Lower Gallery: Field-notes by Iwan Bala & Menna Elfyn
Upper Gallery: Like Life Itself by Gerda Teljeur
14th January – 23rd February 2013
Official Launch: Saturday 19th January at 4pm.
Opened by poet and gallery owner Denis Collins.
Featuring a reading by poet Dr. Menna Elfyn.
All welcome to attend.
Lower Gallery
The exhibition Field-notes originated from the Oriel Myrddin Gallery in Carmarthen, Wales and was inspired by the shared interests of artist/writer Iwan Bala and poet/playwright Menna Elfyn. Working closely, they endeavoured to bring words and images together in a creative dialogue that explores their interest in language, identity and place. Bala finds the combination of words and images fascinating; he views maps and diagrams as didactic learning aides and works of art in their own right. Despite their implied certainty often there is a subtext, an error in translation, gaps, omissions which are open to interpretation. This is an issue which holds some contention in Wales and other marginalized cultures as the names of places; towns, villages, farms and houses are translated or lost by re-naming. Both artists explore and respond to the common bond of understanding that can potentially be irretrievably eroded through our use of language.
On this exhibition, Dr. Menna Elfyn commented: “Writing is all about field-work and the act of digging deep to unearth mysteries. We know too well that we are only passing through as we sub-consciously make our personal field-notes. Two artists seeing ‘something down there to smile at in the dust’ share the fascination of lifting and sifting through cae hir (long field) …”
Upper Gallery
Like Life Itself by Irish based artist Gerda Teljeur comprises of over three hundred pen and ink drawings produced over the course of a year. Responding to the intimate nature of the arts centre’s upper gallery, Teljeur has substituted her
customary large-scale drawings for smaller unframed pieces. Producing a work every day throughout 2011, this exhibition marks a new departure through the artist’s explorations into the manipulation of density and space between parallel lines. As with Teljeur’s previous work, the exploration of line and space is the material through which other subjects are meditated on or felt. Independent of any reasoning process, the artist adopts a technique which is similar to the act of free form writing and as such the drawings serve to integrate and rework the hidden activity of the subconscious and in doing so form an abstract language. The artist’s repetitive and cumulative process of drawing interrelates with the way in which thoughts and memories occur, and each work has the potential to evoke a complex range of emotions.
Gerda Teljeur came to Ireland in 1967 after studying at the IVKO (now Rietveld Academie) and Normaal School in Amsterdam, and now lives in County Wexford. Recent exhibitions include Into Irish Drawing, an exhibition curated by Arno Kramer, which toured Limerick City Gallery of Art, Civic Arts Centre in The Netherlands, The Irish Cultural Institute in Paris and the Millennium Courts Arts Centre in Belfast in 2009 and early 2010. In 2007, Gerda featured in Surface
Tension, an Arts Art Council funded initiative curated by Wexford Arts Centre and presented in Broadstone Studios in Dublin, Source Arts Centre in Thurles and Raheen Community Hospital in County Clare.
These exhibitions are funded by Coracle – connecting creativity between South West Wales and South East Ireland which is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Ireland Wales Programme (INTERREG 4A).
For further information on the exhibitions and artists please download a full Press Release below.
Gallery hours: Monday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.30pm.
Workshops and talks can be arranged upon request and tailored to suit the requirements of your group.
field-notes_press_2013.pdf
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likelifeitself_press_2013.pdf
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field-notes_catalogue.pdf
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