Flow Gallery in collaboration with Somerset Art Works and with the support of The Arts Council grants arranged two residencies of one week for artists who work in urban environments yet whose work is deeply influenced by gardens and meadows.
Forde Abbey owners very kindly provided a perfect environment with its magnificent gardens and a grand house ( originally a Cistercian Abbey) full of history. It was to be a retreat from city life, time out to experiment and draw and write.
Katie Spragg and Kaori Tatebayashi were selected for the residency this year.
The residency is a retreat from city life to be inspired by the gardens and history of the Forde Abbey. Focusing on its strong arts and crafts early history. The residency involves drawing painting and photography with the result of the residency shown in an exhibition within the house.
Kaori Tatebayashi is interested in plants and gardening. She tries to preserve the fleeting moments of flowering plants. By stopping the clock and also removing colour, these ordinary objects become something extraordinary and will resemble a ghostly apparition in your eyes.
Katie Spragg’s work combines ceramic objects, installation and moving image to create momentary experiences that allude to the amazement and wonder of being outside in nature. The pieces offer the viewer a space to daydream; evoking distant, possibly half-imagined memories. The contrasting situations presented play on the conflict between our sublime fantasy of nature and the often more mundane reality of our experience of it. While the fired ceramic pieces capture a moment in time, the animations describe the dynamic, receptive qualities that clay and grass share. They record the durational element of making and the elastic sense of time that is felt when in nature.Commissioned by Somerset Art Works Hosted by Forde AbbeyFunded by Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Lottery programme
Forde Abbey
Kaori Tatebayashi
Kaori Tatebayashi
Katie Spragg
Katie Spragg