- Venue
- The Hen & Chickens
- Date
- Saturday, March 17, 2018
11:00 AM - Address
- Upstairs at The Hen & Chickens, Flannel St, Abergavenny. NP7 5EG
- Location
- Wales
- Organiser
- upstairs at The Hen and Chickens, Abergavenny
Event 11am-3pm
Presentation 12-1pm
The Clydach Gorge Collaboration brings together local artists and writers who are now beginning sharing ideas about the culture, history, engineering, geology and nature of the site which currently has the extensive A465 roadworks making significant changes to the land.
Initiated by artist Dr Allison Neal whose attention had been caught by the huge changes to the land and had begun creating drawings in response, but she also invited other artists and writers to do the same and share the work within a loose collaborative group.
Others joined the group at various stages and the understanding was that this collaboration of ours did not in any way suggest an agreement, a unity or an attempt to make one thing fit into another. We all entered into it…
Allison Neal: The Clydach Gorge is a quiet and personal landscape but one that is as familiar as an old coat. The landscape itself becomes a closely fitting, comfortable coat.
I’ll be exhibiting the paintings that I have been making from this landscape.
Ann Drysdale: During the course of the project I found my eyes, ears and understanding opened and my attitude changed to a mixture of admiration and qualified acceptance.
I’ll be giving a stand-up performance of the poems I’ve written surrounded by the work of my fellow-contributors.
Liz Morison: My response is still developing, ideas being thrown up and then rearranged or discarded, like giant earth moving equipment scoring and reconfiguring.
I was very moved by one of the group discussions we had about memory and the Clydach Gorge. The length of time of construction has resulted in a proportion of the community who has never known anything different.
I make films and interactive objects.
Catherine Wynne-Paton: My approach to the Clydach Gorge has been to spend time there exploring visually and through conversation. In spring 2017 I gave out Little Gem lettuces to gather little gems about the area as remembered by residents as a part of my research. I’ve been painting and etching in response to the area and pursuing surfacing ideas in unexpected and surprising directions.
Ric Hool: The poems respond to what I witnessed at Clydach Gorge during 2016- 2017: mechanical denudation, fracturing, grinding away of a landscape
and re-ordering that landscape.
Sign up to receive invitations to future events via the group’s website homepage at www.clydach.weebly.com
Contact Catherine Wynne-Paton Tel. 07827011481 email: [email protected]
With special thanks to Arts Alive for the Mini Fund awarded to Catherine Wynne-Paton, use of their hall in Crickhowell, Greenfingers in Abergavenny for growing little gem lettuces, to the Costain Group for their support and to The Hen & Chickens for the venue.
