ARE THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE AREA MERELY A COMMODITY?

PRIVATE VIEW & LAUNCH OF OPEN STUDIOS: 6-9PM ON FRIDAY 8TH JULY AT THE GARDEN CAFE, (Facebook), LOWER LYDBROOK, FOREST OF DEAN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

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Congratulations to all the artists selected for this years special exhibition. Each artist will be awarded a sum of £100 to thank them for their participation.

This year is the first time FandVOS has hosted a special exhibition curated by a guest curatorial team, led by myself and supported by Keith Baugh, Adam Cairn and Carina Greenwood. Developing the Commodity exhibition with the artists has been an absolute pleasure. A great thing about forests and valley landscapes is they offer wonderful hidey-holes for creative people to live and work in. Artists and writers have celebrated this place for centuries through their creativity and have gained quite a reputation for doing so.

It is fitting to exhibit these ‘Commodity’ artworks in the Garden Café. What is now a tranquil homestead, tucked into a hill near the River Wye, was once a thriving industrial area. With wire factories across the road and a viaduct that actually ran over the house! If you want to know more chat to Paul Hayes, the owner of the Garden Café – he has many stories to tell and is a fantastic host.

The works have been selected to provide an entry point into an enquiry about the Forest and Wye Valleys specifically in terms of ‘Commodity’. They are not commissions – FandVos does not yet have the financial means to commission new work, but they hope in the future that will change. Some of the artists have, however, created new works for this show, motivated by the opportunity to stretch their practice, which is fantastic.

I mention the hidey-holes above, because as someone who moved to this area ten years ago, I am constantly amazed by the number of new artists I encounter who are working the area. And it’s great to see young artists moving here too, adding to the mix.

Living here is very special. Some local artists work in far-flung places, while others choose to work primarily in this area. It’s a privilege to see the range of work made here and exciting to install it in such a beautiful building and garden.

Thank you

Carolyn Black

Novvy Allan

Novvy is showing three prints, unframed, that respond to three natural materials found in the area – water, wood and wool. She is also showing some associated materials, including a piece of knitting made with wool dyed with local natural resources, which was used to create the Wool print. The print of the putchers is concerned with the traditional method of salmon fishing used in the River Severn but now in sad decline. The wood represents the wrangling and landownership battles that have gone on forever in the Forest of Dean, and continue to this day.

Lizzie Godden

Lizzie’s work is made with textiles dyed from local materials and stitched tenderly by hand. Each thread has its own colour nuances that when overlaid across the other pieces of fabric create a sense of rhythm through the work. Lizzie walks the forest and the riversides constantly, meditating on the land, praying for its safekeeping. Fracking threatens to fracture this landscape beyond redemption. This work is a meditation on that fear.

Tom Cousins

Tom is a political activist and a muralist and the work shown here is a very clever way of marketing both of those things. It raises our awareness, through wit and humour, about the concerns communities have about fracking. The twist is, of course, that Tom can earn his living from these political issues, at the same time as making sure that his own concerns by others, who amplify their worries by shouting them out loud on their house walls. He does this work exceedingly well and his film plays on the irony of that. Do take a leaflet if you want to be heard.

Rob Olins

Rob is a sculptor renowned for public art work, which he has been delivering widely for many years. The acoustic mirrors and their associated narratives have been a focus for him for some five years. Big, bold and colourful, they draw the viewer towards them so the more subtle nuances can be enjoyed. Only when close up can you hear the sounds emanating from them and listen to the soundscape. They create a place within a space, bright and calling with a reward at the end – like being drawn towards a rose and bending down to smell it.

Kathy Priddis

Kathy’s 3 Hunting Pots were especially inspired by ‘Commodity’ and represent different animals traditionally hunted in the Forest, always a source of food for foresters. Commoners’ rights for grazing were often high on the local agenda, and hunting with dogs represents both nature and the rural culture of Foresters’ resistance to the power of an overlord. The pots are richly glazed with local clay slips and iron ochres from Clearwell Caves; wax resist between the slip and the glaze reveals the original clay, which spontaneously interacts with the glaze to give both earthy and vivid colours. Her usual pots are more functional, made to be used.

Utilising Clearwell Caves ochres as pastels, Cinderford Stream uses a similar palette, harmonising with her pots, and revealing her love of complementary colours as found in Nature.

Claire Robinson

Claire is a landscape painter and has shown work in several exhibitions that explore themes of environment and conservation, exhibiting with organisations such as the World Wildlife Fund and Raleigh International, at venues as diverse as car show rooms, London Zoo, ecology centres and hospitals. For this show she has chosen to further explore her methods of making work that can be shown outside, in the place that inspires it. Using robust materials means that she has to make very clear marks, as opposed to the subtler ones she can achieve in watercolours. These works have a very physical existence and straddle the worlds of painting and sculpture.

Sally Stafford

Sally makes very beautiful paintings that often celebrate flowers and landscapes in a dreamlike way. At first sight, you may consider these works to be doing just that, but they were informed not so much by a celebration of place but as a sadness that an area of land near Cinderford, called the Northern Quarter is to be developed – putting all of the plants and wildlife at risk.

In the Northern Quarter of The Forest of Dean the land is to be scraped off and reused. This work is a fleeting record of a brief moment in its long history.  Made when it was a liminal place recovering from industrialisation; the haunt of dog walkers and anglers. A place in the process of rewilding. Once again the land is being pressed into service of man. This is my fragile record of an alternative.

Sally collected leaves, water and found iron from the site, eco printed the leaves onto paper and coated the results in beeswax.

Frances Warren

Frances comes from a history of working in the social housing sector and now creates art (which she finds hard to name as such) from found materials and upcycled waste. She paints, nails and ties these things together to create fascinating structures which welcome insects and other creatures to dwell in them. She paints them with colours which attract insects and the frames are not dissimilar to those Mondrian created in his later works. They provide miniature ecosystems that have been created from the rubbish that ruins our landscape we claim to love.