Looking after Copper Knob
We recommend that this page is viewed in landscape format
Looking After Copper Knob was a solo exhibition of new artworks held at The Storey Gallery, Lancaster from 20th to 27th September 2023. In this run of seven days the exhibition attracted over 320 visitors and many comments, a selection of which are reproduced here.
‘Beautiful exhibition – loved the curation and meeting the artist’
‘This is clearly from the heart. I love it’
‘Very inspiring and thought provoking. Thank you’
‘What a wonderful exhibition you have created. So much thought, care and emotion is reflected in the work. You have inspired me to try and look at the world and my relationships in a different way. Thank you’
‘Amazing exhibition! My favourite pieces are the moving mandala which is stunning and the stones with lines which is truly fabulous’
‘Fabulous – a deep thinker that shows in your work. Exceptional. I will be back’
‘Great innovative exhibition. I do hope that it can be exhibited in another venue – it deserves to be seen by a wider audience’
‘Your exhibition is simply stunning – we were all blown away‘
‘Stunning exhibition from the first approach to the last goodbye. Thank you’
‘Wonderful. Love the feeling of intimacy and eternity’
‘Beautiful. Thoughtful. Expertly made. Well judged. Would like to have spent more time with it. Won’t forget it’
‘This is the best exhibition I have been to in YEARS. I love it. The line of stones is beautiful. So many pieces made me think and smile and feel happy. Thank you’
‘I absolutely loved it! Like the copper. Like the humour. Like the feelings. Liked the concepts. Inspirational. Loved the crabs and skeletal bits’
‘An interesting exhibition with lots of food for thought. Look forward to another exhibition’
A solo exhibition is anything but a solo effort and I would like to thank Graham and Lin Dean for the photography, Peter Huddleston for technical and engineering assistance and Philip Province for his creative input, technical and moral support and many, many hours of time.
Please email – [email protected], if you would like to purchase any of the original artworks.
The artworks in the exhibition were presented as six themed collections:
Remnants
Mortal Coil
Circles and Thread
Inscapes
59 Copper Stones
Tidal
Remnants
Wild Duck
H20 x W25 x D25
£100
Each of the artworks in this group includes an isolated part of a dead body and each one is displayed on its own natural plinth – rock, stone or driftwood – carefully chosen to enhance the composition.
These pieces invite the viewer to question legacy and what is left behind after death. They might also wonder how these fragments became separated from the whole and where the rest of the body is.
My materials are usually what my environment yields and living near a beach, this is often what the tide brings in. I don’t believe there is a clear line between nature ending and art beginning. I am inspired by natural entropy and unpredictability caused by the eternally changing tides.
Marsh Sheep Skull
H19 x W20 x D32
£80
Wild Rabbit Spine
H13 x W17 x D15
£50
Deer Skull
H18 x W14 x D23
£80
Wild Gull Beak
H14 x W24 x D10
£80
Tiny Shell
H05 x W10 x D07
£50
Trio
H10 x W27 x D10
£40
Pelvic
H13 x W23 x D14
£40
Sprouting Shell
H7 x W10 x D10
£30
Jaw
H06 x W22 x D11
£30
Slender
H9 x W20 x D13
£50
Horn
H11 x W19 x D12
£40
Songbird
H10 x W23 x D14
£80
Mortal Coil
Stump
Essentially a stump tells us that there was something more there before.
This piece is as much about the part that is missing as it is about what we can see now – what is left behind.
Carrying
Bind
Perhaps resembling a swaddled baby, we see here a cluster of branches, bound together by a clean cloth bandage which is pinned in place by an oversized nappy pin. Could this enigmatic bundle also invite questions about relationships – symbiotic, epiphytic, parasitic – and how we may become inescapably bound by them?
H 24 x W 65 x D 24 – Mixed media- £150
Seesaw
H 34 x W 177 x D 30 – Mixed media- £500
Knot
Looking after Copper Knob
A circle of copper painted stones surround a pair of spheres, one large and one small, each on a circular plinth with the artist’s red gold hair wound tightly round. There is an intimacy between the two spheres which are positioned together so closely they ‘kiss’.
H 37 x W 85 x D 85 – Mixed media- £1000
Circles and Thread
The title for this collection is taken from a small double aperture mixed media piece, Circles and Thread, where we see a combination of red painted circles joined together by pencil lines. There are two separate images here, each within its own ‘window’. Yet, as they are framed together, one above the other, the viewer is told they are also a pair.
Circles and Thread
H 43 x W 33
Mixed Media
£80
Immersed (1, 2 and 3) These square mixed media paintings are perhaps reminiscent of microscope slides of cells or ova. The paints used here show resistance to one another – oil and water separating which then creates organic patterns alongside the drawn pencil lines.
Immersed 1
H 53 x W 53
Mixed Media
£180
Immersed 2
H 53 x W 53
Mixed Media
£180
Immersed 3
H 53 x W 53
Mixed Media
£180
Trails 1
H 42 x W 135
Mixed Media
£250
Trails 2
H 67 x W 67
Mixed Media
£250
In Hairpiece we see a spiral inside a circle. The artist’s red gold hair has been wound tightly into a spiral that is then set within this circular wall piece.
Hair Piece
31 cms diameter
Mixed Media
£100
Small Circle
H 33 x W 33
Mixed Media
£80
Red Thread
H 48 x W 10
Mixed Media
SOLD
Cutting the Cord
H 23 x W 23
Mixed Media
SOLD
Lines is an installation piece created and constructed within The Storey Gallery. A six metre line of beach stones are placed within a length of cast iron guttering filled with sand. Each individual stone has a line of quartz or calcite running through it. Stepping back and viewing the piece from a distance we see one continuous line where each stone connects with its neighbour. It is literally ‘a line in the sand’. Stepping forward we can view each stone as an individual with its own shape, colour and marking.
For me, this piece investigates the coexistence of continuity and wholeness alongside separateness and individuality.
Lines
Not for sale
Inscapes
Viewed together as a group, we see circles and particularly concentric circles featuring in these works. There is also a doubleness at play here where the artworks are suggestive of something that might be planetary as well as bodily. Are they macro or micro? Inner space or outer space?
These paintings map out and externalise aspects of my internal world. The layering of experiences and consequential memories grow like a tree trunk, ring by ring. The self is never fixed. We are always developing, always in flux.
The large slowly rotating Mandala (Mandala being the Sanskrit word for circle) brings movement and an ever changing perspective to the group. It is the iris and pupil of an eye. It is a ringed planet. It is the ever developing self.
Mandala
Mixed Media
183cm Diameter
£1,500
Supernova uses materials that include both oil based and water based paints and explores ideas of overlap and resistance where sometimes colours blend happily together and other times they resist and pull apart.
I’m interested in the actual porosity of skin and what we absorb physically as well as the metaphorical interface between the inner and outer selves.
Supernova (diptych) – H 90 x W 30 (x2) – Mixed Media – £350
In The light of the mind we see again this double image where there is the suggestion that this might be a planet in outer space yet is also reminiscent of something bodily perhaps the labyrinth of a human brain.
The Light of the Mind – H 64cms x W 64cms – Mixed Media – £250
Dark
Mixed Media
H64 x W64
£250
Ova
Mixed Media
H70 x W50
£150
Even the Sun will go out Eventually
(Triptych)
Mixed Media
H34 x W67
(x3)
Floaters 1
Mixed Media
H60 x W60
£150
Floaters 2
Mixed Media
H59 x W60
£150
Floaters 3
Mixed Media
H87 x W26
£100
Moody Blue
Mixed Media
H60 x W13
SOLD
59 Copper Stones
In 2021 I began an artwork called 59 Copper Stones. Initially, my intention was to explore personal experiences of family estrangement and separation. As this work progressed, it also got me thinking about more universal themes such as dispersal, displacement and migration.
During the months leading up to my 59th year, I collected stones from the beaches near my home. I sprayed each one with copper paint and gave it a sequential prime number (2 –277).
Over the year ahead, on random days, I returned each stone to the beaches making a record of where and when I did this. I also noted the relevant tide times and weather conditions for each particular day.
Before she began to release the stones, Province photographed each one individually to document its shape, size and distinguishing features. She also photographed them as a group (or family) in various formations (line, spiral, concentric circles, pile) before they became separated.
These photographs were displayed as part of the exhibition.
Having begun the project as part of a group, these stones were now dispersed and separated from one another. The original group no longer existed just as families change and disperse.
Sometimes as I let go of the stones I felt liberated – freed from a psychological burden. On other occasions, I felt sorrowful, reluctant to let the stone go and hopeful that I would rediscover and reunite with it at some point in the future.
Stone 257
Reunion
The day before my 59th birthday, I walked to Bazil Point to release the last two stones – 59 and 277. I stood near the fisher’s hut and took about 12 paces towards a white post that stood upright ahead of me, embedded in the pebble beach. Closing my eyes, I threw the stones into the estuary water. It was 12.05 pm and I felt satisfied that I’d completed my task. I enjoyed a sense of relief.
As I turned to continue my walk, something caught my eye. Beside my foot lay another stone. It was a shiny copper colour and I recognised it as one of my original group. It had number 257 painted on it. My initial response was to reach down and pocket it but then I hesitated. Did I really want it back? No. I didn’t want to feel its burden again so I left it where it was and walked away.
Nearly six months later, stone 257 reappeared on the beach in a different position. This time, something within me had changed and I didn’t experience it as a burden, so I picked it up and I welcomed our reunion.
Tidal
In this interactive installation, the artist invited visitors to the exhibition to create their own assemblage. A large sand tray and a wide range of objects – natural and man made – all found by the artist on local beaches (yes, even the coconut!), were provided and available to use by visitors.
I offered participants a creative experience and an emotional response through a direct relationship with these objects. Simply by being chosen and arranged, these become ‘vital objects’, imbued with meaning. Just as the tide is constantly moving and rearranging what lies on the beaches, this piece was constantly changing.
Here are photographs of some of the tidal assemblages created by visitors.
