What’s On

Current Exhibition

B R E A T H E   Helen Booth

9 March – 12 June

Oriel Myrddin Gallery are delighted to present the solo exhibition 

B R E A T H E by West Wales based artist Helen Booth this coming January 2021. 

The majority of work in this exhibition will be a direct response to Helens residency at Hafnarborg Arts and Culture Centre in Iceland earlier this year. Witnessing what Helen describes as a ‘Divine landscape’, these works will interpret Nature in its purist form using the limitless variations of the single dot. 

These recent paintings concentrate on the single dot. Often following disjointed lines, the way in which they crowd together in amorphous blocks or destroyed by gravity by the dripping of paint. The works explore both an impulsive and repetitive way of mark making that is both gestural and meditative - straight and dynamic lines often appear alongside the more delicately translucent marks. The dots in Helen's work can represent many different concepts - air trapped in ice or falling snow. It can be the end of a sentence or a punctuation in a landscape. A symbol of life and a representation of death – a full stop.

The loosely applied paint is equally as emotional a response to the process of painting, as is the restrained colour palette, creating work that focuses on the mark and texture without the distraction of colour. This way of working is fundamental in striving to capture our emotions and responses to life, landscapes, and the elements that are thrown at us. 

Agnes Martin stated succinctly in her Beauty is a Mystery of Life lecture in 1989 that “it is commonly thought that everything that is, can be put into words. But there is a wide range of emotional response that we make that cannot be put into words. We are so used to making these emotional responses that we are not consciously aware of them till they are represented in art work”. 

Featured work: ‘Slow Water’

You can view our online tour of Helen Booth’s exhibition here.

Coming Soon

Charles Burton: Painting Still

19 June - 19 August

For six decades Charles Burton has been one of the major figures of art in Wales. Born in 1929, he grew up amid the poverty of the pre-war Rhondda Valley. While still a student at Cardiff School of Art he became a central figure in the influential Rhondda Group and his work was purchased for public collections. He won the Gold Medal of the National Eisteddfod aged just 24. At the Royal College, Carel Weight described him as one of the most lively in a generation of painters that included Peter Blake, Leon Kossoff and Bridget Riley. After heading the painting department at Liverpool College of Art in the era of the Beatles and the Liverpool Poets, he returned to South Wales in 1970.

 This retrospective at Oriel Myrddin Gallery draws out the constants in Charles Burton’s work from the 1940s to the present – his subject matter in the people, objects and places that surround him, his fascination with pictorial structure and representation, and above all the brilliant serenity and stillness of his paintings. The artist has chosen the works in collaboration with the gallery and Peter Wakelin, who wrote the book Charles Burton: Painting Still.

Cat on a Chair 1981

 

Past Exhibitions

T H E  W I N T E R  S H O W  y bwrdd

10 November – 31 December 2020

Our Winter show The Table // Y Bwrdd returns for a second year to offer you the best in timeless craft and contemporary art from some of the finest creatives that Wales and across the UK has to offer. 

The Table this year looks to new beginnings and hopes to offer a respite and perhaps a little optimism for the year ahead. Showing a wealth of creativity from Wales, its borders and across the whole of the UK in the form of ceramics, textiles, wood and paint. 

Exhibiting Makers + Artists:

  • Isatu Hyde

  • Adam Buick

  • Justine Allison

  • Helen Booth

  • Rosie Farey

  • Jochen Holz

  • Lindy Martin

  • Matt + Amanda Caines

  • Eleanor Pritchard

  • Megan Ivy Griffiths

  • The Natural Dyeworks

  • Takahashi McGill

  • Jemma Lewis

Peter Bodenham: Sea Vessel 

15 August – 24 October 2020

‘Sea Vessel’ is an exploration and extension of Peter’s site-specific research project in which he has been studying the human impact and ecology on a small section of the West Wales coastline.  Peter has spent the past year combing the shoreline of plastic as well as seaweed and clay, using these in his own ceramic practice to respond to the everyday ‘beauty’ but no less harmful effect of found plastic debris. 

Peter has collaborated with the photographer and video artist Nigel Goldsmith. Nigel currently lives and works in Bath but was born and grew up in Cardigan and knows the beach well. His current practice focuses on ideas about the Anthropocene, the sea, the flow of global trade through shipping and environmental issues.

You can view our online tour of Peter Bodenham’s exhibition here.