Her Imaginarium

HER IMAGINARIUM

Copyright 2022 View Art Gallery

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books

the group

Her Imaginarium

October 21 - November 20, 2022

View Art Gallery

Hotwell Road

BS8 4RY

Kingdom

Her Imaginarium

Co-curated by the multi-talented artist, poet, comedian and singer, Clare Ferguson-Walker, this exhibition is a view into the wonderland of the all-female collective from West Wales.

“A glimpse into the subconscious collective of women and those identifying as female. What moves us, what do we see when the veils of reality are stripped back to the dreams, the beauty, the magic? Imagination; A collective vehicle for that which we speak in symbols, creatures and multi layered fragments of modernity, harking back to the dawn of humanity.”

CLARE FERGUSON-WALKER CORRIE CHISWELL ZARA KUCHI FLORA MCLACHLAN NADIA HILLMAN

Clare Ferguson-Walker

Clare trained in sculpture at the Carmarthen School of Arts and has gone on to exhibit her work all over the world. Her unique surrealist figurative style has garnered her a global following with shows in L.A, SanFransisco and Japan. Clare is also a regular exhibitor at the RWA and RA. Sir Peter Blake describes her work as “powerful and exciting”.

Clare lives in a small village called Tavernspite in West Wales, heavily influenced in childhood by the work of Jim Henson in films like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, Clare’s work is otherworldly, and often uses fairytale and mythical archetypes to represent aspects of the human condition.

“I see the imagination as a conduit between worlds, the world of the conscious and sub-conscious minds and I believe that there is a symbolic language that transcends the spoken word that can be tapped into, as an artist I feel its my job to help manifest those symbols.”

The Sacred Wound, hand painted bronze resin, edition of 9, 25 x 30cm

Clockwork Heart, hand painted bronze resin, edition of 9, 65 x 55cm

The Politics of Secrecy, oil on canvas, 60 x 40cm

Sorrowful Siren, hand painted bronze resin, edition of 12

Remember the Sea, bronze, edition of 12, 70 x 50cm

Caught the Sun, bronze, edition of 12, 60 x 25cm

The Lonely King, bronze resin, edition of 12

Eve and Her Bindweed Crown bronze resin, edition of 12

Corrie Chiswell

Corrie Chiswell studied art at Fettes College, Edinburgh, where she was taught by the Scottish painter John Brown RSA and won ‘The Andrew Campbell Memorial prize for Art’. She accepted a place at Exeter College, Oxford and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art, specialising in painting, from The Ruskin School of Drawing. After travelling extensively, living and working from her studios in Australia and America, she returned to the United Kingdom. She now works from her studio in Cardiff and has been shortlisted for the Glamorgan Purchase Prize, awarded runner up in the Wales portrait award and won the painting prize in Welsh Artist of the Year.

In her work the artist combines figurative work and landscape in her narrative portraiture. She draws inspiration from folklore, classical mythology, historical events, literature and song while her sitters channel hybrid forms, angels, selkies, sirens and characters from fairytales. She is equally comfortable in observational painting of form, often with a surreal slant, which is magnified in her dreamscapes, full of symbolism, where she uses the canvas as a portal to other worlds.

Ghost ll oil on canvas, 56 x 56cm framed

Xas oil on canvas, 71 x 173cm

Cariad Fel Y Moroedd/Love as Vast as Oceans oil on canvas, 156 x 126cm

India’s Farewell oil on canvas, 86 x 86cm

Nicolette’s Pact oil on canvas, 61 x 61cm

China on Old Linen oil on canvas, 86 x 56cm framed

Find Me in the Future oil on canvas, 81 x 106cm

Zara Kuchi

Zara Kuchi studied Fine Art at Carmarthenshire College of Arts and Technology and went on to graduate from Falmouth College of Arts with First Class Honours. She now lives and works in rural West Wales.

Kuchi is primarily an oil painter working mainly in the tradition of classical portraiture with a particular interest in the genre of the ‘tronie’. Kuchi is most well known for her series of works portraying the ‘Girl in a Turban’. This series began around 2012 based on images modelled by her niece and has evolved over the years to become focused on the universal and mysterious appeal of the ‘youthful face adorned with fabric’. The principal aim of these works is to convey a sense of timelessness and serenity in the midst of a chaotic world.

Girl in a Gypsy Headscarf Oil on Panel, 36x28 cm

A Still Life for the Ancestors Oil on Panel, 40x30 cm

Girl in a Pink Turban Oil on Panel, 36x28 cm

The Egyptian Girl Oil on Panel, 25x20 cm

Girl in a Blue Kimono Oil on Panel, 23x30 cm

Portrait of a Stone Skull Oil on Panel, 18x13 cm

Portrait of a Turquoise Skull Oil on Panel, 18x13 cm

Woman Born of Flowers: Blodeuwedd Oil on Linen, 100x70 cm

Flora McLachlan

Flora is based in West Wales where she lives on the edge of the Preseli moors and makes etchings and lithographs. Flora’s imagery springs out of her sense of the mythical and archetypal elements of landscape, as found in the storytelling tradition. She is fascinated by how the residue of our childhood reading affects our emotional connection with observed landscape.

In her work, images from her everyday life and her memory are gathered and bound into a tentative personal mythology that weaves her to the world and to other people. The motif of the transformative quest in medieval romance informs her work with a sense of travelling outwards into the wild forest, and inwards into the mysteries of the self. Her work is steered by the nature of her materials, whether local charcoal, copper plate, wood, or lithographic stone. The work can suddenly leave paper and become expressed in film, sculpture, or event. She also uses invented forms of divination and ritual walking and dreams up magical happenings to explore the imagery she is using. A suggestion of reaching for the Other is always present in her work.

Image from the film ‘In Which I Go Hunting’ 4 minutes

Cattle grid at midnight

Welsh gorse charcoal, 30 x 41cm

The goose girl

Oil on gesso on board, 44 x 40cm

Spirit travels Oil on canvas, 75 x 75cm

Hearthfires lithograph, 76 x 54cm

Awakening lithograph, 76 x 54cm

Ride a wild goat

Welsh willow charcoal, 30 x 41cm

Just playing

Welsh willow charcoal, 30 x 41cm

Spells lithograph, 76 x 54cm

Possession II etching, 78 x 53cm

Nadia Hillman

Nadia is based in West Wales between hill and sea. Her home is a creative laboratory filled with originality, colour and chaos; she lives as close to the plants, animals and seasons as possible, linked to a symbiotic “my feelium” of friends. Alongside writing poems, singing and gardening, Nadia is a selt taught collage artist and like much of her home and surrounding wilderness her creative process is riotous and untamed. Fragments of form and colour mesh together with the softest of nudges, organically creating a unique visual style. Themes of hope, fantasy, identity, nature, spirituality, innocence and conflict have emerged through these pieces. An irrev erence bleeds in to this work but there is also a sensitive nod to life’s vulnerability and richness.

Ashen collage, 40 x 40cm

Tongue And Groove collage, 40 x 40cm

Too Close To The Sun collage, 40 x 40cm

Her Imaginarium collage, 40 x 40cm

You Won’t Find It Here collage, 40 x 40cm

Secrets And Lies collage, 50 x 40cm

Corrie Chiswell

Flora McLachlan

Zara Kuchi

Nadia Hillman