Saturday January 11 2020, until further notice.
Dartington Space Gallery
Two recent art graduates Christiane Berghoff (Falmouth University) and
Ann Russell (University of the Arts, Camberwell) are experimenting with materials and forms using nature as component parts. Ann works with the sea, and the images you see in this exhibition are developed from photographs taken around Prawle Point, a spectacular piece of coastline in South Devon which has claimed the lives of many ships and sailors over the centuries.
Christiane Berghoff experiments with colour derived from natural dyes and with very simple large-stitched forms using the yarn she makes wool from British farms, and with undyed linen.
The exhibition is open now until March 24. The artists will talk about their at the First Friday event on Friday March 6. Join us there for a shared lunch at 13.00 – the artist talk begins around 14.00.
How to find the Dartington Space Gallery
Christiane Berghoff
Artist Christiane Berghoff mainly works with sustainable textiles, having studied Art and Environment at Falmouth University. She worked in an area of the walled garden on the Penryn Campus, planting and nurturing a variety of plants selected for the purpose of botanically dying textiles and for their value to insect pollinators.
Christiane has led the conversation to the wonder of the natural properties of harvested plants, to dye material. A method practiced for centuries, that is almost forgotten and that connects people with place and nature. Christiane hopes to encourage engagement with local habitats and inspire enchantment in the environment.
Christiane teaches Slow Stitch for Wellbeing in workshops and courses, collaborating in future projects with Social Prescibers and Community Engagement Organisations.
Christiane says:
Stitches are the steps of a journey, they are a beginning into the unknown.
The feel, the touch and the smell of wool are an intrinsic element in my work, explored through the slow time it takes to create. Currently I am working with linen and plant dyed British Wool, exploring with slow embroidery stitch the relationship of a place, and the plants and insects, which are present in a space of time.
The current body of work is the result of a project with Exeter University and their Creative Exchange Program in 2019.
Ann Russell
Ann Russell works across printmaking, drawing, video and photography. In 2019 she graduated from UAL Camberwell with an MA in Printmaking and received the annual Art Hub Printmaking award. Ann has always worked by the sea. Her practice explores the exchange between stillness and motion, presence and absence, traces and edges.
between two waves
My latest project explores the interaction between the sea and the structure of an eroding wreck. It has grown out of a year’s worth of visits observing and recording the changing rhythms of this encounter. Working from hours of gathered footage, she collages video stills in the form of inked transfers. In this spontaneous practice, linear time unravels; moments merge and diverge.