Antonia Dewhurst - Ty Unnos/One Night House

Antonia Dewhurst - Tŷ Unnos/One Night House - courtesy of Antonia Dewhurst

 If you are in the Newtown area of Mid Wales, make sure you drop into Oriel Davies to see Antonia Dewhurst's Test Bed Project - Tŷ Unnos in the park adjacent to the gallery. Antonia built the house in accordance with the historical Tŷ Unnos/One Night House tradition:

"Tŷ Unnos is an old Welsh tradition dating back to the 17th century: if one could build a house between the hours of sunset and sunrise and have smoke rising from the chimney by dawn, the ownership of the land could be claimed. While Antonia does not lay claim to Newtown’s park on 19 July she will build a Tŷ Unnos - literally overnight - in the town’s parkland opposite Oriel Davies. This will be a temporary structure made from recycled materials - wooden pallets, tarpaulin and corrugated iron. After a night of feverish building the structure will be in place by the morning of 20 July, complete with smoke rising from the chimney."

Here's a short stop motion video of the construction.

You can also see Antonia's Gimme Shelter series of small scale constructions in the Test Bed Space inside the gallery - including the newly made piece of the Tŷ Unnos in the park.

Courtesy of Antonia Dewhurst

The house remains in situ until 5 September and Antonia is occasionally 'In Residence' - ring the gallery for times on 01686 625 041

Antonia Dewhurst - Ty Unnos

Antonia Dewhurst - Gimme Shelter - seen here

I am really looking forward to Antonia Dewhurst's forthcoming Test Bed project at Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown. Antonia's series of shelters, Gimme Shelter which were made as part of her degree work at Coleg Menai, Bangor in 2010/11 have led her to undertake the creation of a Ty Unnos dwelling in the parkland alongside Oriel Davies on the night of 19/20 July 2012.

"The tradition of the Ty Unnos (One Night House) was established in Wales around the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century when  over 5000 Enclosure Acts were passed. This resulted in common land being passed into the hands of landowners. In response to the resulting homelessness and poverty there was a rise in the tradition of the Ty Unnos.

Thought to date back to Hywel Dda, but never enshrined in law, this tradition stated that if a house could be built between sunset and sunrise and have smoke rising from its chimney at dawn, then the builder could keep the house and the land as far as a hammer or axe could be thrown from each of the quarters.

Materials would be collected secretly over several months and all the builder's friends and family would be involved on the night. Often the only clue the landowner's agent would find was that the local carpenter was making a door for someone. However, the house was often pretty primitive and the 'door' might be a woven hazel screen, the walls of cut peat, the roof thatched with gorse or whatever was to hand. The chimney too might be of woven hazel or willow and these house-names persist today e.g. Corn Helyg, Willow Chimney.

Once the house-builder's title was established they could amass more permanent building materials and replace the original building with a more substantial dwelling and these too persist into the present day in the house-name Ty Newydd - the new house."

Antonia Dewhurst - Materials for Ty Unnos - Courtesy of Antonia Dewhurst

  

In keeping with the tradition, Antonia has been collecting her materials over the last couple of months and is getting ready to undertake the building of her dwelling overnight on 19/20 July.

Bedwyr Williams - Nimrod

Bedwyr Williams - Nimrod 2009 - Courtesy Ceri Hand Gallery

Oriel Myrddin Gallery took a trip north last week to visit the Eisteddfod in Wrexham. We stopped in at Oriel Davies in Newtown on the way to see the Bedwyr Williams solo show which includes the installation Nimrod (after which the show is named), a scaled down airport with lit up air strip, control tower, adverts and muzak. Overhead a surreal squadron of craft are coming in to land constructed from skateboard decks and walking sticks.

Throughout the exhibition Williams sharp, observant, neurotic humour is at play and the work is comprehensive and accomplished, every bit worthy of Williams growing international reputation. The show continues until 31 August.

Placement at Oriel Davies

I went along to the opening of Placement - Ceramic Collection: Wales & Scotland  at Oriel Davies in Newtown on Saturday evening. The exhibition has been curated by ceramicists,  Lowri Davies (Wales) and Dawn Youll (Scotland) and brings together artists working in ceramic from both these regions.

This is one of the best shows I have seen for some while, I really enjoyed the choice of artists, the subtlety brought to the show by the curation and the physical layout of the gallery. The artists chosen for the show are: Stephen Bird, Claire Curneen, Lowri Davies, Ken Eastman, Nick Evans, Laura Ford, Anne Gibbs, David Shrigley, Cecile Johnson Soliz, Connor Wilson and Dawn Youll. 

The artist which both curators had on their wish list for the show was Laura Ford, and through making that connection they found that other suggestions unfolded around the ideas of ceramic in the widest contexts; the boundary between fine art and craft is truly irrelevant in this show. 

"Placement explores the subject of place, whether geographical or make-believe, and associated ideas around arrangement and placement, whether located to a place or within history. It aims to highlight important associations in the field of ceramics concerning location, geography, geology, ritual, commemoration and souvenir. Works by eleven artists reveal how ceramic objects can, and have been, used to articulate a particular language: telling stories and connecting us with both past and present."

There is such a feast of exceptional work in this show it's hard to decide on any favourite artists or works. Dawn Youll's work is stunningly well resolved in every way, it combines ideas about form, semiotics, materiality and concept effortlessly and elegantly. There is a major article with her in this month's Crafts Magazine which is featured on the front cover - very much worth grabbing a copy.

Stephen Bird's chaotic ceramic sculptures crackle with a nervous spirit of obsession. Much of his work is a subversion of the traditional English figurine, playing with the inherent colonialism and notions of class they embody and muddling them up to create fantastic, hybridised figures and scenes which borrow across global and contemporary culture.

Claire Curneen's trees feel powerfully mythic, red earthenware with gilded roots and branches, these forms are subtly abstracted from her often overtly figurative work and bring with them a slightly darker and richer language. I had no idea that David Shrigley made ceramic work, but his objects (a pair of oversized black boots and a bomb) are extremely sharp and funny. Lowri Davies delicate tea service and vases are the result of a keen and modestly authoritative understanding of both materials and historical references. Conor Wilson brings a magpie's eye to his pieces, they feel like they have been assembled and made beautiful with eclectic borrowings from many different sources, they are slightly rude, slightly dreamlike, slightly decorative and shot through with a complicated narrative.

If you are anywhere near Newtown between now and 6 July,  I strongly recommend a visit. Whilst you are there you can also catch Jonathan Anderson's installation, Aggregates in the Test Bed space at the gallery. The confined square footage of the space brings a tangible sense of claustrophobia to the work, but the irreverent, anti-capitalist humour that is evident, especially in the 3 dimensional objects he has chosen for the space lifts it and brings it into an interesting conversation with the Placement works in the main gallery spaces.

Scotland Meets Wales at Oriel Davies Gallery

Lowri Davies - seen here

Dawn Youll - Anodyne Adventure - seen here

I'm really looking forward to the upcoming shows at Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown. From 16 April Placement - Ceramic Connections: Wales and Scotland will be in the main gallery, curated by two ceramicists;  Wales' Lowri Davies and Scotland's Dawn Youll. There's a fabulous line up of artists and makers including Laura Ford whom both artists had favoured on their wish list of participants:

Stephen Bird, Claire Curneen, Lowri Davies, Ken Eastman, Nick Evans, Laura Ford, Anne Gibbs, David Shrigley, Cecile Johnson Soliz, Conor Wilson, Dawn Youll

"Placement explores the subject of place, whether geographical or make-believe, and associated ideas around arrangement and placement, whether located to a place or within history. It aims to highlight important associations in the field of ceramics concerning location, geography, geology, ritual, commemoration and souvenir. Works by eleven artists reveal how ceramic objects can, and have been, used to articulate a particular language: telling stories and connecting us with both past and present."

Jonathan Anderson - Dark Bulb, 2009 - seen here

At the same time, in the Test Bed space at Oriel Davies, Swansea's Jonathan Anderson (also a Scot - so the connections are widened) will be showing an installation of works with the title Aggregates - I'm very interested to see how he uses the diminutive space, I can imagine it will be a powerful experience.