My triptych Postcards from a mythical childhood have been selected for the upcoming Above and Below exhibition at Artizan Gallery, Fleet Street, Torquay, Devon.
The postcards show photographs of me as a small child taken in Brixham. The original images were taken on Brixham Harbourside and Mansands Beach Brixham in the late 1950s and 1960s. I have collaged these photographs with images of classical gods and imagery. The landscape where we spent our childhood seems unchanged but it holds myth and legends that have migrated through the western world, changing our perception of our small world as we mature and understand the fragility of all we hold and love. As climate change increases, idyllic childhoods, landscapes and our lives become like Ozmandias of Egypt – lone and level sands stretched far.
Above and Below information from Artizan Gallery
As part of Devon Open Studios 2022, we are delighted to host castings and other artefacts from the Time and Tide Bell initiative and to host a programme of performances, readings, and workshops in partnership with Prof Corinna Wagner (University of Exeter) on a project supported by the UK Climate Resilience Programme and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Alongside this we’re hosting a curated show of new works that respond to the themes celebrated by the bells, as well as their warning about rising sea levels, flooding and coastal erosion. Exhibiting artists have created works responding to themes of:
- Interconnectedness
- Our relationship with the sea
- Coastal communities
- A fragile world
- Floods, ruins, erosion,
- Disappearing infrastructure and communities
The Time and Tide Bell Project
The Time and Bell Project was first conceived in 2008 by Marcus Vergette (artist, sculptor, bell-maker) and now includes seven completed and six in progress bells along the UK coastline. The bells are public artworks, gifted to reinforce connections in local communities, between different parts of the country, between the land and the sea, between ourselves and our environment.
The bells, which toll at high tides, remind us of the material and intangible relationships we have with each other and the world around us, and in doing so draw our attention to the fragility of our environment and the impact we inevitably have through our irrevocable connection to it.