I am so excited that my concept for the Wighton 23 exhibition has been selected!
Many of you are probably familiar with the Cley summer exhibition held in July. The main venue was St. Margaret’s Church. Over the years artwork was exhibited throughout the town and on the beach. In 2021, the final year at Cley, my installation piece ‘Ether’ was exhibited.
Run by the North Norfolk Exhibition Project (https://nnepcontemporaryart.com) and originally located in Salthouse, the exhibition will take place at Wighton for the first time this year. It runs from Thursday 6 July – Sunday 6 August. The venue is All Saints Church and includes the churchyard and conservation area. Forty artists will be responding to the theme ‘Cycle’ in an exhibition curated by Rachel Allen of Mandell’s Gallery in Norwich.
The conservation area is reached through a gate off the churchyard. It’s like a magical entrance to an intimate space. Present are several historic gravestones and crosses. One bears the name Raymond Spencer Moore, father of Henry Moore. It’s funny to have landed in a place so close to where Henry Moore spent his holidays while studying at the Royal College of Art. What a surprise to find that it was here that Henry Moore found the flint that so inspired him. It is here that my work will be.
The title of my piece is Beginning – Ending – Beginning. I will be making a sequence of pillar-like shapes growing out of the ground in which I will embed organic materials found on site. This will be a development of the work I did at the Symposium in Germany last September. It will be an exploration of how time will effect the natural materials and how long it will take for them to break down and disappear allowing new surfaces to emerge. What will happen to the cement?
On the one hand the work will be a living piece in that it will change over the month at Wighton. At the same time it’s a decaying and dying piece. A paradox.
So, if you are curious about how my work is progressing or questioning whether I will be able to get everything done on time, don’t hesitate to drop in and ‘check up’ on me during my open hours (Saturdays and Sundays from 10-1). If you are passing and see me working, tap on the door and I will open for a chat.