Ephemeral Coast

Official documentation of Situation/Material/Ocean

Thank you to the artists, Matt Otten for documentation, and Mission Gallery

On April 8th, 2017 the next Ephemeral Coast Exhibition entitled Situation/Material/Ocean will open at the Mission Gallery, Wales, UK.

Situation/Material/Ocean presents a series of studies that explore the perception and sensibility of coastal materiality.

Gemma Copp, a Welsh artist whose work is animated by the coast of Swansea, and Annie Thibault, a Canadian artist who frequently engages with the biology of aquatic life, present assemblages of fluid materiality and matter drawn from the sea and configured in series of studies. Both artists consider material forms in terms of their relationality: salt, algae, plastic, and seawater come together and begin to question and problematize distinctions. At times unexpected and ambiguous, these explorations of the micro and macro sensibilities of salt water encompass the ethics of environmental degradation: material waste, geological erosion, and the seemingly endless yearn to connect with non-human life. Placed together, the work of Copp and Thibault also situates these vastly differing coast lines into connection, creating hybrid configurations of aquatic life.

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of films by Adele Vye, Lee Williams and Daniel Trivedy in 'the [...] space'.

Adele Vye

04 April - 21 May 2017

Adele Vye grew up in Port Talbot, South Wales and studied Fine Art at Oxford Brooks University. Vye is based from her studio in Swansea as well as working out in the field. Her site-specific explorations respond to the artists timely questions and take the form of documented actions. Vye was awarded the John Brookes Memorial Prize for Fine Art in 2005 and Welsh Artist of The Year for Time Based Media in 2009.

Lee Williams

23 May - 25 June 2017

Based in Port Talbot, working in a broad interdisciplinary practice including painting, printmaking, sculpture, the moving image and ever emerging technologies, Lee Williams enquires into the creative potentials of the narrative structure by tracking and recording industrial flotsam. Collected, collated and tracked, the work is part planned, part improvised. 

This work addresses issues of identity, ownership and authorship where more formal issues realize a uniqueness and authenticity, revealing a quieter sensitivity of our at times complex relationship with the material and the ephemeral. The work intentionally establishes a developing proposition of the viewer and the arena of recovering an immediacy, finding an opening through the elusive, seductive and sensual world of exploration and representation.

Daniel Trivedy

27 June - 06 August 2017

Based in Swansea, Daniel uses art as a method of investigation. His working method involves a process of research, thought and material play that rarely produces a defined end or conclusion. What has developed over a period of time are a number of divergent strands of conversation that skirt themes of connection, belonging and global citizenship. Daniel is interested in our psychological relationship to each other. What are the origins, ramifications and consequences of these relationships? How are these relationships changing in an increasingly connected world?  

In tension to these works, Daniel's practice involves periods of solitary thinking. These meditative sojourns are an introverted response to the fast rate at which we live our lives, a way to cope with flux and change; a method of escape. Within these intimate works there is a longing for the tranquil and ‘authentic’.

Daniel’s work for Ephemeral Coast is informed by his return trip to the area of the former migrant camp in Calais known as The Jungle.  Daniel first visited the area in August 2015 and returns to contemplate the site’s closure and subsequent erasure by the French authorities.

For more on the event, click here.