Highlights
20 - 26 January, 2025New Art Highlights includes: Sonny Williams, Chris Alton, Clare Chapman and Holly Slingsby
Delusion, 2024 by Sonny Williams
…conscious and unconscious distortions…
Delusion
By Sonny Williams | 2024Home for One Who is Away from Home, 2020 by Chris Alton
Home for One Who is Away from Home (2020) is a pair of patchwork quilts, made from army surplus clothing. The fabric's origin is reflected in the colour palette; khaki, brown, navy blue and military green. Other hints are also present; an unnecessary seam, the curve of a pocket, or leftover buttons. They were produced to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the Penn Club. The Penn Club was founded in 1920 by members of the Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU)*; the quilts pay tribute to this history, as well as the club's connections to Quakerism and Quaker values.
*The Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU) was a volunteer ambulance service, founded by individual members of the British Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), in line with their Peace Testimony. The FAU operated from 1914–1919, 1939–1946 and 1946–1959 in 25 different countries around the world. It was independent of the Quakers' organisation and chiefly staffed by registered conscientious objectors.
150x150cm
Home for One Who is Away from Home
By Chris Alton | 2020Remains, 2024 by Clare Chapman
Oil on canvas
95x135cm
Remains
By Clare Chapman | 2024Felled, yet unfurling, 2024 by Holly Slingsby
A live performance work made especially for St Mary’s Abergavenny, Felled, yet unfurling takes the recumbent bodies of the wooden Jesse sculpture and stone monuments within the church as its starting point. The work synthesises these with other iconographies of holy figures - such as the wounded Christ and the pregnant Madonna - to present the body as a vessel for transformation and newness.
The Jesse depicted within the church was cut off from the tree traditionally sprouting from him, but here mourning is combined with regrowth. A prone figure pulls items from her garment which accumulate in a meditative ceremony, a ritual act of healing and rebirth.