Art at Rhosygilwen

I will be showing work at Art at Rhosygilwen, arts festival, July 3rd & 4th

in the exhibition:

Tarantela yn erbyn y wâl: dawns i arbed fy mywyd cyn i mi gyrraedd 50
Tarantella against the wall: a dance to save my life before I’m 50

Tarantella: a dance to remove the poison and melancholy of the spider's bite, a dance to save your life.

I examine myself, my body …not a youthful body any longer, physical limitations, psoriasis, notions of depression, melancholy and what are we do about such emotions?
Alongside this are my continuing investigations of movement and stillness, which captures movement best, moving or still images (wrote my first essay on this in 1983)? In what ways do we believe photography? If I tell you this is taken with a compact camera with no cable release; and these are not stills from a video…. How do you read it?
At times it is impossible for me to dance due to psoriatic arthritis…so how do I set out to save my one, precious life? And how do I feel about wearing a petticoat in a smooth skinned slim youth beauty culture?

a slow tarantella by L' Arpeggiata - "remember you must die" can be listened to here

around and about:

Cosmic housekeeper: sweeping the yard
Gwraig cadw tŷ cosmig: ysgubo’r llathen

Turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. A square yard is defined by four tape measures – metric on one side, imperial the other, pinned together. A small quadrant of the universe is designated for cleaning. All manner of brushes and cloths are used.
Conversations sometimes occur… about domestic things, a particular one I remember is about an old tradition, from maybe just my locality, of cleaning slate floor slabs then drawing a pattern with dock leaves.

see previous entry

Lines & Strata

An open exhibition presenting a cross section of contemporary drawing practice from artists across Wales

Arddangosfa agored sy'n cyflwyno croestoriad o arferion darlunio cyfoes o bob cwr o Gymru.



Oriel Llyfrgell Dinbych/Denbigh Library Galery

Sgwar y Neuadd, Dinbych

06.03.2010 - 17.04.10



holy hiatus 3, 4 & 5: repetition & stillness



Drawing has always paid an important part in my life. My two favourite methods being pencil (currently Staedtler EE) and pen & ink. The work has ranged from near botanical accuracy to abstracting the landscape. I also view drawing in broader terms seeing lines and arrangements in everyday life that I photograph – from natural to synthetic. Throughout my life I have also used movement. In formal training I learnt to remember sequences of movement by orientation in the space and a sense of drawing with feet and hands. When I created a phrase of movement (to be repeated for 6 hours) for Holy Hiatus I was very aware of the floor pattern, especially as one of my practice places was on the estuary in Trefdraeth/Newport.

red riding wolf

work in progress
rose images: Quebec, February 2005, forest images: Sir Benfro, August 2006 ; part of an ointment 'all in a days work'
thanks to Louise Laurens, Ailsa Richardson & Mel Shearsmith who joined me, bringing ideas from email exchanges.

The imagery here was via www.slide.com which has now closed, I will replace ASAP

also inspiration from Angela Carter & conversations with Mike Hodson. Of course there is always more but these are the important ones...also earlier work of my own.

additional texts are being compiled here

Red Riding Wolves

The imagery here was via www.slide.com which has now closed, I will replace ASAP



featuring Louise Laurens and Ailsa Richardson
part of an ointment 'all in a day' event

additional texts are being compiled here

a place for everything lle i bopeth

Ooh La La
a burlesque inspired exhibition,
View from the Top, Nottingham

under over

The imagery here was via www.slide.com which has now closed, I will replace ASAP

inside outside under over below above

into black beneath and out and up to white above, followed by echoes

part of an ointment 'all in a day's work' event

a black video link

a visual video link

angels on the beach

an edge living on the edge birds fly from the rock edge water hits land and disappears into air velella velella by-the-wind-sailor come to land and die in their thousands truly having lived on the edge leaving their fate to the hand of god consider the lilies they go where the air and water take them
we move very little and observe in ourselves the desire to go into the water noting also that we are both too unwell to even take a decent walk

part of an ointment 'all in a day's work' event. Lou laurens and I visited the site: ceibwr, some days after the others.

Eli (salve) with ointment

ELI (salve) prosiect ointment projects 2005

Over the last 4 years ointment have initiated a number of public arts projects exploring the relationships between nature and culture in the rural, both here in west Wales and Internationally.

Spanning the seasons between summer 2004 and spring 2005, the artists of ointment will create the ELI (salve) project. In the following live art events they invite the public to participate in a series of walks to find extraordinary herbs in ordinary places and to join with them in making ointment, the ointment itself serving as a medicinal balm for the collective skin of a community and as a botanic and cultural map of particular geographies of west Wales. Also Simon whitehead and Maura Hazelden will take the project to Darmstadt in September 2004.

look here for all eli entries

click here for full eli (salve) text

eli (salve) on ointment site found here

Eli, installation, Llandudoch

THE CHARM SISTERS FROM TYRYET, PONTFAEN, CWM GWAUN, SIR BENFRO

Until the advent of the National Health system there was always cost to see a doctor. People could resort to their own devises – creating a folk herbal tradition, or turn to the local herbalists, healers or doctors, all of which have evolved and borrowed from each other over the years. There have always been an extraordinary range of people to turn to should the problem seem to be beyond your control or capacity to treat: the shaman, the witch, the wise woman, the wart healer, the barber surgeon, the medical doctor, the medical herbalist etc. And you didn’t always get medicine to swallow or an ointment to apply – there were charms and spells, magic and psychic powers afoot.
Dig back far enough and wide enough in your area or even family and you will surely hear of a healer and perhaps one that didn’t apply lotions, medicines or even their hands.
In west Wales in the early twentieth century there were two sisters, Gwawr and Mair Evans, who from their mid teens seemed to have had a gift for making charms to cure various ills of the body and occasionally the heart. It is believed they gained their knowledge from an unmarried great aunt on their father’s side, who lived close to them in Cwm Gwaun.
The sisters were born and brought up at Tyryet in Pontfaen, Cwm Gwaun. When their mother married a few years after the death of their father, when they were 20 and 22, the unmarried sisters moved to a small cottage, Iet-hen-isaf near Mynachlog ddu.
They both seemed to have knowledge of the use of herbs but rarely used them to treat others; some notes and letters sent to a cousin give suggestions of treatment with herbal decoctions, tinctures and ointments. They did use herbs and spices and flowers in the making of the charms that took the form of actual objects. Also both houses where they lived had significant springs close by and they often made mention of use of particulars waters to take or to be involved with ritual.
The charms were individually tailored to the person and the ailment and given along with instructions of how to use them. It is not clear in what form payment was.
These were not two sisters from a poor family, but certainly there was no spare income from the family farm. But they survived, it would seem, without any other income or work than the charms, though it is known that Mair was outstanding at decorative embroidery. Not a lot else is known about them, though a visiting academic from Cardiff made particular note about their well-stocked library everything from herbals to poetry to philosophy to science. All was lost when the sisters died in a devastating house
fire, thought to have been caused by a lightening strike, in 1930. The sisters were only aged 29 and 31.
Little collections of charms, some with more detailed information than others remain in the possession of local families; presumably grateful people for whom the charms worked.
The three charms here were given on different occasions to Bethan Edwards of Maenclochog. The ball was made by Gwawr and apparently is made of petals including soapwort and pink roses, along with hair from Bethan. It is not known if the wax and petals continue to the centre or if it is wrapped around some other substance. Also recorded is that it contains frankincense and certainly after it has been confined in a box for a while and is first brought out there is a hint of the fragrance. It seems that Bethan had ongoing menstrual problems and the ball was hung on her bed during daylight hours and taken to hang by an east-facing window during hours of darkness. It was originally held within a silk tulle bag of which there is a scrap left.
Mair, whose work, apparently always had silk ribbon flowers attached, made the other two charms. Bethan received the rose with bird foot and feathers charm during her difficult pregnancy with her first daughter, Caryl. The charm was kept enclosed in a small box above the fireplace until the labour started then it was taken out of the box and hung in the window of Bethan’s bedroom, where the birth took place. Afterward it was kept near the baby’s crib for a year and a day.
The feather charm was made for Bethan’s son Dafydd who was ill as a teenager. It is made with feathers that seem to match those on the rose ball – possibly a grey wagtail. It is not known if this is particular to Bethan’s family or to Mair herself. It has a small piece of elderflower attached – the elder has always been an important tree for protection.
Both children grew up healthy and remained in the area. Dafydd died in 1993 aged 91 and Caryl in 2002 aged 82. It was Caryl who had received the charms from her mother and passed them on to a great niece living locally. It seems there were others but not in a very good state of repair.
Many charms made by Gwawr and Mair were never meant to be kept, as their use included putting them outside where the weather and rain undid them again.


References include:
Mynachlog-ddu, a historical survey, E.T. Lewis 1969
Pethau Cysegredig, Amgueddfa Sir Gaerfyrddin, 1996
Dedicated to and influenced by the rigorous scholarship and creativity of Iolo Morganwg, without whom contemporary Welsh culture would be depleted

Caerdydd - Clunderwen - Caerdydd

Tactile Bosch, selected group show.

very large photographic work of train window images from the above journey, mainly of Port Talbot.

the space between

Have I ever been to Port Talbot?
Inside and outside, moving and stationary. Reflections in glass - where do they exist? The glass is thin, but as I focus the lens, I go beyond the glass. Focus on the glass and the beyond, the real outside, (especially the industry of Port Talbot particularly the steel works, remembered from geography lessons at the age of 11), is still there, but out of focus. I’ve never stopped in the town, only passed through, probably hundreds of times. My eye can’t focus both on the near glass and the far landscape. Focus on the glass for dirt and rain and scratches, memories. Where are you when you travel? An investigation of memory, seeing and landscape, within travel.
An ongoing series of work Clunderwen – Caerdydd – Clunderwen; Charing Cross – Charlton – Charing Cross and other journeys that occur such as Caerdydd – Carlisle – Caerdydd.

the order of domestic memory

@ ointment II, Llandudoch/St. Dogmaels, Sir Benfro, Cymru/Wales
installation & performance






The Domestic Order of Memory
The Memory of Domestic Order
The Order of Domestic Memory

Order
Organise
Arrange


Every part in its right place
A place for everything

Trefn Ddomestig Cof
Cof Trefn Ddomestig
Trefn Cof Domestig

Trefnu
Cymhennu
Tacluso


Pod darn yn ei briod le

Lle i bopeth


ointment website: events

Old Stone: on paper, on cloth

Ceredigion Museum,
Aberystwyth

photographs, mainly details, of early Welsh crosses, with John Sharkey.

the tea cups should never be stacked

the tea cup, particularly the pink tea cup and a particular green one will be found throughout my work....for, I expect much more than 10 years, it's been 9 already........

Self Portrait

the land in the body, the body in the land

Shown at:
CAT Show, Caerdydd, Cymru Wales 1999
Wrth Fy Modd, Oriel Mwldan, Aberteifi, Cymru/Wales December 2004