Victoria Rance: Otherworld

Victoria Rance

Otherworld imagining the lost creatures and local spirits of Blackheath

March 2019

Victoria Rance

Otherworld imagining the lost creatures and local spirits of Blackheath

The White Box Gallery, 5 Hare and Billet Road Blackheath SE3 0RB from March 1st to 10th.

Open Day March 1st 11-8pm with performance by Blanc Sceol at 7pm by The Hare and Billet Pond. Open Friday to Sunday 11 – 6pm and by appointment.

In 'Otherworld', a series started in 2015, award winning artist Victoria Rance will be imagining Blackheath as it once was, and could be once again if it were re-inhabited by its lost creatures and local spirits. She looks at the connections between humans, animals and nature and creates tiny detailed pewter characters from her imagination and mythology, setting them in tableaux scenes.

Responding to the location and the time of the mad March hare, Rance is also showing a new series of talismanic sculptures based on The Three Hares, an ancient archetypal symbol. She sees the motif as a way of honouring our precious declining wildlife, as well as being a helpful counter to the conflicted and binary splitting of current world views. She writes: "In 1859 the Greenwich Natural History Society made a record of fauna on Blackheath.

The animal species recorded included natter jack toads, hares, lizards, bats, quail, ring ouzel and nightingales. Today the bats are the only regular inhabitants on that list.

Otherworld, my exhibition opening on March 1st is on Hare and Billet Road. Opposite is the Hare and Billet Pond which has the most natural wildlife of the three ponds on Blackheath.

There are many residents and local experts who work hard to protect the wildlife that we have left on Blackheath which is in the boroughs of Lewisham and Greenwich. It is acid grassland, a site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation, with an impressive number of bees, wasps and ants species recorded, the most recent study is by David Notton of The Natural History Museum. It is also used regularly by humans for fairs and festivals such as On Blackheath and the fireworks on or around Guy Fawkes day, sports, kite flying, dog walking and picnics. At over 200 acres it is one of the largest areas of common land in Greater London. The Blackheath Joint Working Party, Greenwich Wildlife Action Group and The Blackheath Society are among local amenity groups which help protect it and educate about it.

My point of view as an artist is to honour it by evoking a different type of world, one which is lost not just to the Heath but to most of Western Society. This is a world in which our connection to nature is imagined through nature spirits. Last year before a visit to The Outer Hebrides I read Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies 500 AD to the Present by Simon Young and Ceri Houlbrook. It is a scholarly history of fairy sightings, which amazingly enough do continue in the UK. There is still a remnant of belief in these hobgoblins, elves, dryads and fairies of our old stories which screamed when trees were cut down, punished when sacred places were violated or caused mayhem when certain animals were killed without due care and respect. If we still all had respect for these old superstitions (as they do in Iceland) perhaps the destruction of natural habitats would be far less prevalent, climate change not such a threat, and we’d even still have brown hares running around on Blackheath. For Otherworld I have discovered (in my research, dreams and imagination) some creatures whose job it is to haunt and protect the Heath through fear or favour."

Victoria Rance February 2019

Otherworld 2018-2019 catalogue of work (unique unless otherwise stated) 1. Black Dog Walking (Cù-sìth) 2019 14x11x6cm pewter unique

2. Thorny Loki 2019 16.5x9.5x2.5cm pewter unique

3. Little Loki 2018 7.5x5x2cm pewter unique

4. Witch 2015 16x10x10cm pewter unique

5. Light Deer Cloud 2018-9 13x6x4cm pewter unique

6 &7. Loki Plants 2019 various heights pewter unique nfs

8. Thorness 2019 10x6x3.5cm wax and thorns unique nfs

9. Dark Plant 2019 11x4x5.5cm pewter

10. Mayfly Fairy & Little Weed 2019 12x4.5x3cm pewter

11. Little Weeds 2019 various heights 4-11cm pewter

12. Little Weed and Mayfly 2019 12x3x2cm pewter and clay unique

13. Little Imps 2019 Little Imp Wax Foot 2019 12x5.5x2cm

Little Imp Long Hair 2019 13.5x5.5x2cm

Little Imp Sharp Hair 2019 11x5.5x2cm

Little Imp Webbed Hair 2019 12x5.5x2cm

14. Dark Cloud Deer 2018-19 12x7x3cm pewter unique

15. Tree Spirits 2019 Tree Spirit I 2019 12x6x2cm pewter unique

Tree Spirits II 2019 13x6x2cm pewter unique

16. She Tree Spirit 2019 16x6x3cm pewter unique

17. Hermit I 2019 12x7.5x3cm pewter

19. Hermit III 2019 13x8x3cm pewter unique

18. Hermit II 2019 12x7x3cm pewter

20. King I 2019 14x6x3cm pewter unique

21. King II 2019 14x6x3cm pewter unique

22. Sun Loki 2018 8.5x7.5x2cm pewter unique

23. Bat Loki 2016-18 12x5x2.5cm pewter unique

24. Deer 2016 8x8x4cm and Tree 2018 10x10x10cm pewter unique nfs

25. Mad Cat Sìth 2018-19 10.5 8x11cm pewter unique

26. Praying Loki 2018 9x10.5x3cm pewter unique

27. Thorn Tree Spirit 2019 10x9x3cm pewter unique

28. Old Goddess Loki 2018 12x7x4cm pewter unique

Three Hares and Greyhound Talismans (unique unless otherwise stated) 29. Three Young Hares 2018 pewter 9x8x2cm 30.Three Dancing Hares 2018 pewter 8.5x8.5x1cm

31. Hare 2015 pewter 5x6x2cm 3/5 edition of 5

32. Three Flying Hares 2018 7x7x1.5cm pewter unique

33. Three Flowing Hares I 2018 10x9x0.5cm

34. Three Flowing Hares II 2018 10x9.5x0.5cm

35. & 36. Three Hares Disc I and II 2018 10x10x0.5cm edition of two unique multiples

37-40. Hares 2018 9.5x6x0.5cm edition of four unique multiples

41. Three Hares Triskele 2018 8.5x8.5x0.5cm pewter unique

42 - 46. Greyhound Talisman 2018 pewter 6x3x0.5cm edition of 6 unique multiples

47-51. Greyhound Charms 2018 pewter 4.5x2.5x0.5cm edition of 5 unique multiples

51-55. Old Jack Hares 2019 pewter 4.5x3x0.5cm edition of 5

56-59. Three Hares Running 2018 6x6x0.5cm lead free alloy edition of 4 unique multiples

60-63. Three Lucky Hares Running 2018 7x6x0.5cm pewter edition of 4 unique multiples

64. & 65. Three Hares Running (Celtic) 2018 pewter 6x2x0.5cm edition of two unique multiples

“Rance’s Work as a whole both reveals and acknowledges the disturbing things that are going on around us before offering us an alternative or means of protection; uniting the knowing and the not knowing, the visible and the invisible, the supernatural and the rational, the loving and the terrible.”

Anna McNay, Assistant Editor, Art Quarterly

Otherworld | Victoria Rance The White Box Gallery, 5 Hare and Billet Road Blackheath SE3 0RB Open 1-10 March Friday to Sunday 11-6pm and by appointment: Tel: 07958 977992 Website: www.victoriarance.com Email: victoriarance@btinternet.com Twitter: @VictoriaRance Instagram: @victoria_rance Facebook: Victoria.rance all works and photographs copyright Victoria Rance 2019