on a kitchen table, designing and printing the family Christmas card. I now have a dedicated space housing a screenprinting bed [purchased through Ebay from Wakefield college of Art], and a portable roller etching press suitable for producing relief prints, monotypes, drypoints and collagraphs.”
West Wales is proving to be a hotbed of print activity. To the North, Aberystwyth Printmakers are based in dedicated out of town facilities near Bow Street, while Swansea Printmakers occupy premises near the city centre. Walden Arts in Cardigan offer workshops in printmaking.
Carole too is herself a resource for would-be printmakers. She has taught a variety of printmaking techniques through a series of workshops; in Surrey, at her studio in Newcastle Emlyn and at Oriel Q. “It is always a pleasure to see the sheer joy on a student’s face when a successful print has emerged from between press rollers. I feel I can share in their achievement at that moment.”
She is also a bookbinder. For her, printmaking is integral to that activity too. “I design my own covers and print them on a silkscreen bed in my studio. I employ my printmaking skills to produce the covers, printing my own designs. The bookbinding grew out of a need to make sketchbooks at college, where I used prints which were not of exhibitable standard [her quality control, level is set to ‘high’].” Now the books [blank sketchbooks, notebooks, wedding photograph albums, address books] are for sale to the general public, each with their own hand printed cover papers.
Perhaps the title of the show is a little misleading, as digital prints are produced through clean means on a computer or tablet in conjunction with a printer [unless of course there is a problem when replacing a leaky ink cartridge!] “There is great potential with digital printing and I was happy to accept digital submissions as long as they were originally generated on the computer and not simply an enhanced reproduction of an existing piece of artwork from another medium.”
Though for now, the bulk of artwork on display utilises media and techniques which would have been familiar to Durer, Rembrandt and Hokusai. Scratching, gouging and biting into surfaces with acid. There is something satisfyingly timeless to the activity, though the products of these endeavours are resolutely contemporary as the methods keep evolving. Come and take a look; surface interest, technical prowess, vibrant colour and across all subject matter there really is something for everyone -whether they themselves have sticky fingers or not…
Glenn Ibbitson August 2022
Sticky Fingers
now on to 10th September; Weds-Sat 10am - 4pm
https://www.orielqnarberth.com for full details
The Oriel Q Gallery sign has been repainted - looking good !
C Claire Woolley
L Louise Weldon
M Melanie Davies
K Kay Margerison
G Glenn Ibbitson
G We first met during lockdown[ back in 2020, socially distanced in the car park in Newcastle Emlyn. I remember that the four of you [Kay Margerison, another of the Attic Players, was there too] were more enthusiastic than I could have hoped for. What were your preliminary thoughts and ideas? How did you pitch the Orwell theme to the Attic Players as a group? was the group just content to let you run with the project as a sideline to their main programme?
M when we first got together
C in the carpark -we were excited straight away
L After meeting in the car park we pitched the idea to the other Attic members,
M. It was a time of Covid, so people were doing other monologues
[Which can be viewed at: https://attictheatre.wales/during-covid/ ]
C because we met you we had more of a connection with the project. We felt it was something we all wanted to creatively engage with.
L I remember George Orwell from school where we read Nineteen Eighty-Four and was interested to revisit it and find out what his work was about. His writing is so clean and concise. He’s fascinating; he’s such a good writer.
M we were genuinely intellectually engaged with the subject matter. The theatre wants to join in with local events and engage with all sorts of things, and with this Orwell project, we were offered something and we just went “of course we want to do this!”
C it's great joining local events and that can be good advertising, whereas this felt like there could be some real artistic input
L Also relevant politically today. What’s going on. It was a relevant project. Plus; I do like to dress up
C Yeah, you do Lou
M So Lou; you did your piece first for one of our monologues.
L The first one was the shouty one I was just so driven by the project and keen. I got dressed up one day and said to Pete [Weldon], film this. No rehearsal; straight in; filmed in one take, and that was that..
M and then you came to ours to film a second monologue.
L The second scene was more considered and Mel and Peter [Mount] kindly helped with it.
M We all read the book .
C We decided that because time was quite short, we decided to focus in on Nineteen Eighty-Four after reading some of the other essays.
L Too much to filter. Nineteen Eighty-Four lets stick to that
C Its got nice strong themes
L Each of us would go away and work out a little piece that we thought was relevant.
G Sadly, Orwell is linked in some literary circles with Hemingway as a writer overly preoccupied by ‘male’ concerns. I was impressed that you switched the emphasis from Winston Smith to the women. You found relevance in the book from a female perspective which I felt heartened by.
C Because we are all female we focused on the female stories in it and we all saw the different facets of how women are represented in the book. That is what interested us most. We looked at the prole women and the women in the party and the mum and neighbour; guilty and terrorised by her children
M and Claire’s mother at the sink, intimidated by her own children
L My newsreader was just a generic ‘shouty, shouty’.
C You had the idea of having more of a political reference linking with today.
L I looked at the ‘Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill’ and I picked themes out of that and into the newsreader’s pitch to the people added in to make it link and connect to what is relevant today; which is shocking.
C so we had the idea of looking at the women in the book. We then pieced together scripts
M Individually
C finding relevant bits of the book. I felt that, for me, the prostitute was one of the strongest female images. That image of the prostitute as being superficially very pretty but then getting up close and realising she is quite old and haggard and clearly desperate, was for me one of the strong images in the book
K Lou, why did you do the rat in the cage?
M its a good image
L My memory of reading the book as a young person was that cage
M it’s the abiding image of that whole book
L It’s horrendous, isn’t it?
G Your film, ‘Thought Police 4891’ is very episodic; when editing, I realised that the tableaux could be arranged in any order. Was that deliberate in your working method?
M It kind of made sense because of the short time frame we had to put it together;
reading separately, researching separately then coming together with our stuff made sense
L It was the only way to do it in the time given.
M We didn’t want to meet together all the time and rehearse a play
C Or write a script for it
L The way we devised it we came together and discussed and went away and worked out our bits and came back together.
C and we like each other; we trust each other.
M and we are thinking differently to perhaps a lot of people who contributed to the exhibition, who work individually, we very much work as a group. All our contributions are accepted , talked through, then, because there is a lack of ego in this particular group of women, none of us are going, “Me. I’m doing it. my thing is the best thing.”
C Though Mel is mostly always right.
M There is that, yeah.
L We would go away and come back knowing that each of us had given it our best shot and had listened to what we had discussed in a previous rehearsal so that it did all meld.
M and we are prepared to give things up.
G Would you consider adding scenes to what you have already done? I know that you Mel, had a ‘watcher’ episode, which I didn’t think through properly before our video shoot. Mea culpa.
M Being watched does play into the women thing. I know they are all being watched. We are all interested in the role women play in the world generally and that is something the we naturally go to as a starting point for work.
C If we had had more time I would have also really have liked to have done the dark haired girl who’s following behind Winston, spying on him. Who is this person? Can I trust them?
L I would like to look at Julia’s back story How? Where What? Explore her character.
C The torture scene; we didn’t plan that at all it wasn’t worked out beforehand
M It came out of improvisation skills. and our working together on other things. our past work together informs this work.
G Your other contribution to the room 103 project was your ‘Exhibition Security’; a piece performed on the preview evening. what was the thinking behind that? To what extent were your movements around the room pre-planned and to what extent did you have to respond to the space itself?
L I thinks its fun to dress up and do something that is alive, in person, right now, right then. I like art that has that shock element
M I agree. I think that we put that into our work. I definitely put that into my writing. It’s about not making people feel comfortable where they are; what they’re looking at.
Glenn definitely does that with his work; a lot of the work in the exhibition was like that so of course it made sense for our work to be uncomfortable as well and people were uncomfortable.
C and practically we wanted something that we could do without having to learn lots of lines or do lots of rehearsal and with minimal costume. Develop something in a quite organic way around a simple idea. We found some phrases from the book and we had little note pads
M that was really helpful.
L The space was smaller than I had imagined so that was a challenge initially but that did help us work together because we didn’t have far to move.
C We had preplanned triangulation, with one being in charge and responding to the others together as a trio.
M We played with it; it didn’t stay solid that one would move all the time, but we had a starting point.
C We also talked through the idea; how it might make people so uncomfortable and how to minimise that.
L How far to go with it.
C We didn’t want to strip-search anyone .We did talk about that to begin with then we sort of went away from that. It might have been a bit familiar…
L What I found being in character and staying in character, I was prepared for people feeling uncomfortable. I was very aware that they had come to a pleasant evening and how far did I make them feel uncomfortable so I was very aware of stepping back sometimes if somebody looked as if “I just want to look at the painting, please go away”.
C Another interesting response was when I walked purposefully across the room and ended up banging into a guy and he pushed me back. He really didn’t like it. I didn’t want to start a fight, so I ignored it.
M I’ve had that experience a lot and it is usually people who can’t really play. They are not comfortable playing the game. other people go along with it; “I know your not real” and they have no issues at all. There was another woman who didn’t get it; she just walked across and away….
but thats the skill isn’t it? How far it’s ok to go. That person who might hit you around the head, they might shout at you so you don’t want to push them too far.
C How far can you push an audience?
M Its important that the audience think and feel something. Whats the point of it if you’re going to go “oh that’s nice”, and walk on? You want to affect something and with this it was really quite easy because being intimidating is very affecting. We don’t usually go into art galleries and expect to feel fearful of people. You only have to stand too close to someone and say “Name” and that’s it, they can feel uncomfortable. People did feel uncomfortable; a lot of people did.
C One of the interesting incidents was when I did was pretending to talk into my earpiece and said “the person on the blue jumper? Yes, I’m watching them..” and you could see people tense when their heard the piece of clothing they were wearing mentioned.
L “Have I Got a blue jumper?”
G You certainly raised eyebrows by interacting physically with some of the artwork…
C Well that was your fault Glenn. You told us to turn the pictures round so if there were eyebrows raised, that was down to you.
M It actually worked really well Did you notice people saying “they’re touching the pictures”?
L especially when someone was there looking at it and you go up to turn it round in front of them…
C I enjoyed doing it
L Is that like breaking the fourth wall?
M Yes, probably it is actually.
L stepping over a boundary you cant touch artwork. What?
C That’s Glenn’s fault
G How easy was it finding the character?
C We were helped by the costume and how we did our makeup.
the masks actually helped
M I really liked the masks; dehumanising.
C when we realised that we going to have to wear the masks I was…[grumble]..
-and actually it really helped I felt, because it hid you and it meant you were
L just the eyes -which is very Orwellian. It honed in the attention. We weren’t gurning with our mouths.
C you’re anonymised aren’t you? It is used quite often to inflict violence; like the executioner having to have a face covering to inflict violence on people and not own up to your own identity
L Depersonalised.
M I found it quite empowering because going up close to a man or a woman, but particularly getting into a man’s face and asking them a direct question. I loved doing that.
L You were very good on the door. Very intimidating. “Get in!”
M “Hurry up!”
L I found it quite easy to get into character because we came at it professionally and wanted to do a good job
C and we’d read the book so we understood the underlying feel of what ‘The Party’ was about. Intimidating; taking away people’s enjoyment, really.
G As a non-actor, it always amazes me how you can play against type so well and switch in and out of role -fortunately for the rest of us who shared the supper table with you after the preview. How easy is that for you?
L coming out of character was quite tricky
C I found it quite hard actually
L When people said, “you can stop now.”.
C I couldn’t because I was in the same space and there were still people there, so it helped me to go to the bathroom and take my stuff off. Then I was fine.
M Ok, That’s always interesting. People may be thinking, “Is the person I have just seen on stage the same as the person I’m now seeing?. Are they really a nasty person who is going to come into my space and shout at me?” What I’ve done in the past is be ‘more nice’ than I really need to be. Trying to reassure, I don’t want people to think i’m horrible, do I? I probably get myself back that way.
L I love the acting because you can do stuff that is so not you; that is such fun because I am not a shouty aggressive person in real life, but to play that was; “yes, c’mon. I wanna be the baddie.”
C Do most actors like being a baddie? I cant imagine not wanting to be a baddie. The joy of playing someone so different to you and do things you wouldn’t normally do.
M I don’t think everyone would be able to do what we did. I think some people would find it hard to find the horrible bit of themselves.
L Oh that’s really easy.
M some people wouldn’t. some people would think “everyone will think that’s me. I don’t want people to think I’m a horrible person.”
C I didn’t take that thought in to dinner afterwards. I didn’t think people would think that we were those characters. If I had, I would have been more n ervous approaching the dinner.
M that’s a really interesting line crossing from you to your character; a really interesting line…
G A [foot]note courtesy of Quentin Kopp, Chair of the Orwell Society.
“Just a little note to say thank you for a wonderful evening and a great exhibition. I thought your actors were great.”
Glenn Ibbitson April 2022
Dave Stephens is a sculptor, performance artist and film maker. He has exhibited in many galleries including the Laing Gallery, Newcastle and the Economist Building in London. In his career as a performance artist he has performed in over 100 venues in the US, Canada, Europe as well as the UK.
His practise often moves between disciplines and some of his recent work combines elements of all of them. It is a way of giving a piece a past and future as well as the present. As an educationalist Stephens has been a visiting lecturer in many art institutions including most recently at the University of Brighton. He is also Head of Design at Varndean College in Brighton.
Dave is represented by three videos in Room 103: ‘Veil’, ‘Stalagmite/Stalactite’ and ‘Come Hell and Homework’.
Hiding in Plain sight: the nightjar project
Using drawings and mixed media sculpture I explore the visual properties and poetics of camouflage though the dark lens of Nightjar. These are a large family of small, insect-eating birds. Usually nocturnal and often migratory, they rest during the day relying on highly evolved cryptic camouflage. Their invisibility and strange call has earned them a place in folklore as omens of doom or spirit guides to the otherworld. My work connects with Orwell though concerns about surveillance and unease about the increasing power technology gives to the state.
I am fascinated with the challenges of depicting camouflage, whether by man’s design or by natural evolution it is an abstract landscape. Dappled light dancing across a forest floor is one of my favourite things; the dark shadow and brilliant patches of light break up the form of fallen branches and tree trunks casting a natural camouflage pattern over the scene. While contemplating this forest scene darker connotations spring to mind because camouflage is naturally associated with prey and predator, as well as with military concealment. It is naturally ambiguous, providing safety and/or danger depending on the user’s role.
Making a painting featuring nightjar is difficult; sketching from life is impossible so I need to rely on photographs and museum specimens. Paint it well and the bird vanishes from the painting, destroying the conventions of traditional composition.
Orwell championed the rights of the individual against totalitarianism and in a world where the surveillance power of the state becomes ever greater, I admire nightjar’s ability to become invisible. ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide what’s the problem?’ Well there are many lessons from History which disprove that comforting reassurance1. The military are learning from nightjar too, old fashioned simple concealment patterns are being replaced by advanced fractal designs generated by scanning natural forms and producing algorithms to design new patterns2. Following real world field trials, the most successful variants are then improved by machine learning in a form of ‘un-natural selection’.
‘Ladybird, Ladybird’ and ‘Clockwork Heart’
"Through a dark lens innocence catches alight...rays from a fake sun intensified by a media hungry for blood, our children are not safe as houses... when those houses are filled, infiltrated. They're watching you watching them watching you, and if nothing is being sold, you're the product".
Clare Ferguson Walker, March 2022
Laser cut perspex on board
“I have taken George Orwell’s 1984 as a point of discourse, particularly the hyper control of knowledge and information flow by a state or controlling body and their use of the propaganda posters as a means to facilitate their message in an accessible visual way, contemporized and objectified in a gallery. ‘The red and black invokes totalitarianism and state authority across a political spectrum’ (Prof Kirstie Ball 2022, personal communication). It is for the viewer to consider the meaning both obvious and subliminal.”
Liam Ainscough March 2022
Laser cut perspex on board
“Human structures have existed in the landscape for thousands of years for a variety of reasons including protection, isolation and surveillance. From hill forts, castles and watchtowers to mobile telephone masts, secret surveillance establishments and radio telescopes.
In this time of a global warming catastrophe vast amounts of money and resources are still spent on spying, mistrust and isolation.
Professor Stephen Hawking said that mans greatest achievements are made when we talk to one another.
Vaccine research during the global Covid 19 pandemic has shown what can be accomplished where there is cooperation and the sharing of information, expertise and resources.
This series of paintings, in a small way, aims to highlight the folly of this isolationism!
From these small pictures let us hope that we can begin to see the bigger one.
Let’s Talk………”
Neil Johnson trained at the now Manchester Metropolitan University. For thirty years he enjoyed a highly successful career teaching Art and Design in South Manchester, while continuing to produce his own work. In 2007 he returned to Borth in order to devote more of his time to developing his own work and ideas. He has had work in solo shows and joint shows in galleries nationally and internationally, including a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art Wales.
Neil is a member of the Royal Watercolour Society of Wales and has work in private collections throughout the UK and in USA, Canada, Germany, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Greece, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Click on the image below to listen to Glenn Ibbitson, the curator of Room 103, talking on BBC Radio Wales about the exhibition at Oriel Q Gallery. Starts just after 12 minutes in.
Restricted: oil on panel
“This series of paintings is based on American and British radar and ‘listening’ installations in the north of England. The geometric structures create a striking and sinister contrast with the pastoral landscapes that surround them and with a constant police presence on the roads that surround them, high security fences and situations on hill tops they are the epitome of restricted sites. To the point where, even the local firefighters who have been given training and security clearance to deal with blazes on the sites are not allowed access to certain buildings and are instructed to let them burn rather than enter.”
Alan Pergusey
Red Light Tower: oil on panel
Radar Station: oil on panel
Poet and photographer Paul Steffan Jones developed an abhorrence of social injustice not by taking to the roads of London or cleaning in the kitchens of Paris, but by working for the Department of Social Security in a Job Centre Plus, where, against the unwritten rules in operation there, he actually proactively assisted his clients to fill out the necessary forms to make successful claims. This wilful independence of spirit and a burning anger against establishment mores stokes his poetry and his photography.
My Fake News
Our questionable democracy
in its heartless heartland
its chasms of inequality
and spasms of broken promises
uneven justice that isn’t even justice
the cause of the proliferation of foodbanks
denied by millionaire cabinets
and their empty debate podia
the denial of climate disaster
and the Holocaust
policies based on alternative facts
wars waged on non-existing evidence
we allow our lives and those of our children
and the health of the earth and its creatures
to be skewed and prostituted by dark money
and unaccountable lobby groups
those so-called Islamic States
that so-called Tommy Robinson
you couldn’t make it up
but someone did
my fake news
Liars Incorporated
shamelessness is the new virtue to signal
and here comes my deepfake
wonder what I will end up looking like
BEWARE: Big Brother has instructed that on no account must subjects of Oceania visit this exhibition. Attendance at this unauthorised event must be considered a ‘thoughtcrime’ and will result in the imposition of the severest penalties on anyone ignoring this ruling…
Seventy years after George Orwell’s death, the term ‘Orwellian’ crops up unprompted in media conversation on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. It may be misused by people who are referencing anything remotely totalitarian or anti-social, but that still provides a measure of this man’s work and the shadow it throws across the landscape of contemporary thought. Although he was not a visual artist and art criticism does not figure prominently in his work, his writing provides a continuing stimulus for artists of conscience and political resistance. Originating as an online resource, ‘Room 103’ has developed into an ongoing travelling show, with an ever-changing roster of artists examining all themes ‘Orwellian’. This Oriel Q exhibition follows on from previous exhibitions in Manchester, Leeds and the University of Oxford, where it provided a visual centrepiece for a symposium dedicated to discussion of the great man’s work.
Sugar is Bitterness. Ignorance is Sweet.
‘A spoonful of ignorance’ rails against a wilful misrepresentation of our Imperial past. Coal wasn’t the only substance that drove Britain’s industrial revolution. Sugar provided the fuel for economic expansion -and it’s manufacture necessitated the crime against humanity which was the slave trade. Here, the tripod and three chains made of bent spoons echo the triangular trade route across the Atlantic, and the pot of gold at its apex is a sugar bowl. Orwell would have known very well the history of the sugar dissolving in his tea..
“A Spoonful of Ignorance” Susannah Oliver: tripod, sugar bowl, spoons.
George Orwell
“The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism. “George Orwell; ‘All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays”
The freedom of the individual to think independently of state permissions is the founding principle of Orwell’s work.
Although he was not a visual artist and art criticism does not figure prominently in his work, his writing provides a continuing stimulus for artists of conscience and political resistance, and it was with this in mind that artist Glenn Ibbitson developed the idea of bringing together a wide range of talent to create an amorphous exhibition aimed at assessing the impact of Orwell in the context of the present day.
Originating as an online resource, ‘Room 103’ has developed into an ongoing travelling show. This Oriel Q exhibition follows on from previous exhibitions in Manchester, Leeds and the University of Oxford, where it provided a visual centrepiece for a symposium dedicated to discussion of the great man’s work.
Themes such as surveillance, state oppression, Imperial legacy, homelessness, people trafficking, character profiling techniques and individual liberty are all examined here by artists from across the United Kingdom, with a healthy contribution from Wales-based creatives working with both traditional and time-based media.
“It’s interesting that somehow the usual fashionable backlash against Orwell has never really gathered traction and his ideas have consistently appealed to successive generations, possibly because his writings are so far ranging. There is always some aspect of his work to stimulate the next generation of artists.” Glenn Ibbitson
Room 103 @Narberth will feature painting, print, photography, sculpture, artist’s books and time-based media from over twenty artists.
Lou Weldon: 1 minute and 44 seconds of Hate video
Tony Baker: photograph from his book, “Homage to Homage to Catalonia”
Nigel Pugh: Facial Recognition #1 Digital print
Four stills from the time-lapse video of “Willow Bridges: a Drawing” by Glenn ibbitson [4 minutes 33 seconds] The film will be on show through the duration of the exhibition.
“At the intersection of visual stimulus, cerebral analysis and physical interpretation via hand and arm, emerge the marks we identify as drawing. Drawing is democratic, classless, egalitarian. It affirms individual potential in a collective world. Its means are accessible, affordable, portable. It is a fundamental human activity; timeless, essential, compulsive.” –Glenn Ibbitson
Individual artists and educators sharing words, actions, ideas and space in the first creative clinic in anticipation of the next exhibition- 'Drawing what is it?'
Creative Clinics are gatherings of like-minded individuals who may be able to make use of the gallery space on days when the gallery is closed to the public; currently Sunday, Monday and Tuesday*. An opportunity to meet others, work in sketchbooks and share stories.
For more information, please e-mail: info@orielqnarberth.com
*clinic dates are dependent upon the nature of the artworks being exhibited at the time.
