Detail of Fall Down Series by Saidhbhίn Gibson, 2016. Photo by Simon Williams.
“What Do I Need to Do to Make It OK?” is currently being exhibited at Devon Guild of Craftsmen in Bovey Tracey where it has been enhanced with three new artworks by Dorothy Caldwell and Saidhbhίn Gibson, all commissioned as part of the exhibition project. Extended dates for the tour this year are also now confirmed.
Dorothy has created a major new piece called Traces, a quiet yet compelling work evoking the distant and dramatic wild landscapes across the Canadian Arctic and Southern Australia that she has explored as part of recent residencies. She says, “I approached the work as an act of repair” and close examination is rewarded: the myriad of marks across the surface recall the hills, gullies, rocks, vegetation and scars in the earth that Dorothy observes, the marks and residues of human presence.
Image: Traces by Dorothy Caldwell, 2016, as installed at Devon Guild of Craftsmen. Photo by Simon Williams.
Saidhbhίn’s two new works are more modest in scale but exquisite in detail. Fall Down Series is a collection of dried chestnut leaf stems, each delicately ornamented with fine cotton crochet, while Comfort and Joy II’s lace encircles a found nest, tentatively identified as a wren’s. The artist’s marks evoke care and tenderness as well as wit, a welcome mediation with nature that enhances and protects these found objects.
Image: Detail of “Comfort and Joy II” by Saidhbhin Gibson, 2016. Photo by Simon Williams.
These works can be seen at Devon Guild of Craftsmen until 8th May, alongside other new works by Celia Pym, Freddie Robins and Karina Thompson, all exploring the exhibition’s central theme of damage and repair. The latter two artists will also be at the gallery with me on Saturday 23 April at 10.30am for a Meet the Makers talk around handmade processes versus high technology in making.
The final commissions by Karina Thompson and Freddie Robins are also nearing completion and will join the exhibition later this year. The next two venues are R-Space Gallery in Lisburn, Northern Ireland (28 May – 8 July) and Forty Hall, Enfield (25 August – 20 November). The full tour schedule is here.
Liz Cooper 