ARTISTS TALKING

Oriel Davies, Newtown
10 October – 18 November

A horizontal and invisibly suspended plane of lava rocks spans an entire gallery, dividing neon symbols of good and evil – a monumental halo and a burning red snowflake. Divided (2006), a new work by Philippa Lawrence, is big enough to implicate the viewer physically. Yet we pass from heaven to hell in a few strides, this huge, hovering igneous layer the only impediment. It’s part of Lawrence’s first one-person exhibition at Oriel Davies, Newtown, which also offers an opportunity to take stock of her breadth of work to date and the steadfast consistency of her enquiry.

Many of the simple acts which Lawrence deploys gain a contemplative, ritualistic power through repetition. The act of binding or bandaging a limb is transformed when it is applied to an entire dead tree, each branch tenderly wrapped, to protect, to conceal, or to render it more visible (Bound, 2003, National Botanic Gardens of Wales). Small repeated actions combine to achieve something physically big and conceptually bigger still. When this small-action-enshrined-in-a-larger-action of binding an entire tree is itself repeated, with trees sited in strategic spots in every county of Wales (Bound, 2004-6), ritual and meditation become a kind of public shamanism, where she is called to account for her action, and the action becomes a social as well as an aesthetic engagement.

In Nothing is Something (2006) she makes a community even of holes – exploring nothingness by collecting a multitude of holes and allowing them to coalesce. These are burn-holes in sheepskin parchment, carefully snipped around their fragile edge, and linked by tied monofilament to form an ethereal cloud. There is something repellent about the animal origin of the material, something too intimate for words, its treatment truly brutal; but the result is a thing of fragile beauty.

Other recent works, particularly those made for the International Site-ations Project ‘Sense in Place’ in Iceland, refer to more elemental themes in an environment of natural extremes. Fallen Star (2006) has gilded light bulbs emulating raindrops, in frozen freefall over: in Iceland, porous, thirsty-looking lava rock; in the installation for Oriel Davies, chunks of Welsh coal. After installing this piece Lawrence was informed, to her humorous satisfaction, that the Welsh word for coal is ‘glo’, and this is the kind of discovery in which she takes obvious delight. She speaks of the impossibility of truly imposing oneself on the material world, and certainly hers is a gentle manipulation, an ironic and punning world-view. But while teasing out meaning from the trivial and the overlooked, and retaining a strong sense of playfulness, she yet deals with the big issues – life and death, sex and desire, love and loss.
sara@sara-roberts.com

Sara Roberts

Sara Roberts is an independent curator and writer based in Winchester.