The Oriel Q Gallery, Narberth Annual Fundraising Auction Exhibition is now open ( Wednesday-Saturday 10am-4pm ). We have 70 fantastic lots and they can be viewed and bid on at
https://www.jumblebee.co.uk/artistsandcollectorsfundraisingauction
Oriel Q gallery in Narberth presents “Under New Made Clouds” – an exhibition by a group of three artists responding to the landscape around them in new and innovative ways.
Sian Jones captures the ever-changing light from her riverside studio,
Ruth Sergeant explores details like the algae and reflections in the water trough left by a farmer to water his stock.
Jess Woodrow’s colour-rich work is stimulated by the monumental and minute detail experienced on her travels and in the mountains near her Abergavenny home.
Each artist has her unique response in their visual work, from audio and digital installations to ceramics, drawings and paintings.
Created over Lockdown , the works give fresh insight into our experience within the landscape of Wales. This show allows the spectator to see it through the artist’s eyes.
Glenn Ibbitson has been in [e-mail] conversation with the exhibitors.
J.W. I do work in the studio, I don’t work directly from the landscape except for the odd water colour . Paintings (oil) are memories of place and experience usually from some time ago, when something triggers a particular feeling , so bringing at the past into the present. Drawings are more directly from the landscape around me, drawing on stories that seem to be already present there, maybe past events (often grim!) Narrative is important in everything, even if its not obvious what that narrative is. I don’t try and do anything thats new….I think if you are true to yourself, some aspect of the work will inevitably be new. Its important to me to be as personal as possible, at least with the painting on panels. I like to think of it all as a kind of emotional geography…..which I absorb through my skin as well as see with my eyes. I work most days in the studio. Movement however is vital, if i don’t travel, things become destructive! literally ending up in the bin. Movement is everything. Walking (or driving) in my immediate landscape helps to bring together other times and places, events. Walking ties it all together. A kind of time travelling…… deja vu maybe sometimes. I could probably write forever about painting…..I work on several at once, discard, return to, rework, until I have a series of 10 or so...
G.I. Jess, you have presented paintings in oils and works using ink on paper, which both convey a spirit of place, but in hugely divergent ways. Does the specific pictorial problem presented by the subject at hand suggest the medium to you to the exclusion of those others available to you?
J.W. That’s a kind of chicken and egg question! I think I use oil primarily because I love its qualities, and because I like the challenge it evokes in terms of the historical baggage that using oil paint brings. I want to turn it on it’s head somewhat, and make small works that have a strong presence but aren’t grandiose in any way. Using oil appeals to a complex thought process which is at one with what I am searching for I hope. Because it is a search. I use boards which I make gesso for, because canvas doesn’t offer me anything, the gessoed boards feel like I already have something to have a conversation with.
Similarly, with paper, it has something to offer because of its texture, so i respond to that. So I think the answer is I follow the materials, but I chose the materials which I find most sensually appealing and I guess there is some sense of the romantic landscape which oil painting gives me and some sense of movement and energy that brush and ink gives me.
G.I. The materials here certainly produce very different results. They both suggest that the motif you use as a starting point for a work is merely a springboard. You mentioned the romantic in art, so are investigations into feeling and response foremost in your search?
J.W. Yes, I would say that investigations into feelings and response are definitely foremost in my search. The motifs are something that I search for to help express that, so I don’t start with them, I tend to finish with them. I apply paint, often in many layers, sometimes removing it as well, until I find a resonance between a shape/motif that perhaps appears as if by accident, and a feeling that is already there. As soon as a motif takes on a life of its own, I leave it. Oil paint lends itself very well to this way of working. I have found a way of using ink, and various other water based paint on paper, by turning it over and incorporating the stains that come through into another image which slows down a process that would otherwise be a much faster way of working. This way accidents can still be a part of the process. Similarly I allow motifs to appear very slowly, so they are searched for. The paintings, I think, do relate somewhat to a tradition of landscape oil painting. I love looking at oil sketches, i.e. Constable or Corot, or Thomas Jones, but instead of making fast oil sketches, I make slow ones, which involve numerous places and a lot of time. Maybe the works on paper are more primitive in a way, and relate to a much older way of mark making and recording surrounding or events. I like to look at drawings by Dubuffet, or Eileen Ager…..Artists who work from their sub-conscious.
S.J.Being a painter during the Covid pandemic hasn't been that different to ‘normal’ times because as an artist and gardener I am very used to isolation.
What has been difficult is not seeing friends, and in particular other artist friends.
I belong to a group of artists called Six in Conversation (sic) and we meet once a month to discuss art, life and food! We support each other in our practices and organise group exhibitions and laugh a lot - which has made being an artist a lot less lonely.
Having an exhibition to work towards gave a focus to days which could have lacked motivation. Like a lot of people, my world shrank to my garden and the daily walks around the village. I really began to take notice of shadows and reflections and got excited about puddles in the road! Once you start noticing these things it becomes impossible to ignore them. The shifting shapes and wind blown reflections are mesmerising. Alliums, euphorbias and grasses in the garden provided the colours and structure. And so the inspiration for my work in “Under new made clouds” came into being.
G.I. Sian, your paintings achieve a sense of deep illusionistic depth of field between fore and backgrounds; yet still acknowledge the flatness of the picture surface. Addressing this fundamental dichotomy is a cornerstone of Modernism. How do you see your work relating to contemporary art practice?
S.J. With regard to how I see my work relating to contemporary art practice, it's a good question but not one that I give much attention to. The reason being is that I see contemporary art as being eclectic in its lack of uniformity, principles and ideologies, allowing artists a fair amount of freedom to express themselves. It is often about ideas rather than purely aesthetic considerations and within that framework I am able to communicate my interest and concern about reconnecting with nature. With this in mind, my aim is to rethink the familiar and convey my views, but also invite the viewer to make their own individual interpretation.
G.I. So you are hoping the viewer will see something new in what they may have assumed was the familiar everyday?
S.J. The short answer to your question is “yes”, however it’s not that simple! It’s great if the viewer sees something new in my work but my paintings are not intended to be didactic - they are just my own exploration of the subject. I might begin with very little idea about where a body of work will take me but in the case of the current exhibition “Under New Made Clouds” (a quote from Dylan Thomas’ Fernhill) the title immediately got me thinking about the garden and landscape around me. I find reading poetry is a good way of seeing things differently because the relationship between words and the visuals can be quite distinct. For example you see a group of alliums and you ‘ know’ them as alliums but in poetic terms they could be described as musical notes. Observation, imagination and pictorial language combine to create something new. If I have my own way of looking at the world, then others are bound to see things differently too and therefore I am happy to accept individual viewers making their own interpretation of my work, whether it fits with my original intention or not!
R.S. I saw the opportunity to continue a body of work compiled for an online course in Art and Archaeology and completed during the first lockdown. Both had given me the stimulus and time to root myself in the landscape with the hope of capturing the constants of movement and change. From the tail end of hurricanes to approaching hose pipe bans, I found a rich seam of activity and some noble collaborators to tap into.
G.I. Ruth, In our conversation in the gallery, you referred several times to the physical extraction of material for your art from the earth's surface. Completing an MA module in Art and Archaeology has obviously influenced your thoughts and practice. Could you elaborate?
R.S. The references I made to taking from the earth came from a long-standing love hate relationship I have with clay, my need to work in multiples and the complex environmental questions this throws up. I thought that the art and archaeology module which led to a final submission using raw porcelain with inclusions of wool, mould, tree litter and moss had solidified my position. Raw clay can of course be recycled. But one year on it seems not.
G.I. and your work here has an element of collaboration -with noble trees whose branches contribute some mark-making. How did you set that up?
R.S. Collaboration yes. Never work with children or animals, I believe actors say and I think the trees upstage my mark making on every occasion. This idea evolved during the storms of early 2020 - Kiera and Dennis - when attempting to capture the movement of the laburnum opposite my studio. I am impressed by the work of Mark Nystrom who makes wonderful work with the wind. http://marknystrom.com/winds-process-2005-01 I thought that in place of his machine constructions, the branches could deliver, and possibly in a more random and exciting way. My first drawings with trees were made with saturated ink on drafting film attached to gesso board and simply offered up to the lashing wet tips of the tree. (image 1 attached)The drawings in Under New made Clouds come from marker pen attached by cord to the branches and allowed to roam freely over drafting film supported on the ground.(image 2) An apple pencil on an ipad works well. In a short time, I realised the almost limitless possibilities with different trees, medium and weather conditions. It did seem each tree had its own signature.
Under New Made Clouds
September 2nd - October 9th
10am to 4pm , Wednesday to Saturday
Oriel Q Gallery Members Exhibition. Until 28th August. Weds. - Sat. 10am-4pm.
G.I. Could you give us some background on the Bartok inspired pieces?
B.C. In accordance with my usual practice, I played recordings of these quartets while I made the paintings. They are difficult and demanding pieces for the players. Inevitably that complexity is reflected in the painted marks. I particularly am inspired by these quartets which are definitely viewed as the 20th century rival to Beethoven's Late Quartets. It is impossible to describe the process in my mind while I am working, other than to say that there is a continual dialogue between ear and hand. Listening to the internal conversation.
There is a programatic element in that each of the six quartets is allotted a colour; moving around the colour circle from Red No.1:
to Violet No.6:
The motive for enclosing the musical dialogue, mostly in black and white, in the middle with the selected colour around the edge is an idea that I took from the painter Francis Bacon:
I am getting more and more interested in enclosing the dramatic area(s) in the painting with flat areas of colour.”
G.I. Picasso seems to have had a profound influence on your art, both in mark-making vocabulary and your use of collaged print elements. Could you expand on that?
B.C. Yes Picasso has has a huge influence on my life and work since the very beginning with facile line drawings in my philosophy notes in 1970. He probably made only a small number of really great paintings, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica, among them, but his whole life’s work is a total masterpiece. I love his imagination, his energy, his conviction, and his striving always to go beyond.
In his painting he used sand, paper collage, nails, chair caning to make strong sculptural statements that brought the painting back to the surface in Synthetic cubism and contrasted with the more sensitive painterly mark making in Analytic cubism.
In his sculpture he used found material to great effect in plaster, wood, metal, card, paper etc to make simple bold statements in 3 dimensional space.
G.I. Your work is highly politically charged. What are your views on the use and potential power of visual art as a weapon of social change?
B.C. I don’t believe that you can disentangle true art from ethics. Our beliefs effect everything that we do.
I certainly don’t believe in politically didactic art. Any message in my work comes from a need to express myself, as a reaction to events expressed in newspapers. The motive is to show and expose through a dialogue with the tabloid image.
I don’t know whether what I do has any power to influence social change. I feel in a position of powerlessness as an individual but I am also deeply motivated to make works which engage with larger events in the outside world employing means which are as oblique and cryptic as I am able.
This image is a redaction which is work in progress (less is more); does it need the business of painted words to make its point. Is the most powerful visual message in the ‘juxtaposition of unanticipated elements’: I don’t know? But I feel an urge to do more!
But yes I do want to change the ugliness and deceit that we witness every day in the reporting of world events. It obsesses me and so it comes out in the pieces that I make.
G.I. What are you working on at the moment?
B.C. I have been working on this painting which has been recorded in progress:
Kreutzer - Binary Late Covid
I was working from the Kreutzer Sonata by Leoš Janáček String Quartet No. 1, this resonates with Beethoven’s renowned piece of that name initially dedicated to the violinist George Bridgetower which in turn inspired Leo Tolstoy’s novella of that name.
The short film which is being created from the process will be shown on the screen in the front window of the gallery for the public to view in the street outside.
This painting is work in progress in my workshop at the moment:
Fate - Gull Late Covid
I am working from the cliche of Beethoven ‘s 5th Symphony with its motto ‘Fate’.
The development process is being recorded. These images will be sent on a memory stick, in the near future, so that there is the possibility of making another short film that can also be seen in the front window of Oriel Q.
In my workshop in Frome these daily Tabloid front pages are ready to redact.
B.C. The plan is that I will return to Oriel Q to work on the front pages in the gallery between 10am to 4pm each day from Wednesday July 21st - Saturday July 24th.
Anyone who is interested can come and work with me there to react to news on these Tabloid pages through image, word, collage etc. You are welcome also to bring your own materials, front pages etc to work in the Gallery space, within permitted Covid restrictions.
Our Guest Curator Sammy Carswell, Terrific job Sammy, professionally organised for us, brilliant. Talking of guest curators if anyone would like to be involved with the gallery OR has a suggestion for a curated show, please contact info@orielqnarberth.com
Artist Peter Spriggs in online correspondence with Samantha Carswell; Oriel Q’s first guest curator, responsible for the presentation of our Barry Cooper: ‘Events’ exhibition 17th June -24th July 2011
[photos: Glenn Ibbitson]
Q. Congratulations Sam. You have just completed your first degree in Sociology at the University of Durham and have been accepted on to a Masters Degree in Creative and Cultural Industry Management at the University of Northumbria. I guess Barry Cooper's "Events" exhibition at Oriel Q Narberth may be your first experience in curation and wonder was it perhaps a baptism of fire where it may have been difficult to get even one cat to face the right way?
Yes in a way I suppose it was, when preparing there were the obvious challenges of organising the exhibition over Zoom etc. But upon arrival to the gallery, although quite a daunting experience in the beginning, seeing the space and artwork in person was a experience of great clarity.
Also, since we have all been in the gallery, and as this is my first real experience working this closely with an exhibition, it really has been a real benefit to be surrounded by such experienced and accomplished artists such as Barry Cooper and Peter Spriggs. Who have supported me throughout this whole process. This really has been a collaboration between us all.
Q. You have established a good working relationship with Barry and a clear understanding of his work - would you like to explain how these were developed?
As all of the preliminary work to this exhibition was on Zoom, there was obviously going to be the issue that I was not physically going to see the work until the putting up of the exhibition.
However, Barry was incredibly helpful in explaining and showing his work throughout our meetings. Also, I think one main benefit of things all being over Zoom is that I got to see Barry in his studio space, which is such an important part of understanding the work and how has been produced.
Q. Barry is a mature and prolific artist with a huge body of work spanning back over 40+ years, please explain how you established the title for the exhibition and how you selected the work.
There is a huge body of work that we were working with, and I think with many of the pieces of work being series of work, such as the September 12th works or the Xenophobia acrylic on canvas works, it was clear that there were sections and phases of Barry’s work which could be made clear in this exhibition.
And with choosing the title Events, I think this title sums Barry’s work at multiple levels. There is that each of the sections of work is a response to an event itself, such as the Brexit, the Twin Towers or more recently the coronavirus pandemic. However also there is that Barry’s work emphasises the uniqueness of a singular brush stroke as an event itself. Which is evident in the Musical works.
So you can see how the title Events sums Barry’s work in more than one way.
Q. Is being new to curating exhibitions an advantage - perhaps there was an opportunity to come up with alternative and fresh ways of exhibiting work?
I think that this being my first experience curating an exhibition has been an advantage due to me having no expectations of what the exhibition should look like, so really considering all the possibilities in the space. And I think that also being new to this specific space in oriel Q has the same advantage, in that I am a completely outside and new perspective on the space. That being said, I do think that having Barry and Peter here with me have guided me to explore as many options as possible and supported me when I needed it.
Q. Please talk about ways you have devised to engage the public with this exhibition (e.g. Barry was going to complete a live painting in Oriel Q during the exhibition but Covid regulations meant this could not go ahead. How did you come up with a different way?
In our meetings, we had discussed many possibilities such as a Live painting in the gallery, an iWalk through Narberth with Barry and having a workshop where members of the public can respond to newspaper images like Barry does.
In light of the pandemic, we really have had to rethink many aspects of these workshops. But new technologies have really enabled what we went out to achieve, for example having Barry complete a live painting and having it filmed which still enables the viewer to witness Barry and the event of his painting as part of the exhibition
Q. You quickly grasped the way Oriel Q functions. It's run by volunteers and aims to showcase excellence in fine art. In today's financial climate the gallery does not necessarily have the clout of high powered funding, is this something that ever concerned you when curating Barry's exhibition?
I do not think that that has ever been a real concern or limitation in this exhibition, I think we, and I think I can speak on behalf of Barry and Peter on this, have absolutely achieved what we had set out to. And this is not necessarily something enabled by high powered funding, but rather the passion and time put in by those working in the gallery.
Q. You organised a number of curatorial meetings on Zoom. I understand there were humorous and amusing moments in these. Was it difficult, at times, to keep a professional face
Haha yes possibly at times, I think in the past year and a half everyone has seen their fair share of funny zoom moments. I suppose that is one of the things which has made this project so fun!
Extracts from a conversation with Samantha Carswell @Oriel Q 23rdJune, 2021
I’m self-taught as an artist. My mother was an artist who went to the R.A. the 1930s and I think that, through the whole of my schooldays, I was probably a little intimidated by that so I didn't start drawing at all until I was studying philosophy at the age of 23 or 24 in Bangor University. I started drawing Picasso-esque drawings which come actually very easily to me. They are the the most facile means of communication I have actually. It's like my handwriting; they just come out of me. So yes, I started doing line drawings and then at home I started doing paintings because the other influence was the other philosophers whom I learnt from and were very good painters, both abstract and figurative.
I didn't in fact finish my philosophy and in 1970 -71 Probably the reason I didn’t finish my degree was because I was just frustrated that that you know the whole studying philosophy is about regurgitating other people's thoughts and and nitpicking the arguments, and I wanted to realise some of the ideas through my painting. I took a year out and then I Began painting full -time and in 1975 or so the Ballet Rambert came to Bangor to perform in the New Theatre and I was working backstage and there I became fascinated with the work and so I Began drawing the choreography, which I continued for the next 10 years, going to theatres around the country where I could go and sit in the Auditorium [Leeds Grand and Sadlers Wells] and then I was offered a show in the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm in 1976 where Rambert launched their first full-length ballet based on the life and death of Lorca. [Cruel Garden choreographed by Christopher Bruce in collaboration with Lindsay Kemp]
After a show in the October gallery in 1984, where my work was described as being ‘figuratively abstract’, I was offered a place at the Royal College of Art. I had no formal training and the course itself wasn’t a training; you were visited by well known painters. The main influence for me was John Golding, an expert on Cubism. He’d mounted many exhibitions of Picasso and Matisse. I had a long relationship with him which lasted beyond the Royal College.
At the Royal College I did a lot of work from the model in the life room. John Goulding and Peter de Francia were big influences there.
I started to develop a philosophy From the ground work of Cubism; from the idea of examining reality on the canvas in three-dimensional form, I began to think about nuclear events, which in terms of the science of the last hundred years is an important ingredient in human thought. So on the blank canvas I started to mark-make. I saw the marks as being particles. It's as though you are in the Hadron Collider in Cerne; particles are raced around in opposite directions; they meet, there is an event and what the physicists are looking for are accidents. It’s the same on my canvas; I am looking for accidents. I build up from marks and gradually progress to seeing this kind of realistic abstraction as a way into music, which I had previously been working with in the dance company.
Some late Synthetic Cubist paintings had made comment on the world in the sense of investigating the material of the world through painting, and that went into the works triggered by 9/11. I was using newspaper as a palette for oils at the end of the day I would make a painting out of that palette on the single sheet I was working on. When the newspapers from September 12th surfaced on that pile, I couldn't just mix my paint on them so I saved them; photocopiying both sides and then the original newsprint I glued down onto board -losing one side, and then made paintings out of them.
My motive there was a healing image. I used two things; one was the goddess, an image which goes right back to rock art. The other was the bird which is also something which features in Rock are going back to the Neolithic and further, actually so I used to bird more as a symbol of of our interconnectedness of mobility all those things and the Gia was definitely a healing thing
At various stages after that I collected newspapers; redacted them and then added images and words. I collected 117 front pages tracing the history of brexit from its beginning to about March 2019. I had a show shortly after that called Armageddon
The main thrust of my work became music and in particular in this show the music of two composers. One is Ysaÿe. A violinist, he made six sonatas dedicated to his violinist friends six solo sonatas for violin and and a collection of six of those in this show and then I turn to Bartok who is one of my favourite composers and I have recently been working from his six string quartets.
Although I am a visual artist, I am not a very practical person and I've been self-taught all the way along. I've learnt from from other people how to do things and in particular in this show I looked to the to the Welsh artist Peter Spriggs who was 17 years younger than me at the Royal College of Art but he was a lot wiser than me about the use of materials and so whereas in the early days I was pencilling in a composition and then filling in,he told me just to go just to go straight in with the paint and and realise that the paint is a material in itself which has to sing.
That kind of philosophy influenced my approach when I started to doing stone sculpture with a Zimbabwean stone carver, Joseph Muzondo who was wonderful, archetypal stone carver and the Zimbabweans have a saying that you start from this blank stone and it's not a square block, it's something you find and then you to teach the stone to talk and that kind of is is my attitude to painting too; I wrestle the image out of the canvas
The material side of it has always always been a struggle. It's always a challenge. the line drawings are fine they come naturally just like handwriting
Gradually I've learnt about the material -if we are making reference just to painting, the material of paint, then it's just got looser and looser; or rather freer and freer and I don't feel tied to an image although sometimes I want to control it more and define space and figures.
I think it's worth mentioning that one painter at the Royal College who I had some dealings with was Chris Fisher. He said to me two things: one was that art is about the juxtaposition of unanticipated elements. The other thing he said to me was that a painter is someone who's brush is a little ahead of themselves so you get out of the way of yourself and the image talks to you.
Barry Cooper; EVENTS Oriel Q until July 24th 2021
Simon Garrett in Conversation with Glenn Ibbitson about his show at the Gallery. 21st May 2021
Dawn Flying was the result of a long process which was to do with making something that sort of curved blimp shape, part chrysalis and part airship, but literally weightless; with the idea of transition, transformation, change. I struggled with this difficulty of making something which has no mass. I eventually came up by accident and frustration with the notion of making them in plaster. This resulted in a white form. At some point I just grabbed a brush and applied paint and almost at random applied the colour of sky, an evening or morning sky that gave it a sense of weightlessness: since it’s sky. This gave me the first inkling that I could think better with my hands than my head.
It almost became a three-dimensional canvas for you?
Not intentionally; I have a job distinguishing between two and three-dimensional work. Some pieces need colour in some way that I can't explain and others don’t.
Now you have said that, these works link more closely in atmosphere to the paintings on the wall. Were they done at the same sort of time?
That's interesting; they have all been completed in the same time frame and there must be a relationship to each other but it isn’t conscious. They are all very tactile; their appearance is a result of a process, which is defined by material and intent; a feeling that needs to be articulated in some way. I no longer know what's going to happen when I start and that’s become an essential part of the process. I used to have an idea and try to make it in whatever form I conceived a piece, I made it, I finished it, I moved to the next work. This seemed to me a rational, cerebral, but essentially sterile working method, closer to design than what art should be about, it didn’t feed itself. It wasn’t organic. I would be thoroughly bored with that approach now, it no longer has any interest at all. Of course, now there is a risk that they could all go horribly wrong at any time - some people would say they do! I don't know what is going to happen at the start of the process but I have an unarticulated feeling.
The method reminds me of somebody’s description of Louis Armstrong's early cornet playing as with “the abandon of someone with absolutely nothing to lose”.
Interesting you should say that because the works have a very ‘Jazzy’ look to them.
Well; there are improvised
Which is the essence of Jazz isn’t it?
I usually have 10 pieces on the go the same time which means I can always stay busy. There is always a surface ready to receive attention. A process which generates more as it goes along.
I wanted to get an idea down on paper the other day and sat down with my sketchbook and I watched my pencil do something completely different to what I had intended, and I thought let's just go with that. I really don't think that my rational brain is any use to my process. It's constructive idiocy in some degree.
These two paintings, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and Glimpse are pretty much contemporary. They were named after their completion. I have absolutely no idea how I did that (Kiss Me) and I would have a job to make anything like it again. I had never done anything like that before and when it was made I was intrigued by it. It was another clue about working without using my brain.
Glimpse; the very simple blue-and-white painting there, puzzles me too. It is as if I didn’t have anything to do with its making. The American poet Robert Frost said “if there is no surprise for the poet, there is no surprise to the reader” If things don’t surprise me, then they get painted over or stuck in the bin.
What did you use to apply the pigment here?
A cloth, I think. At some point I almost completely gave up using brushes. I often use my fingers to apply acrylic to canvas to make the process as direct as I can make it; as if forming the paintings and the sculptures were the same thing. Liquid and solid iterations of the same state of mind. The process is very direct between the surface and the hand and as tactile as I can make it.
Several of your works remind me a little of Jean Dubuffet
I love his playfulness and he was obviously a great champion of ‘Outsider Art’ which is a great interest of mine, together with paleolithic cave painting, which is probably the single longest fascination for me and is being reflected in my artwork more now. On one level art is what humans do and always have done for whatever reason; on the other hand it represents something very mysterious. I don't think I know any works of art that I really like that I actually fully understand.
The development of Western Art can be seen as an increasing cultural layer upon layer which eventually forms a cataract between the viewer and the object. I'm thinking in terms of prehistoric peoples by contrast having a much smaller cultural library to draw upon.
I don't know what the cultural sector was like 60,000 years ago! Essentially, they would've been just as we are; fully modern humans. With intelligence and experiences very similar to ours. Painting would've been very much more central to their culture. There is some very good drawing - and obviously not from life. I imagine they would have had a more visceral relationship with drawing.
It is interesting to view art by someone with an insider skill set but practicing outsider art.
I think it possibly has in common with a lot of creative disciplines, that you have to learn everything about it; and then forget everything you've learned. Otherwise you end up trying to work with Botticelli looking over your shoulder, and several hundred years of art history breathing down your neck. I find it very difficult looking at other people’s work, either if it's interesting I'm jealous of it or otherwise I'm not interested and it annoys me so I have to be in a very specific frame of mind to be able to look at art.
When we were hanging this show together the other day I must admit I started out presuming the paintings were to be used as backdrops to the sculpture. I initially saw the paintings as subservient to them. It doesn't look like that now. The exhibition looks much more balanced.
There is a risk that if one puts them too close together they interfere with each other. Sculpture can really hit you in the face in the way it occupies more volume. The paintings are to some extent field paintings; they're not so obvious. They take a bit more time to get to know. For example I don't know quite why or how, but sometimes their colours change with the changing light: movement. It isn't something that you see immediately. It's not intentional. I very much doubt I would be able to do it again because I don't know how it happened in the first place. There is an endless fascination with paint; it's a very seductive material.
What are your thoughts on iPad art? I feel it has evolved no visual personality of its own as yet.It is the absolute opposite of what I do. My art is about emotion, feeling, and the hand and the way it manipulates physical material, if I can’t get it on my clothes I'm not interested. Digital is an interesting medium and I expect exciting things will happen - but not by me..
In the series of Beacons, I was thinking about non-digital communication over long distances. I'm a great fan of Alfred Wallis, I love his lighthouses.
Another outsider
Yes, a sailor and an ice cream seller who wanted to paint what he had seen in his life, and also to fill in the long evenings after his wife died. One definition of the artist is someone who goes somewhere and comes back and tells you what it is he has seen. That’s what he was doing. I think that's what I do in a curious way. It resonates for me though whether it's a useful definition or not I don't know.
listen: it’s the sound of the universe reminds me of those time lapse films of fungi growing on rotting wood
Yes a little boy came in the other day and said it looked like a poisonous mushroom. This I feel is a ‘quiet’ piece. It is unusual in that respect. I'm not quite sure why I feel it's quiet though I was thinking of hearing things; some sort of listening device.
In Blue with Strange Receptors, that was receiving something other too; I didn’t have a notion of what information it was receiving. It arrived. I thought, what is that about? After I finished it and looked at it it occurred to me that it did look as if it might be some sort of dream Jodrell Bank receiving some sort of signal or mysterious energy from somewhere are other in another way This one (listen) is much more emotional in a way that I can't put my finger on. The idea of dream as a metaphor seems to be a useful one. Another particular interest of mine is Aboriginal painting. It took me a very long time to begin to understand, as a Westerner, their creation idea of ‘The Dreaming’ the idea that everything was and is made in the dreaming. Thomas Pynchon said "maps begin as dreams". Dreaming [not the simple go to sleep dreaming] seemed to be a useful metaphor for a wider consciousness, rather than narrow rational consciousness that we use to operate a computer and so forth.
I wondered about tools which have no real obvious function. That's quite true of a lot of relics. They did have a function; we just don't know what it is now. The group of Three Magical Utensils come into that category. Perhaps like dowsing rods. I always thought I would make a good dowser, but sadly I’m hopeless, I’m not sure what I would be dowsing for with these tools.
Dreams?…
As you can see these objects (the maquettes) are extremely delicate. Something I was thinking about at the time was chrysalises and cocoons and things going through stages of transformation. One theme if you like was movement; a spirit boat of some kind; the other theme was transformational change from one condition to another. They are very fragile and difficult to make bigger. I don't usually sit down with a pencil thinking that I should illustrate or plan something out; instead very often it might be a rhythm, or trying to describe energetic points, or movement.
Talking about energy points; on something like Yellow with Warm Nodes they are almost like sunbursts
For some time I imagined it was an asteroid; having started off as an ugly pea pod. It was ugly - it still is in a way. The asteroid seemed nondescript, so I tried to make it more suggestive.
A lot of the 3-D pieces are made in plaster. The armatures were made from a variety of materials; paper, aluminium foil, anything that can be formed by hand, tactile, plasticity is vitally important because the armatures have to be formed by hand freely and then after that a lot of it is rationalising the surface so it is a finished piece rather than just an armature. Texture is important. Form suggests texture. Similar shapes can be quite radically changed by texture Some seem to suggest that they need to be smooth; others rough. I am wary of over-finishing pieces. Some I have done and they lose their tactile quality, if they are ever completed. Even the fairly smooth ones like Icarus are actually pretty rough if you look closely.
The exceptions are perhaps some of the bean-shaped ships, although in the case of Stealth the surface itself is very smooth and quite a lot of trouble went into finishing it I seem to have deliberately ruined that smooth surface by splattering paint all over it in the most violent way I could. On top of the plaster I use a lot of gesso as a finishing medium; pigmented gesso. I use a lot of polymer clay because it is tactile; like a permanent plasticine. Gold leaf because it is a better way of getting a gold colour than paint. I also like the fact that gold leaf has been used for so long. Thousands of years….
Painting is almost always in acrylic unless I want to stick things into it. Some have elements of polymer clay gilded in them. A notion I pinched from the Palaeolithic; there are lots of instances of teeth being stuck into cracks in their cave walls; a strange thing to do except that in a dark cave they would reflect torchlight. Somehow that resonated with me in a way that I can't really put my finger on. It seemed to me quite sensible; quite understandable.
At least two of the comments in the visitors book describe these pieces as ‘edible’
I'm not sure about edible. l I know that they’re not. I quite like the idea because it's another of the senses which is being evoked in some way or other. It is not conscious, though I do enjoy cooking; maybe somewhere that expresses itself in some way through the work. I'm not sure I'd recommend they lick the work -especially post-Covid.
Something that struck me having put the exhibition up is how many of the pieces float, which is a slightly odd thing to say since I mentioned flying in the exhibition title. For some reason it hadn’t struck me. I was particularly puzzled by the pieces I called Trees which are obviously missing one of the key features of a tree; they have no roots; both of them float. I was reminded about some of the beasts in cave paintings. They are beautifully drawn; there was no lack of skill on the part of the draughtsman, but a lot of the animals don't have feet! The best explanation I've come across is that they don't need feet because they don’t walk on the ground, they are spirit animals. I have a feeling that is why my trees might not need roots.
Peter Spriggs Retro-spective Exhibition
ORIEL Q GALLERY Narberth
Dear Artists, friends and supporters,
This is a plea to all people who have exhibited in Oriel Q or bought from here or who have enjoyed visiting and would like to see the gallery continuing, especially in its new venue which has got off to a really good start !
The annual Artist and Collector Fundraising Auction exhibition which ends in an auction on Saturday 14thNovember,will be open from 23rd October and we hope you will be able to contribute to this show.
This year the whole Auction will be online from 23rd October along with the work being exhibited in the gallery to see first hand. To register for the auction go to
The money raised is to help pay the rent of the gallery and make improvements.
Up to three works can be submitted for entry and they can be from you as an artist or from your collection (why not refresh your walls and buy something new!).
The terms are that we take 50% commission (unless you would like to donate the work!).
You may put a reserve on the work and the auctioneer will not allow it to go for less than this, but,as it is a fundraiser, we ask you to be generous and not put too high a price on it.
Work must be mirror plated for hanging (unless it is 3D) and we ask you to submit an image of each entry, with size, title and details by email. Extra forms are available from the gallery and on the website (www.orielqnarberth.com) to enable this.
Please send these details as soon as possible and bring in the work on any week day to our delivery hub, AutodromoLtd , Unit 6 West Wales Business Park, Redstone Road Narberth SA677ES 01834860999.
The exhibition will be open on Friday 23rd October until Saturday 14th November, Wednesday-Saturday 10am – 5pm plus extra days when volunteers are available to invigilate.
( Would you spare a few hours?) Tel.07917292774 .
We hope that you will contribute to this exhibition and make a date in your diary to come to the auction on November 14th but it will be available online throughout the exhibition and on real time on the final auction day
Best Wishes,
Harriet Addyman (Gallery manager)
Please help support Oriel Q, enter work or join the Auction ! We are still here and look forward to the next years programme......
More details will follow, please contact info@orielqnarberth.com for more information. A treat for collectors and buyers of works and going online this year great exposure for artists.
Thanks to all our volunteers who worked really hard to prepare the gallery.
As soon as it was decided to hold 'Back to Collage' at Oriel Q, it became apparent how many Wales-based artists are exploring the possibilities of collage. Peter Rossiter, artist and guest curator was delighted with the phenomenal response to his call-out. "The exhibition has 40 artists taking part showcasing the exciting range of this multifaceted medium; from escapism and fantasy to cutting edge reflections on the world we live in."
Private viewing of the exhibition will be on the 1st Nov from 6pm, fully open to the public from the 2nd - 30th Nov inclusive.
The Christmas Exhibition 4th - 21st Dec will contain:
Objects of Desire - Main Gallery
The Shape of Sound by Harry Bryanstone - Oriel Fach
The Oriel Q Fundraiser (8 x 6" canvases for auction) - Makers Room & Stairs
Please note: We would like to ask artists to pick up a 8 x 6 canvas from the gallery, create a wonderful painting and this will then go into the auction.
Any canvases not auctioned, will be raffled at the Christmas Party on the 21st Dec and raffle tickets are £5, prizes will also include a hamper and wine.
Please note - THE GALLERY WILL BE CLOSED FOR THE MONTH OF JANUARY.
Re-opens February.
GALLERY CHANGES:
Tanya Burke (professional accountant and bookkeeper) will take over as Treasurer.
Emma Harries (professional executive assistant) has been appointed Secretary.
Cora Cloud is confirmed as Admin. John Sleigh is Catalogue Organiser.
Diana will continue as Chair and Harry as Gallery Manager.
Oriel Q Gallery is now a volunteer led not-for-profit company ensuring the future of this well-established exhibition space.
Are you passionate about the arts? do you have experience to offer or work you would like to show?
Please contact our team on info@orielqnarberth.co.uk
PLEASE consider being a Friend of the gallery to receive invitations and updates on exhibitions and workshops. YOUR SUPPORT IS VITAL
To subscribe to the Friends it’s currently £20 per annum to help cover running costs. Please contact the Team on info@orielqnarberth.com
The Winter Open Exhibition 2018 is in full swing with over 100 artworks submitted from Ireland, England and throughout Wales. It is a truly diverse exhibition with most media being employed to capture land and seascapes, still life studies, abstract and figurative work. Below is a preview of how this fabulous exhibition is looking.
This exhibition will run until 22nd December 2018, when we will be throwing our big Oriel Q Xmas Bash to really get in to the festive spirit. All are very welcome to this free event, where we will be offering you the chance to win a real piece of art for the price of a raffle ticket, an opportunity not to miss (see HERE for details)!
Many thanks to David for reading his poem as part of the In Conversation With: Keith Bayliss and Roger Moss event. Click this post to read the poem in full.
Eamon Colman has generously donated his painting, ‘Dreaming in exile of a lonely field’ from his recent exhibition here at the gallery (click HERE for exhibition info) in a bid to help us raise funds. We cannot thank Eamon enough! We will be selling raffle tickets to win this original artwork. Tickets are £10 each, the raffle will be drawn on the last day of the Winter Open exhibition 2018 (December 23rd) and the winner will be notified before Christmas.
This is an excellent opportunity to obtain an original piece of work from an internationally recognised and established artist, whilst also supporting Oriel Q Gallery.
Raffle tickets to win this brilliant prize are available from Oriel Q Gallery in Narberth. Find us on the top floor of the Queens Hall. If you are unable to get to the gallery, we can arrange tickets via email - please contact us on info@orielqnarberth.com
Do not miss out on this fantastic opportunity and good luck!
Below is a full-view of the painting to be won…
Eamon Colman ‘Dreaming in exile of a lonely field’
Mixed Media £2600
