I had soooooo many plans for things to do, see and visit over the summer months and now it's September....hey ho! I'm sure I'll somehow get over it!...gutted I didn't get to "Cloth and memory" exhibition at Salts mill gallery..I think that was bad management on my part as I really wanted to see it....so I'll have to wait until next August to see part 2!
... My next exhibition's looming at the Triton gallery. I have almost finished all three pieces of work....The exhibition is basically about a group of artists who meet up monthly to discuss art and stuff, visit each others studio's, guest speakers etc type of affair ....
...who decided to exhibit together at the Triton Gallery, Sledmere house.
The brief was ~Sledmere! so anything to do with the building, gardens history etc....quite an open opportunity to play with. After a group visit around the house I laid it to rest for a bit...revisiting photos and researching it every couple of weeks etc....letting ideas formulate , & trying a few of them out....
....I found some of the least obviouse elements of the place interesting... gutter brackets, plaster molding, repeat patterns,
as you can tell from this eclectic collection of photos...I seem to be drawn to relief marks etc I hadn't realised this until I looked at the selection of photos....and it definitely wasn't my intention...
interesting!
....with such wonderful furniture and rooms to feast your eyes on I hone in on plaster work, plant tags and garden figurines....?
It took a while to get my head around what I wanted to do, I found the house quite sad and forlorn...don't get me wrong it most probably wasn't and isn't but the first time I went it was just opening for the season and it seemed eerily quiet..there was nobody about apart from a few random gardeners going about their business!
Sir Christopher Sykes extended the building and redecorated it in the 1780's and 1790's, sadly it was ravished and gutted by a fire in 1911, however through careful restoration most people still think of Sledmere House as an eighteenth-century house.
Something that really appealed to me was the vast amount of rich and ornate plasterwork by Joseph Rose. How it's repeated throughout the house weaving its beauty in the least suspecting places: corners, ceilings, pillars etc. so I decided to concentrate on just one piece of plasterwork.
I wanted to portray through my work how uneasy I had felt on my first visit....is that how the children had felt when they were there I wondered...present but never really properly seen or heard....in the shadows... did they peep past the columns totally unaware and unaffected by their beautiful surroundings at unsuspecting guests and visitors...just like the lone stone figurines dotted and hidden surreptitiously throughout the gardens?!
So the idea and body of work was formed....influenced by Rose's plasterwork muted tones and shadows....and a lone figurine!....
So here's a sneak peak at some of the work hopefully going into the exhibition...of course its mixed media!...and just like Frank Stella I have used the same pattern/shape and repeated it in various forms and playing with shadows, tone and scale...
....anyway....it's been good to blog!....catch up again fairly soon...
....Take care, happy reading, bye
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