Looking after Copper Knob
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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 lovely 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 me – [email protected], if you are interested in exhibiting my work at your own gallery, or 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
The discovery of a wild gull’s beak on Morecambe beach initiated this collection which invites questions about the remnants of a life. What is left behind after death – a personal legacy and proof of life and existence.
Each of the artworks in this group included an isolated part of a dead body – a bird’s beak, a deer’s skull, a sheep’s horn. We might wonder how these fragments became separated from the whole and where the rest of the body is. All these pieces have been sprayed in gold paint.
I want to enable the viewer to observe death without the usual associations of fear and revulsion.
Each piece is displayed on its own natural plinth – rock, stone or driftwood – carefully chosen to enhance the composition. Presented in this way, the discarded body parts become abstract with new form and beauty.
A habitual beach comber, my materials are usually what my environment yields and particularly what the tide brings me. 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.
I find all sorts of discarded, displaced items on the beach. I often take them home and alter them in some way. I make them my own. They become an ensemble which in turn becomes my voice.
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
The title for this group of sculptures was taken from Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet and is a reference to life on earth and the human condition.
Stump
The ugly severed limb we see here suggests that serious injury has taken place. Although the remaining stump has been attended to – sewn and dressed – the wound appears severe and permanent. 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. Perhaps I am saying that inevitably we become shaped and defined by what we have lost and what has hurt us the most.
H 27 x W 18 x D 18 – Mixed media- £100
Carrying
A broken sheep’s ribcage rests upon a heap of terracotta beach stones. Within this ‘cage’, a small red and copper sphere is being ‘held’. Is it safe or is it trapped?
I wanted this piece to initiate questions in the viewer’s mind about caring and protection, control and restriction.
H 30 x W 60 x D 40 – Mixed media- £150
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
H 23 x W 30 x D 19 – Mixed media- £80
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’. The circle of copper stones creates a boundary around them and conveys an exclusivity in this relationship where they are alone together.
H 37 x W 85 x D 85 – Mixed media- £1000
Circles and Thread
At first sight this group of artworks appears disjointed and contradictory. The message is not clear. We see lines and pathways alongside circles and spirals. Are the lines here connecting or disconnecting? Are we looking at self contained units or do they say something about community?
The title for this section 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.
I wanted to initiate questions about the very first relationship we have – namely the one we have with our mother while we are still fetal where we are actually and absolutely immersed within her.
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 and 2) Here we see a series of rectangular tiles in various geometric arrangements. Grooves, pathways, sinews have been gauged from the surfaces and these seem to offer an opportunity to connect with the neighbouring tiles.
I was initially inspired by the lugworm castes seen on Morecambe beach which got me thinking about the trails we make as we journey through life. A life journey is never isolated. It is always a complex mixture of interdependencies.
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.
During the pandemic, when hairdressers were not available and I was reluctant to let my husband ‘have a go’ my hair remained untrimmed and grew ridiculously long. When finally I got an appointment, I kept the length of hair that was cut off and transformed it into this artwork. At the time, I’d been thinking a lot about life journeys and the surprising directions these sometimes take, particularly with the pandemic in mind.
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. It is an expression of my fascination for the ‘fragmented whole’.
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
In the diptych entitled Supernova (the death of a star) the contents of the painting spills beyond the frame and onto the gallery wall around it. Using materials that include both oil based and water based paints, Province 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
Orange Moons
Mixed Media
H61 x W76
£150
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 my own experiences of family estrangement, separation and the burden I felt. 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 them all copper and painted a sequential prime number (2 –277) on each individual stone.
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.
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.
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.
