- Venue
- Baile Na cille church
- Starts
- Saturday, August 20, 2022
- Ends
- Saturday, September 17, 2022
- Address
- Timsgarry Gallery, Baile na Cille Church, Uig, Isle of Lewis, Scotland |20thAug to 17thSept 2022
- Location
- Scotland
- Organiser
- rebecca styles
Rebecca Styles’ series of large-scale paintings have been created onsite at Baile na Cille Church over several weeks, in the company of Scottish poet Heather Mackay Young, whose writings respond to the immediate environment and artwork being created there. With the decaying beauty of the ancient church in mind, the generations that have worshiped there over the centuries, and the relentless and unforgiving seasonality of the Western Isles, the work of both these artists reflects the circularity of all things – of life, death and rebirth – through her use of the materials such as flax, bone, ash and earth on linen canvas.
As the paintings have evolved, on the floor or hung from the walls of the church, elements of the building’s very fabric have made their way into the work.Finally, the addition of gold leaf makes reference to the religious and art historical concept of the Church icon, whilst playing on the sociological opposites of gold against the rawness of earth, ash and bone, or what the artist describes as “all of nature, but not as equals. Would therebe golden icons without stone,lime, horsehair, rust, wood and slate to house them, without thissacred building, pulled out of the ground, like the earth pigments used to make these paintings?”
Heather Mackay Young, in the poetry created alongside these works, describes this collaborative show as “carving a triquetra of paint, poetry and place inside a crumbling church, inviting all who experience this exhibition to dissolve into dust and be transformed by the Seen and Unseen.” Her writings, which will hang from the beams of the church, explore the alchemy of this three-way conversation within a unique body of work, and act as a catalyst for the contemplation of our own relationship with the natural world.The show will be accompanied by a book of Heather’sAlchemypoems. All works in the exhibition, both written and painted, will be available to purchase.
@alchemy.exhibition.uig
