EDGELAND
Drawing | Installation | Sound
August 2016 | Penarth Pier Pavilion | Wales
Below is the work from Geraint's major solo exhibition EDGELAND, his first show since completing the Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing School.
The focal installation, ‘Monolith (horizontal)’ combined sculpture and soundscape with a burnt out car. This semi-autobiographical, multi-sensory installation delves into personal memories of the artist's childhood, playing in a scrap of woodland that backed his estate in west Cardiff. The work explores the notion of destruction as a form of creation and considers what it takes to break the negative social cycles of estate life.
“The nowhere bits of scrub-land that lies between where our cities become more dilute and our countryside begins is where you’ll find the Edgelands: spaces as transient, evocative and visceral as memory itself.”
Many of the drawings are largescale and site specific, often done entirely from observation. These in situ sessions are aided by listening to sound while working via headphones plugged into a microphone, intensifying the sensory connection to the place. Evans’ work is built around the central concern of the individual’s experience of genius loci, in both the political and physical geography of place.
“Edgeland explores the wilderness of memory; a word unclear as to what events are fabricated and what are recalled accurately from reality; recollections where factual experiences, almost within grasp, meet belief and imagination. Evans presents these coming of age events as legend.”
The exhibition was made possible with support from Arts Council of Wales, with special thanks to Bob Gelsthorpe (Penarth Pier Pavilion), Pengham PartMart and sonic artists James Holland and Nick Perry.
Photographs by Chris Evans and Bob Gelsthorpe.