GIP: Gweledigaethau Eco | SKIP: Eco Visions
Clirio llwybrau at ddulliau cynaliadwy o wneud celf.
Clearing pathways to sustainable approaches to making art.
Nazma Ali | Lucy Donald | Mark Folds | Jonathan Green | Demian Johnston | Ann Jordan | Paul Munn | Sarah Poland | SGIP
Orielau Un a Dau / Galleries One and Two
Rhagolwg / Preview
01/04/2023
Canol Dydd / Midday
Arddangosfa’n parhau tan 6ed Mai
Exhibition continues until 6th May
Oriel ar agor Dydd Mercher – Dydd Sadwrn 11yb-9yh
Gallery open Weds-Sat 11am – 9pm
SGIP/SKIP was set up to look at how artists could minimise their impact on the environment by exploring different approaches to making art and sourcing art materials.
Over the past 12 months, artists, and members of the elysium gallery community which form the SGIP group have been looking at alternative approaches to their creative practices in light of the worldwide environmental crisis and the damaging effects of humans on the earth.
Through recycling, upcycling, and experimenting with natural ingredients, all of the artists in this exhibition have been looking afresh at the impact we have as artists on the environment. The global ecosystem is now at a critical stage and artists need to lead the way showing how collaborative and sustainable actions are incredibly important to our future.
SGIP Eco Visions activities have been taking place in the new elysium gallery community space called Thirdspace.
Thirdspace has developed into a hub for ideas sharing & learning, looking at fresh ways artists might respond to the environmental problems of today’s world, & how sustainability might stem from joined-up thinking between different people & communities.
There will be a free drop-in printmaking workshop open to everyone of all abilities on Saturday 1st April, 12-4pm in the Thirdspace.
Artists
Nazma Ali
Swansea artist Nazma Ali produces collaged images sourced from discarded magazines and newspapers. She is especially interested in the contrasts between urban and natural landscapes and the over saturated colours of vintage advertising from her youth.
As a British-Pakistani women, Nazma’s work also touches upon issues of female repression still inherent in many societies across the world.
Being raised by her Pakistani mother with her 6 siblings in South Wales, she found inspiration in the family garden and city scape in Newport. Nazma recounts on how she would be able to find the smallest glimmers of colourful nature and how she grew these glimmers into artistic creations in later years. From seeing the newly sprung yellow daffodils on her way to school as a child, to the little patches of greenery in Castle Square in Swansea today, Nazma see’s beauty in nature growing amongst the concrete city jungles, and aims to create something equally as beautiful.
Lucy Donald
Lucy Donald often uses complex layers of history and historical artefacts as a starting point to inspire her work. She is interested in the signs and symbols that create the language of art and the context in which it was made and the ever-changing context in which it is received. Her work is deeply rooted in her Welsh identity and combines personal mythology and sometimes she references her travels as a tourist creating a multi layered personal visual language.
Mark Folds
Mark Folds is an Artist, Educator and Activist, specialising in making 3d objects and responding to specific locations and contexts. Since 1983 He has exhibited and designed/made commissioned Public Art projects internationally from natural/sustainable or re-used materials.
His interest in using Cardboard as a sculpture material stem from Art College: being resourceful, using what was around us, what was available and free. It was an ideal material to cut, shape and construct easily and quickly on a large scale in 3d, using minimal joining materials. The SGIP workshops and exhibition is a great opportunity to ‘infect’ others into working with this often-overlooked material.
Jonathan Green
My current concept that I am working with to define one element of my art practice is that of “Detritus”. Defined as “a product of disintegration, destruction, or wearing away.” – I use found and gathered objects to create 3 dimensional collages, which could loosely be described as “sculpture”, often taking a form that suggests a living being, whether human or animal, monstrous or mythological.
The source of most of my materials are the abandoned industrial sites of Swansea and surrounding areas. Wandering in these areas also stimulates the sense of a wasteland, of a place once powerful, meaningful and and purposed, yet now reduced to nothing but rubble and remnants. Out of which can arise a new reality, both terrifying and stimulating, hopefully expressing something of the essence of the cycle of time, creation, destruction, rebirth.
Jonathan Green is a Swansea artist. Graduated in fine art in 1981, retrained as a psychotherapist, worked in private practice and with the ChildLine service for many years. He won a Millennium award in 2000 for his collaborative installations “Interior Designs” , and has exhibited his larger works under the name “Serviforce Industries” in London, Bath, Swansea and Cardigan. His “Detritus” work has emerged directly from his experience of the COVID lockdown.
Demian Johnston
Demian Johnston’s practice builds on a growing body of work with energy concentrated by its confinement – “thinking inside the box”. These ideas value spontaneity, the positioning of objects and making of marks based on inner instinct and expression.
Perverse in its initial conception the practice shows dimensions of unpredictability, naturalness, glimpses into the unconscious, dark and monotonous, allowing the viewer to become a participant in creating discourse, helping the artist try to understand his own internal dialogue and find some sense in this illogical world.
Says Johnston, “It’s time for everybody to stop and look at the world with a view to seeing who is watching us and why. It is increasingly important that people step back, look at themselves, they’re surroundings and the world.”
Ann Jordan
‘As a participant in a series of walks and recent workshops organised by elysium creating art materials from natural or recycled products, I have re-evaluated and made changes to my own practice, adopting a more eco approach specifically in the use of resources. This has resulted in producing work for this exhibition created from repurposed found or discarded objects, some from an old industrial site that we visited, that would have been destined for landfill. What emerged are 3D drawings based on weaving techniques referencing a process I utilise as a textile artist’.
Based in Swansea, Wales, Ann Jordans work is often site-responsive, which references both historical and contemporary cultures and includes mapping our personal and community identities. She aims to create a relationship between the domestic, private space and the public siting of the work whilst allowing the observer to reappraise their own views of familiar crafted processes and places, often utilising or creating textiles. The artist repurposes materials often discarded or destined for land fill, or obtain natural fabrics that require upcycling.
Paul Munn
Paul Munn is an artist who loves to delve into the contents of a skip!
‘I have no idea what any of the contents may be useful for, but it is the first impression, the glimpse, that compels me to either remove the object or let it be.
I have no sense of its final place in a piece of work, and often nowhere to store it, but the challenge of its shape, the texture of its surface and the colour of its form all suggest a possible realisation of a sculpture or installation. It is an organic methodology that drives the process’.
Paul currently works from his studio at elysium studios in Swansea city centre.
Sarah Poland
Outside of Sarah Poland’s studio is a large outdoor, wood-fired cast iron bath where she uses botanical colour to dye lengths of canvas before painting. Living lightly, in nature, with a growing awareness of the wider issues of plastic pollution and climate change, Sarah started looking to source sustainable materials for her creative practice. In 2011 whilst living in a woodland in West Wales, she wanted to make work ‘of the woodland’ and discovered oak gall ink. Recently she broadened her palette, foraging botanical colours from the environment and developed a garden area for growing dye plants.
SGIP
SGIP is made up of members of the elysium studios and artists community who all share a passion on changing environmentally unfriendly approaches to their artistic practices and engaging holistically with the natural surroundings.
SGIP is open to new members who can contribute with skills and ideas sharing.
