It's not often you talk to an artist about their upcoming exhibition and find out they are not yet sure what it will contain.
To some this might seem an impossibly nerve-wracking work ethic, but for Abergavenny-based sculptor Sean Edwards the genesis of his pieces can only begin once he is in situ.
His latest installation, Drawn in Cursive, opens at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff on Saturday 27 July and runs until Sunday 22 September, before moving temporarily to the Netwerk Gallery in Aalst, Belgium in December and then to Mostyn in Llandudno in October 2014.
It will consist of an outpouring of considered pieces from Sean's own archive of objects, images, drawings, photographs and clippings that he has been accumulating for a decade and adds to each day.
Sean Edwards, Untitled, 2013. Framed archival giclee print. Image courtesy of the artist, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin and Limoncello, London
Materials he has found that no longer serve their original purpose like scraps of chipboard or discarded packaging are imbued with new potential through the creative process, containers for materials become different types of vessels.
He told me: "I accumulate objects and sculptures and imagery in everyday life and then I will take them to each gallery space with me and craft them in relation to the history and space of the site.
"I am interested in the outpouring of things that sit at the periphery of a practice; the incidental moments and small objects in life that we sometimes neglect.
"They are usually manufactured or man-made objects that in some way are part of our ongoing obsession with producing things that end up as detritus."
Sean Edwards, Remaining Only, 2011. Courtesy of the artist, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin and Limoncello, London. Photo: Nick Ash
Because the completion of his work is only ever achieved in the exhibition environment, it gives a flexibility and fluidity to each installation, with the pieces open to audience participation.
This places a new spin on the perception of the gallery and our expectations of what state of creation we should perceive our artworks in.
It could provoke the reaction that the exhibition will be too randomly organised for audiences to grasp but Sean says he uses "artistic intuition" when gathering and selecting objects and to create the expanding dialogue around it.
Sean said: "For the two galleries that follow Chapter, I am taking a slightly different approach and will be making a larger structure that supports the objects on display in a more conceptual way - a shelf that goes round the entire gallery space or a bookshelf that goes down the centre of the gallery space.
"Each exhibition will shift and change in dialogue with the architecture, history and location of each space: so the exhibition at Chapter will mirror the building's past life as a former school; Netwerk, Aalst, Belgium's past as a former textile factory and Mostyn's as a purpose-built picture gallery which traditionally showed women's art."
Sean Edwards, Resting Through, 2012. Installation at Kunstverein Freiburg. Courtesy of the artist, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin and Limoncello, London. Photo: Marc Doradzillo
The exhibition at Chapter will encompass most of the building with an accompanying installation on the Lightbox, an Art in the Bar exhibition and various film screenings and hopes to enable those that are familiar with the venue to reposition themselves within it.
Sean Edwards was born in Cardiff and lives in Abergavenny having gained his BA Fine Art at University of Wales Institute (2003) and his MA Fine Art at Slade, London (2005).
The exhibition at Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno takes place from 17 October 2014 to 4 January 2015.
