A new exhibition at Mostyn in Llandudno promises a unique journey around the UK through different artists’ eyes.
It features 25 artworks inspired by the places in which the artists were born or raised.
The exhibition includes painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and performance-based work, bringing together existing creations and new commissions by well-known artists like Tracey Emin, as well as Wales-based artists, Richard Bevan, Lucas Clayton, Melanie Counsell, Sean Edwards and Jessica Warboys.
Richard Bevan. Rachel's Bike, 2014. Video still. Courtesy the artist.
The pieces explore notions of childhood, biography and the artist’s own spiritual or creative development, yet have all been established with specific reference to geography.
I caught up with the gallery’s visual arts programme curator Adam Carr to gain a greater understanding of what he hopes to achieve with this selection of exhibits.
He told me: “Although I did not conceive it as an exclusive reference to Dylan Thomas’ work, the exhibition Return Journeyshares a similar sentiment to his work of the same name and indeed to the spirit of Thomas’ work in general.
“It intends to function as a unique journey around the United Kingdom, looking at the land through artists’ eyes, who themselves are ‘returning home’ through artworks which address and refer to the various places in which they were born or raised.
“From my observation of the way exhibitions in the past have dealt with geography, like shows surveying the New York, London or Paris art scene, they have acted as a foil, aiming to establish and present genres of art and moments of art history rather than looking at the idea of place in itself.
“Return Journey instead takes a literal look at the UK and its land, and accounts for a wide, expansive picture of the UK.
“Including work that is about and deeply connected with place of origin, it treats geography as biography and asks what is it to live and work in the United Kingdom? What characterises the place and people? In what ways can it inspire creativity?”
Among the works included in the exhibition is a newly-commissioned large-scale piece by Jessica Warboys, who grew up in Newport.
Adam is a fan of her series of sea paintings which see her applying pigments to large rolls of canvas and then throwing them out to sea so that the salty waves mix the colours.
Jessica Warboys, Sea Painting, South Wales, 2013. Pigment, canvas. Courtesy the artist.
She then drags them along the beach so that the sand becomes an integral part of the creation and rolls them up and takes them direct to a gallery space. She has created a new piece on the shores near where she grew up that is between 7 and 8m high and 3m wide which is hanging in the gallery unstretched and unframed.
Lucas Clayton, who grew up in Colwyn Bay has contributed a piece which reflects on his upbringing and is inspired by a work by Canadian artist Jeff Wall, called Passer-By.
In Wall’s photograph the dynamic of a casual snapshot is turned on its head when you see the passer-by deliberately obscure his face from the photo. Clayton has re-visited similar images captured by the Google Earth camera in the streets of Llandudno and Colwyn Bay that hold meaning for him, where people are caught on the camera’s lens unawares.
Maesteg-born artist Richard Bevan has contributed a film which shows a bike his sister made for her fine art degree show left discarded in their mother’s garden in the rain after she had decided not to pursue a career in the arts.
The piece allowed him to think about what it means to be an artist and how it feels to try to carve a career and to experience a sense of failure and aspiration.
Melanie Counsell from Cardiff has created a piece shot on 16mm film which documents the area near her family home in Pentyrch. It features two posters of the same design pasted one on top of the other on the side of an old metal shed. Faded over time, they have become camouflaged by the environment in which they both exist and illustrate.
Daylight by Cardiff-born Sean Edwards, who now lives in Abergavenny, focuses on the disused Maelfa Shopping Centre in Llanedeyrn on the outskirts of Cardiff. The piece documents the centre’s current derelict state and his memories of what it once was.
Adam added: “It’s great to have so many Welsh artists but the exhibition does look at other places in the UK too.
“I’ve included a well-known piece by Tracey Emin called Why I Never Became a Dancer which is very confessional and deals with her relationship with Margate where she grew up and a sense of boredom and frustration with small town attitudes.
“While looking at the land through artists’ eyes, this exhibition reflects upon ideas of childhood, biography, place, time and artistic development as well as upon the production and the language of art itself.”
A second part of the exhibition will take place at Mostyn in 2017, further exploring other areas of the UK and continuing its tour and coverage.
Return Journey runs until 6 April 2014. For more information visit www.mostyn.org