Art Boxes Archive
Home > Art Boxes > Art Boxes Archive
Material legacies; Caernarfon
Rhiannon Rees
15/06/24 - 12/09/24
Material legacies; Caernarfon is Rhiannon Rees’s project researching into industrial and social materials which have formed Caernarfon. Rhiannon is an environmental responsive artist who is interested in the material legacies of Wales. She has spent time in locations across Wales collecting waste materials or materials of importance to Wales. Rhiannon repurposes these materials into sustainable and gentle paints. Over the past year she has been developing this idea of gentle painting. It is about being gentle with earth and the materials we use but also being gentle with ourselves and taking time to reflect with nature. At the heart of Rhiannon’s artwork and facilitation work is to create a sense of place that communities can connect to.
Material legacies; Caernarfon splits between two locations in Caernarfon, in the walls of Cei Llechi and as a large scale installation in Galeri. The first beginning in June and the latter in July. Within the project there are four key legacy materials.
- slate powder on a white circular base displayed behind glass
- mountain painting made with rhiannon's iron and rust paint, showing flecks of green metal
- a raw piece of copper, a pure copper pigment and a piece of material displayed in glass box
- blue thread on a spool and seaweed-like material installation, shown behind glass
Rhiannon began with slate. It is a crucial material to Caernarfon and its development. In the north of Wales you can see the remnants of the slate industry across the land, from what Rhiannon calls the inside out mountains to the slate buildings around the towns. In the nineteenth century The Nantlle Railway, later the Caernarfonshire Railway, linked Cei Llechi (Slate Quay) of Caernarfon to the slate quarries which helped to grow the town. The cast shown in the Cei Llechi slate installation comes from the Nantlle area and the slate pigment comes from Cei Llechi itself. The piece echoes the link between these once interchanging places.
The second material within the project is iron. In the early 1800s the Union Ironworks developed in the Cei Llechi area. It worked to create the machines for the slate industry of the area, many of which can still be seen at the National Slate Museum in Llanberis. Rhiannon developed her own iron and rust paints in response to this transformable material
The third metal that Rhiannon has researched in the project has been copper. Copper has a varied colour range which she has explored through experimenting with raw collected matter and copper pigment. She discovered how important a role Sygun Mine played in the copper production and shipping for Caernarfonshire. She visited the site to understand the material impact on the place and people. In both the Cei Llechi and Galeri installations Rhiannon has used three variations of copper. One a raw composite, one a pure copper pigment and the last a Verdigris pigment, a reactive derivative of copper. By researching the Welsh costume Rhiannon happened to come across a text detailing the busy woad industry in the market of Caernarfon. Woad is a plant that was used traditionally to dye the colour of blue. It even has some mythology linked to the Celts and their blue face paint, but that is up for debate. Rhiannon has began growing her own woad plants in response to this project and the leaves can be seen in the Cei Llechi installation.
Lastly is seaweed. It is a new material of interest within environmentalist design. It has been used by innovators to create bioplastics and biofabrics. By using this material Rhiannon is looking forward to the sustainable industrial potential of Caernarfon. Rhiannon has used foraged seaweed as a natural dye plant in the installation in Galeri. Through this material Rhiannon asks the public, what do you think the future legacy materials of Caernarfon are and Wales as a whole?
Rhiannon has exhibited across Wales, the East Midlands, and internationally in Finland and America. In 2023 she was an associate of Oriel Myrddin and was published in the Young Welsh Creatives edition of Spacecraft supported by Amgueddfa Cymru. She also had her first mini solo exhibition as part of the Aberetwm festival in Aberystwyth Arts Centre. In 2024 she is working towards a residency in Germany with Agor. Abertawe which will culminate in an exhibition at the Atelierhof Werenzhein.
Void Fraction – Atmospheric Baggage
Mari Rose Pritchard & Julie Upmeyer
22/03/24 - 09/06/24
Portals into the other-worlds of geological time, through a series of four unlikely assemblages of limestone, words, and luminescence.
The boxes at Cei Llechi present three-dimensional manifestations of four entries that appear in ‘a limestone glossary’, a new publication by artists Mari Rose Pritchard and Julie Upmeyer. The glossary gathers their experience with limestone, limestone dust and other quarrying by-products in book form. The assemblages appearing in the boxes include altered and augmented carboniferous limestone scraps, their shapes and textures reflecting the quarrying actions they have recently experienced.
Void Fraction is an ongoing collaborative project that have found the artists, along with many of their friends and family, completely engrossed in the materiality and history of limestone.
Many thanks to Anglesey Masonry, based at Aber Quarry on Anglesey, for their continuing support and contributions to the project.
- large jagged piece of limestone sitting on long rectangular pieces of limestone and powdered limestone. Inside glass art box.
- jagged piece of limestone with one side painted orange. Close up of square cut limestone and powdered limestone undernead.
- long black piece of wood leaning on a piece of limestone
Lost Houses
Morgan Davies | Will Judge | Laura O’Connor
19/01/24 – 17/03/24
Inspired by the work of Thomas Lloyd who surveyed country houses in Wales demolished since 1900, we are currently reimagining lost or forgotten fragments of historic homes across Wales. For each investigation we begin with an architectural drawing and physical study model, displayed here in the Art Boxes Cei Llechi for our first exhibition.
We are keen to unearth and accentuate regional architectural history and important remnants of Welsh placemaking which may have been forgotten or overlooked in recent times. These examples range in size, scale, and significance; each an equally important former occupied home, with stories and tales to be discovered and told. In a period where society is rapidly urbanising, it seems increasingly important to reflect on our regional and vernacular architectural histories and the distinct philosophies of heritage conservation - both past and present. Wales is a nation of small towns and rural settlements, each with a varied and rich history encompassing a wide range of building typologies of varying scales including; castle fortifications, abbeys, country houses, farmsteads, mountain shelters, and terraced properties. Our studies aim to prompt a wider conversation about rural places across Wales, and their environmental, social, cultural, and physical architectural characteristics.
Henblas, Beaumaris
A 15th century partly timber-frame house which used to be adjacent to the parish church in Beaumaris, Isle of Anglesey. The home was arranged in a H type plan, with a central hall and accommodation wings to either side.
Cwmorthin Terrace
A terrace of eight houses built by the Cwmorthin Quarry Company in the 1860s using dressed stone, followed by a further five homes in the 1870’s constructed from slate. Recent recording, archeological, and conservation work has been undertaken by members of the Cofio Cwmorthin Project and Bro Ffestiniog Archaeology Society.
Rhyg, Corwen
A large c.1880’s wing extension to the classical country house built in about 1798. Designed partly as a winter garden, a decorative cast iron conservatory with 5-bay colonnade was divided by moveable screens from a ballroom/billiard room. The structure was demolished in 1974, and featured in Thomas Lloyd’s book ‘Lost Houses of Wales’ published by Save Britain's Heritage.
- inside glass art box there is a flat laser cut piece of wood in the shape of a house, and behind is an architectural drawing of the house
- row of small wooden houses without roofs, with line drawing of mountains displayed behind
- wooden model of two houses displayed within glass art box. Above is an architectural drawing of the model.
Gwenllian Spink
September 2023 – January 2024
Gwenllian Spink is a multi-disciplinary artist, whose practice is rooted in the cultural Welsh landscapes of Wales. Predominantly sculptural, her work is materially led. Most recently, she has received funding from Arts Council Wales’ Llais y Lle fund to research and develop the creative use of the Welsh language within the communities of Dyffryn Nantlle (2023-24). Examples of recent group and solo exhibitions include Bwystfilo at Aberystwyth Arts Centre (2023); Chwa o Awyr Iach at Pontio, Bangor (2023); Dragon Vets at Fitzrovia Gallery, London (2022).
Recent commissions include Y Fenni Community Feast Commission by Peak Cymru (2023), Youth Grant Grow Wild by Kew Botanic Gardens (2022) and a commission by Natural Resources Wales to create a participatory sculpture highlighting the biodiversity present in the threatened ecosystems of Cors Caron, a raised bog in Ceredigion (2022). The installations currently exhibited at Cei Llechi have grown from a series of playful experimentations rooted in the artist's allotment in Dyffryn Nantlle, by approaching the plot as a sculptural sketchbook.
Cara Louise Jones
Plastiq Yn Y Mor
05/05/23 – July 2023
Cara is a female, neurodivergent artist from Wales. She explores the interconnections with the natural world and the evolution of human and other-than-human species, their impacts, and causation as a whole. Considering the Earth's holistic ecologies, Cara uses interdisciplinary practices to bring conceptual form, installation, and audio/visual arts into the humanised experience and anthropomorphise materiality and the non-material.
Inspired by the water's own abilities to shape the material, Cara co-created the forms with the Welsh seas through her practice of swimming and moving over land entering states of flow. Feeling adrift, motionless suspension held by matter, her plastic forms are anthropomorphic particles, digested, chewed, churned, broken, and rebuilt, embodying the relationship of microcosm and macrocosm. Opening a dialogue to human and universal creations as a dualism, difference, and the same these travelling plastic forms evolved through food and economy. Their sea blue ropes, entangled plastics, and discarded, broken remains became home to filter feeders, a nursery for aquatic animals, a colossal reminder of what has entered our food chain.
Cara’s artworks are host to beach-combed items, shark egg cases, sea litter, and fishing line from her litter-picking walks around the North Wales coastline in early spring tides of 2022. Exploring the leading Welsh economy of recycling as form, Cara uses the method of collecting to contribute towards a healthier environment and supporting her well-being as part of the process.
Rhiannon Gwyn
My practice explores the deep connections humans have to place and landscape. I’m interested in how materials can act as identity markers; influencing the way in which we view ourselves and the world around us through the imprinting of emotion and memory onto our surroundings.
Also on display in these cabinets are a collection of decorative plates for the wall including poetry by my father the Welsh poet Gwynfor ab Ifor.
www.rhiannongwyn.com
@rhiannongwyn.artist
Manon Awst
Hidden amongst Cei Llechi’s walls are five boxes showcasing local talent and entwining art and culture. As you walk around the site, take a moment to discover and absorb the art and craft on display.
Showcasing her work in the boxes at the moment is well-renowned artist Manon Awst.
Living in Caernarfon, Manon Awst creates sculptures and site-specific artworks woven with ecological and geological narratives. In the Cei Llechi art boxes, she presents a collection of small sculptures integrating local stones, mirrors, recycled fishing nets and beach inflatables. They are part of a recent series by the artist, playfully exploring the impact of tourism on coastal landscapes.
