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Artist talk: Marie-Thérèse Ross
Marie-Therese Ross’s sculptures are made from a combination of laminated wood parts. Using found objects which are integrated and sublimated into the works with carved and painted wood- colour adds another layer of expression and meaning to the whole. The mass of wood echoes the drawn and cut-out lines found in her drawings and collages, lending itself well to her process of working.
Ross’ sculptures are made of a combination of carved and laminated upcycled wood parts. As well as found objects which are integrated and sublimated into the works and painted.
Marie-Thérèse Ross MRSS is a member of The Royal Society of Sculptors and lives and works in London. She studied painting at Loughborough College of Art and has a Masters in sculpture from the University of Pennsylvania USA.
Artist talk: Sokari Douglas Camp
Sokari Douglas Camp was born in Buguma, Nigeria, in1958, and lives and works in London. She has had more than forty solo shows worldwide and in 2005 Douglas Camp was awarded a CBE in recognition of her services to art. Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., USA; Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; and the British Museum.
Douglas Camp transforms oil drums and fabricates steel into figurative sculpture that is often rooted in African culture where the artist was born. Her work is highly coloured, and uses pattern, textile and decorative elements. Rather than designing and laser cutting Camp ‘draws’ patterns by hand using a blowtorch cutting into the steel sheet.
She describes her work as ‘the joy of making’, however her work is also political and rooted in African culture, her use of oil drums to create beauty is a conscious and poignant statement of the Niger Delta’s oil production and is one of the most polluted places in the world.
Artist talk: Lee Grandjean
‘For me, materials have to be pushed beyond their literal characteristics, beauty is not the goal, but an authentic and believable sculptural energy and presence in which form, and content are one’.
Lee Grandjean is a sculptor, draughtsman and teacher, born in London, although he lived for part of his youth in Romania. Studied at North-East London Polytechnic, 1967–8, then Winchester School of Art, 1968–71. Grandjean had a studio in London, 1971–80, then moved to Reepham, Norfolk. From 1980–1 he was research fellow in sculpture at Winchester School of Art, having lectured at Wimbledon School of Art since 1976, appointed senior tutor from 1977. In 1991 became sculpture tutor at Royal College of Art, He also works widely as a visiting lecturer and examiner.
Grandjean works in various materials and is interested in “the transformation of material” and with non-European and ancient civilisations shared a desire to “render raw materials into another expressive substance”.
Artist talk: Andrew Sabin
‘For me sculpture making is an emotional adventure anyone can join. When we lay the table or wash our hair or dig a hole in the ground we are moving materials around and responding to them – funny or sad, the cutlery in a pile or laid out in order, hair sticking out in spikes or compacted in a mat, we just have to trust our responses, take them seriously and then we are on a path towards playing with sculpture’.
Andrew Sabin (born in 1958) is a British experimental sculptor who has made important contributions to installation, object making and Landscape Art. The Coldstones Cut in the Yorkshire Dales is one of the most visited landscape sculptures in Britain and The Sea of Sun installation was a prominent work in the inaugural exhibition of contemporary sculpture at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. Sabin studied sculpture at Chelsea School of Art where he later became a senior lecturer. On the site of the original Chelsea building his memorial work ‘Painting and Sculpture’ is permanently located.
Material Matters
Material Matters Curated by artist Sarah Tombs brings together the work of four contemporary British sculptors. The exhibition at elysium gallery, Swansea, Wales explores the relationship of process and materiality, how through experimentation and manipulation the sculptor can generate sculptural objects whose content and motivations are accessible to an audience. Engagement with materials and processes of ‘making’ is a particularly relevant debate with increasing availability of digital technology, Computer Aided Manufacture and with the emergence of AI threatening to make human artistic endeavour redundant.
We chat to Sarah Tombs and the four artists Lee Grandjean, Andrew Sabin, Sokari Douglas Camp and Marie Therese Ross about this stunning exhibition.
Creative neurodivergent networks
in 2023 elysium gallery was awarded an Arts Council of Wales Connect and Flourish Grant for our Creative Neurodivergent Networks pilot project. Creative Neurodivergent Networks is a supportive creative platform for the wider neurodivergent (ND) community, positioned within the heart of
elysium gallery creative activities.
Working with ND artists and groups as creative leads; throughout 2023/2024 elysium gallery, Taliesin, ASDES and Shine Cymru will facilitate a series of workshops and networking activities for ND participants to develop their own creative projects and new skills.
This film looks at first part of the project which involved a series of taster workshops by lead artists assisted by ND artists exploring different mediums such as Street art and graffiti, Interactive sound collage, animation, filmmaking, drama and performance, script writing.
Key aspects of this project are that ND participants are at the centre of decision making about what we all do together; and that we ALL learn, grow and develop as the project progresses.
Sarah Poland: Silence – The messenger and the Metaphor
Silence – The messenger and the metaphor looks at Sarah Polands approach to her practice, foraging botanical colours from the surrounding environment and developed a garden area for growing dye plants. All materials in her current exhibition at elysium gallery, Swansea are sustainably and ethically sourced.
We visit Sarah at her studio in West Wales where she has a large outdoor, wood-fired cast iron bath where she uses botanical colour to dye lengths of canvas before painting. Having started working on unstretched canvas in the studio, merging it with the visceral experience of textiles hanging on the washing line, the work evolved into the hanging installation in this exhibition Forest. With the larger work, hoping to engage physically and spatially as well as conceptually, building relationships between the materials and the abstract, Forest is conceived as a piece which can morph in size to fit different exhibition spaces.
Artist talk: Laura Ford
We talk to acclaimed sculptor Laura Ford, one of the artists in our exhibition Household Name.
Laura has exhibited extensively and has work represented in many public collections including TATE, V&A and National Museum Cardiff. Born in Cardiff 1961 Laura was included in the British Art Show 5, 2000 and represented Wales in the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005.
Lockdown and the Submerging artist: Andre Stitt
André Stitt discusses work made during lockdown as a mid-career or what he terms ’submerging’ artist.
Working almost exclusively as a performance and interdisciplinary artist from 1976-2013 Stitt gained an international reputation as a performance artist for cutting edge, provocative and politically challenging work. He has since changed his art practice to painting. In 2015 he was awarded a major Arts Council Creative Wales Award to further investigate painting in relationship to installation art. He is Professor of Performance & Interdisciplinary Art at Cardiff School of Art & Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University and was director of trace: Installaction Artspace in Cardiff from 2000-2010.
Artist talk: Daniel Trivedy
We talk to 2019 National Eisteddfodd winner Daniel Trivedy.
Daniel is interested in our psychological relationship to each other. He explores the dynamic nature of these relationships and the role of representation in belonging. Fundamentally, he is interested in the glue that holds us together but also that which keeps us apart. Daniel talks about the various influences that inform his work and his current approach to materials.