UPSTAIRS AT THE ART SHOP, CROSS STREET

Exhibition opening on Friday 8 September 6-8pm. 

CORNELIA O’DONOVAN – “When I am working I am making stories, the colours are memories and the lines and marks are characters. The paper is the stage. It is a recital as I paint…

When I was a child, my sister and I would spend days making paper cardboard houses, sometimes whole villages – using toothpaste lids to make light bulbs, scraps of fabric for curtains, making interior worlds.

That feeling never left me and still today I work with the idea of making something from nothing. It is fascinating, entirely insular and personal, but speaks of today and time, and is a female voice. The first drawings and scribbles are stiff, then after I am relaxed enough, they begin to be playful. I work without judging or editing and it seems to pour out. I find the process of setting up, layering colour down, cutting up and arranging shapes totally absorbing.

The time I spend working is a complete other world, a time to reflect and map out dreams, nightmares, my fears, and obsessions. The images sometimes repeat themselves, playing out different roles and interpreting the same meaning again and again – images from the stories I collect, my own and other people’s lives, from film, paintings, poems, and myths.”

Cornelia O’Donovan trained at Royal College of Art graduating in 2006. Her work is held in private collections in the U.K. and overseas. She lives and works in London.

 

EDLA MARLBOROUGH – Edla specialises in one-off, hand-built decorative ceramics. She uses an earthenware clay hand painted with a variety of coloured slips and glazes. Form and decoration are very important to her. Influences and inspirations come from a wide range of sources. She collages ideas from her home environment such as foliage, pattern and interiors. External imagery gathered on her travels comes from museums, exhibitions and the natural landscape. She sees both her research sketch books and pots as a diary entry of what she has been looking at and where she has been. The coil and slab-building making process means every piece is completely unique.

Edla studied at The Royal College of Art (MA 1993-95),  St. Martins (London, Illustration 1991-93) and Camberwell College of Art (London, BA 1988-91). She has exhibited widely including the V&A and Crafts Council. 

 

All work is available to buy through Collectorplan from the Arts Council of Wales. This is an interest free credit scheme for the purchase of original, contemporary artwork.