Absent But Not Forgotten

My collaborative show with Jacob Whittaker, Absent But Not Forgotten opens on Friday 19 March at 6pm at The Last Gallery, Llangadog, Carmarthenshire SA19 9BR. The show runs until 4 April - but is only open at weekends. You are welcome to join us at the opening if you're in this neck of the woods!

Here's a short documentary piece about the show.

Belief in the paranormal can be controversial; but there is a strong human desire to find pattern and meaning in the unexplained. Absent But Not Forgotten uses video and sound experiments, textiles and technical objects to evoke the world of ‘ghost hunting’. The project considers the associations, clichés and influences of TV and films on the phenomenon.

We're looking for a bit of interaction from you too - we'd like you to photograph or video the show if you visit - you can post to the website through our Flickr group Ghost Watch or send them to us mail@kathryndodd.com and we'll post them for you - tell us who to credit.

Also we'd love to hear your own stories and experiences - write us a story in 50 words or less and post to our message board - or add to this post and I'll transfer it. We will be developing the project and hope we can incorporate some of your stories.

http://www.absent-but-not-forgotten.co.uk/

Fitness for Purpose

Handmade Cobbler's Bench - seen here

I'm really taken with the idea of hybridised and reclaimed objects. I wrote last year about Vladimir Arkhipov's Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts and Jurgen Bey's Linen-Cupboard-House piece shown at the V & A's Telling Tales exhibition.

Recently I found this picture of a home-made cobbler's bench - perfect functionality - it fits all William Morris' Ruskin inspired criteria of Fitness for purpose that underpinned the Arts and Crafts movement and his famous quote; “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

Quilts: 1700 - 2010 at the V & A

Quilts: 1700 - 2010 catalogue cover featuring At the End of the Day (2007) - Natasha Kerr - Seen here

The V & A Museum is staging a major exhibition of British quilts from their own and other significant collections, Quilts: 1700 - 2010. Opening from March 20th, the show will feature 65 quilts made from 1700 to the present day. The symbolism and imagery of the designs will be explored as well as the exceptional craft of the pieces in themselves.

There are quilts from contemporary makers and artists as well as historical pieces, Tracey Emin will be represented as will Grayson Perry. The curator of the show, Sue Pritchard came to Wales to open Jen Jones' Lampeter based Welsh Quilt Centre last year and has been writing a blog about the progress of the show at the V & A. I believe there will be a quilt from Jen's collection in the exhibition. I'm really looking forward to seeing the show. Here's a Guardian picture gallery in the meantime.

Grayson Perry -Right to Life (1998) - seen here


Bishop's Court Quilt - 1690 - 1700 - seen here

Artes Mundi 4

Chen Chieh-jen - Factory - seen here

We went to The National Museum of Wales in Cardiff last night to attend the opening of Artes Mundi 4. This bi-annual competition, with its substantial prize of £40,000, is an opportunity for contemporary artists who are established in their own country but less well known in the UK to gain exposure. The broad theme of the show is 'the human condition' (although that could pretty much include any artist's work when you think of it!). The eight shortlisted artists' work is housed in a series of spaces within the National Gallery, and the winning artist will be announced on 19 May.

This year the artists were selected by Levent Çalikoğlu, Chief Curator at Istanbul Museum of Modern Art and lecturer at the Technical University, Faculty of Arts and Design, Istanbul. Viktor Misiano, both a curator and an art critic based in Moscow and Italy, a former curator at The Pushkin State Museum, and Director of the Contemporary Art Center (CAC) in Moscow.

The selected artist are: Yael Bartana (Israel), Fernando Bryce (Peru), Ergin Çavuşoğlu (Bulgaria), Olga Chernysheva (Russia), Chen Chieh-jen (Taiwan), Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev (Kyrgyzstan), Adrian Paci (Albania).

We had such a nice time, that we didn't get enough time with the work, so I'll be going back for another visit soon. On first impressions I liked the look of Chen Chieh-jen's films but I really do think one needs a little time to mull it all over and consider the contexts of each artists work and the overall curatiorial vision...

Emmy Lou Packard

Frida Kahlo and Emmy Lou Packard in Coyoacan, Mexico in 1941 photographed by Diego Rivera

I bought this postcard the other day. Frida Kahlo - I saw the retrospective in Tate Modern in 2005, very timely for me, but also generally I think. The other woman in the image I didn't know, so I found out a bit about her today. Her name is Emmy Lou Packard and she was a mural assistant to Diego Rivera, but a prominent artist and political activist in her own right. A painter, but also an accomplished woodblock printer, her work seems incredibly fresh for today's re-visiting of mid 20th Century print designs.

Emmy Lou Packard - Seen here

Milkwood Gallery

Kathryn Campbell Dodd - Birthday Chair and Poem House

Louise West - Common Birds

I went down to Cardiff last night for the opening of the show I am sharing with textile designer, Louise West. It's at the Milkwood Gallery in Roath. The gallery is a fairly new venture set up by Gail Howard and Helen Gubb (lovely people). I was so pleased with the way they hung the work, it looks fantastic. The gallery is a really great space, part shop, part gallery, part artist project space. The shop is delightful; vintage rubbing shoulders with contemporary design, clothes, housewares, books - a real 'flea market' feel. There are two gallery spaces, and in the basement a space which has been given over to selected artists to make and show work.

The current project by a young graduate named Marius Grainger Not Drowning But Waving was also opened last night, he's an very interesting artist. He works with fabrics, clay and found objects; this show confronts issues of loss and death and the idea of the shrine. Very interesting to see a such young man using very feminine techniques in his practice, if I had not met him I think I would of assumed he was a woman, an older woman actually. That's so heartening - it is a wonderful thing when gender stops being a barrier to materials and techniques.

I'm really pleased to have been asked to show at the gallery and interested to see how the space develops in the future.

Marius Grainger - from Not Drowning, But Waving

Mizuyo Yamashita

Mizuyo Yamashita

Our new show Reap & Sew is now open at Oriel Myrddin Gallery. London based ceramic artist, Mizuyo Yamashita spent two days with us last week to install an especially made miniature town-scape in the gallery. It is an exquisitely imagined and realised piece. Ceramic sections of houses, gardens, tower blocks, cars, parks, ponds and trees have been meticulously placed alongside textiles and found objects with a ceramic church at its centre. A serene scene made rather more bizarre by the dinosaurs and the giant giraffe roaming the streets!

We really enjoyed having Mizuyo with us and are delighted with the result. A strange little world seemingly tranquil but at the same time unsettling...it's too quiet, too orderly - those dinosaurs bring an eccentric tension to the scene that disconcert expectations and introduce quirky little sub-plots to the narratives.

Mizuyo Yamashita (detail)

Mizuyo Yamashita (detail)

Reap & Sew is a light, fun, mixed craft and contemporary design show reminding the winter-weary that the days are longer and spring is just about here.