Eleri Mills 'Landscape: Real and Imagined' 7th March to 4th April 2020

ELERI MILLS

‘L ANDS C APE : RE AL AND I M AGI NE D ’

7th March to 4th April 2020

TW ENT Y T W E NTY G A L L E RY L U D LOW

Front cover: Hwyrnos II (Nocturnal II) Paint, handstitching and appliqĂşe on fabric 47 x 74cm 2018

ELERI MILLS

‘ LA ND SC A P E: R EAL AND I MAGI NED’

7th March to 4th April 2020 OPE NI NG D RI NKS

Saturday 7th March 11am to 1.30pm

TWENTY TWENTY GALLERY

4 Quality Square, Ludlow SY8 1AR 01584 875363 twenty-twenty.co.uk

Yn y dyffryn - yn ymyl y nant, ailymweliad (In the valley - near the stream, revisited) Ink and pastel on paper 69 x 102cm 2019

Landscape: real and imagined What is real and what is imagined is a strange conundrum. The real is supposedly what is in front of us, while the imagined can mean many things. Something remembered, a recollection, a reconstructed thought encapsulating a moment in time, a transient vision.

However sometimes the imagined is the more truthful. Eleri Mills constructs a subtle collusion between the real and imagined, she nails the essence of it. A conversation betwixt reality and dream, a reinvention of the world and how she sees it in her minds’ eye.

Reveries; perhaps the landscape William Shakespeare called Arden. The borderlands of the Marches where Wales and England slip and slide into each other have a transience that Shakespeare would have been familiar with. Places of magic and intrigue, dreamlands where hills and woodland have a sense of wildness and passion.

Eleri has visited this duality many times and in many different ways. In recent works inspired by India she depicts a different and more highly coloured landscape. Exotic yet tranquil, with a very different colour palette and a quality of light that is otherworldly. But maybe not so far from Arden. Landscape and our place in it is a long-standing dialogue between the real and the imagined, its depiction has obsessed creative people for millennia.

As Eleri states ‘it is the power of the landscape ...and the power of Art’.

Philip Hughes MBE Director, Ruthin Craft Centre

Yn yr ardd - astudiaeth (In the garden - study) Gesso, paint, ink, varnish and thread on calico 32 x 39cm 2017

Llefydd gwyllt III (Wild places III)

Gesso, paint, ink, varnish and thread on calico 40 x 52cm 2018

Llefydd gwyllt II (Wild places II) Gesso, paint, ink, varnish and thread on calico 60 x 137cm 2017

Yn y caeau II (In the fields II)

Gesso, paint, ink and pastel on khadi paper 58 x 77cm 2018

Llwybrau’r mynydd (Mountain tracks) Ink, charcoal and pastel on paper 35 x 156cm 2013

Ffordd y mynydd-heibio’r llyn II (Mountain track-past the lake II) Paint, ink, pastel and charcoal on paper 36 x 76cm 2014

Arenig-ailymweld III (Arenig-revisited III) Paint, charcoal, and pastel on gessoed paper 22 x 51cm 2014

Hwyrnos III (Nocturnal III) Gesso, paint and ink on khadi paper 30 x 42cm 2018

Castell (Castle) Ink on paper 28 x 76cm 2011

Trwy’r ardd I (Through the garden I) Gesso, paint, ink and varnish on khadi paper 42 x 30cm 2017

Trwy’r ardd II (Through the garden II) Gesso, paint, ink and varnish on khadi paper 42 x 30cm 2017

Yn y dyffryn - trwy’r caeau II (In the valley - through the fields II) Ink, and pastel on paper 69 x 102cm 2017

Ar daith heibio’r caeau (Journey past the fields) Gesso, paint and ink on khadi paper 30 x 42cm 2018

ELERI MILLS

1955 1974 - 77 1978 - 88 1988 - 2000 - 2010 - 12 2012

Born Mid Wales B.A.Hons. Art and Design at Manchester Polytechnic Working from studio in Manchester Working from studio in Mid Wales Represented by Thackeray Gallery, London Creative Wales Ambassador Award, Arts Council of Wales Macy Gallery, New York

Eleri Mills lives and works in rural Mid Wales, where she was born and brought up. She has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad including the Museums of Modern Art Kyoto and Tokyo, Museu Textil d’Indumentaria, Barcelona and the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid.

In 2010 she won the Arts Council of Wales’ Creative Wales Ambassador award followed by a three month residency in New York at Columbia University and a showing at SOFA NYC (the international art fair for Sculpture, Objects and Functional Art) at Park Avenue Armory.

Eleri has exhibited with Ruthin Craft Centre at Collect, the international art fair organised by the Crafts Council, firstly from 2004 to 2008 at the Victoria and Albert Museum and most recently in 2017 and 2018 at London’s Saatchi Gallery.

Her work is featured in national collections which include the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh and the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Back cover: Ar y daith (On the journey) Gesso, paint, ink and stitch on fabric 45 x 68cm 2012

TWENTY TWENTY GALLERY

4 Quality Square, Ludlow SY8 1AR Tel: 01584 875363

twenty-twenty.co.uk