DYS PH ASI A

 “In this exhibition I have selected recent works that consider the differences

between intended meanings and interpretations. This is a continuing exploration 

of poetic landscapes, both real and imagined, searching for common-ground for 

writing and visual art to cohabit.” - from Artist's Statement

ARTIST'S TALK on Wednesday 10 January 2018 at 17:30

Remy Dean : Dysphasia : Partial List of Works 


‘Land Poems’ (2017)

Digital prints made with a photographic process using colours sampled from landscape. Compositions are guided by the interaction of lines using poetic rhythm and metre. Although the 'poems' are linear in structure, they may be ‘read’ in multiple directions, beginning from any square. It was my intention to capture the essence of the land through its colours and transient moods. My initial approach to this photography series was informed by the famous ‘lozenge’ paintings of Piet Mondrian.

This set of 'Land Poems' was produced as part of this year’s Creative Residency at Plas Tan y Bwlch, the Snowdonia National Park Authority's Environmental Study Centre, in Maentwrog, Wales.


‘Writing to Escape…’ (2015 – 2017)

Ongoing series of prints resulting from written drawings of visual and narrative stimuli. Expressing emotions whilst avoiding the deliberate formation of words and so, perhaps, circumventing the cultural dogmas often attached to words and languages. One perceptive viewer described this as, "a tiny form of dance, recorded visually". Precedent for this kind of approach can be found in the calligraphic scroll paintings of China and Japan, and in the modern works of Joan Miró, Cy Twombly, Franz Kline, Hans Hartung, and others…


‘The Stars, at Our Feet’ (2016)

iron : leaves its mark upon the slate in nebulae of rust in a starscape of tiny pits and scratches left by the footsteps of quarriers. The slate, once above their heads, now at their feet, reflecting the infinite night above. Ancient mineral memories… of the blood, of the land, of the stars : iron

The poetic image of slate miners returning to their barracks on a rare, clear night, their heavy work-boots splashing in the puddles, mixing the reflection of the stars with their own. This and the recent classification of the Snowdonia National Park as a Dark Skies Reserve were the seeds for this series of photographs, its title suggested by an old poem by an anonymous Cwmorthin miner. Produced as part of my 2016 Residency at Plas Tan y Bwlch.

You can read an article about The Stars, at Our Feet in EGO Magazine HERE


‘Cicorc Conwy’ (2015 – 2017)

Before setting off on longer than usual voyages, sailors would have ‘one’ last drink in their local pub before embarkation onto their ships and boats. They would enjoy a favourite tipple, smoke a pipe and sometimes they would make a small model dog with corks and match-sticks. These tiny cork companions would travel with them to distant ports in exotic far-off lands and upon their safe return would be gifted to their children. A limited edition, hand-made series of these objet-avec-courte-histoire will be available for adoption, each with accompanying information and story booklet.

‘The Questing Beats Back-Catalogue’ (2017)

A selection of re-issue CD covers from obscure, or non-existent, bands signed to the legendary 1980s art-rock/alt-punk label based in Stoke-on-Trent.


‘Sugar Rush’ (2015 - 2017)

A series of objects, photographs and information commenting on the shaping of the local landscape and culture... taken with a spoonful of sugar. From sugar and slaves… to sheep and slate…

'#Moelwyns' (ongoing, since 2007)

Selected prints from the series of photographs documenting my attempt to capture the ever-changing moods of  the Mynyddau Moelwynion mountain range, the transient atmospheric conditions that only people who are lucky enough to live here, in Snowdonia, really get to know. I see the Moelwyns and walk their slopes almost every day of the year... They remain the same, yet continually change. They never get old. To keep up with this series on twitter, click here.


'Illustrations for THIS' (2017)

Illustrations for the forthcoming illustrated edition of This, by Remy Dean with Zel Cariad, Book One of the This, That and the Other trilogy - imaginative fantasy, on an epic scale. The story follows the special friendship between two girls who embark on a magical adventure together, across the three realms. It is a modern fable inspired by Welsh fairy tales and folklore, in the tradition of The Neverending Story, The Box of Delights, The Chronicles of Narnia… This is published by The Red Sparrow Press

The Stars, At Our Feet - The Plas Tan y Bwlch Journals (part 2)

Iron : made in the stars, gifted to the universe upon their deaths. More plentiful than any other metal. It is in our blood. It is in the land. The acid waters from the high, peated moorland carried the iron down to deposit it as pans of bog-iron in the extensive marshlands that once surrounded the village of Maentwrog. This iron was discovered and worked by the ancient smiths of the Bronze Age, ushering in a new Age of : Iron.

Left: bisected lump of 'bog-iron' displayed at Plas Tan y Bwlch (photograph by Remy Dean, 2016)
Right: galaxy Pictor A - when the light we see left this distant galaxy, 500 million years ago,
what is now the slate of the Cwmorthin quarries was still sediment and ashes...
(image courtesy of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and NASA, 2016)

Nebulae of rust stain the starscapes of tiny pits and scratches left by the footsteps of quarriers. Slate, once above their head, now at their feet reflecting the infinite night above. Of the land, of the stars.

The Stars, At Our Feet (i) photograph by Remy Dean, 2016

In December 2015, the Snowdonia National Park was officially designated the world's tenth International Dark Sky Reserve. This news, and the poetic image of slate miners returning to their barracks on a rare, clear night, their heavy work-boots splashing in the puddles and mixing the reflection of the stars with their own, were the seeds for an on-going series of images I have titled, The Stars, At Our Feet...

The Stars, At Our Feet (ii) photograph by Remy Dean, 2016

I took the title for this series of photographs from a poem by an anonymous Cwmorthin miner, found written on the back of a shipping slip, dated 1889.

You can read the News Release about Snowdonia becoming a Dark Skies Reserve HERE.

Find more about the Cwmorthin Quarries HERE.

Read about Peter Crew's archaeological excavations at Bryn y Castell hillfort and subsequent findings related to bog iron and the Iron Age significance of the Maentwrog area HERE.

Work produced during this Residency will be on show in the Stable Block,

Plas Tan y Bwlch, over this Yuletide, and through Spring 2017...

[read part 1 here]

Entropy / Extropy - Art and Photography by Remy Dean with Pottery by Jane Williams

Friday 13 November (!) until 11 January 2016

This year's Yuletide Exhibition at Oriel Maenofferen (Blaenau Ffestiniog Library and Community Centre) showcases a selection of works by Remy Dean, including recent pieces produced during his term as Writer in Residence at Haus of Helfa 2015. Alongside these photographs, prints and drawings, there is a display of 3D work by local potter, Jane Williams - who we are all currently 'rooting for' every Tuesday, on BBC2's Great Pottery Throw Down.

Entropy / Extropy exhibition poster

The following is taken from the Artist's Statement of Remy Dean:

"I am an author and artist… I also teach.

"Folklore and hearsay interest me, how the myths and legends of the past affect our world today. I love telling stories that hover somewhere in the hinterland between fact and fantasy, whilst scratching at the surface of a truth.

"This exhibition includes some photography, drawings, objects and the outcomes of two recent projects:

"In my artist’s statement for NIGHT / LIGHT, my 2011 exhibition here, I wrote: “The weather, natural light effects and moods of the mountains can change in a moment and I would like to attempt to capture more of the transient conditions that only people who are lucky enough to live here, in Snowdonia, really get to know.” This on-going quest has resulted in the #Moelwyns series which I regularly add to via twitter @DeanAuthor #Moelwyns and the book of the same title that collects a selection of 52 photographs to create a portrait of the Moelwyns mountain range through the seasons. (To coincide with the exhibition, the images from Project #Moelwyns have also been compiled onto a Pinterest Board HERE)

"During September this year, I was the writer in residence for Haus Of Helfa. This residency of a dozen artists in ‘The Tedder House’, a semi-derelict building in Llandudno, is often referred to as the ‘flagship’ of the Helfa Gelf Art Trail.

Writing to Escape the Words - signed prints by Remy Dean,
framed and waiting, before the exhibition

"As part of the Residency, I experimented with the gesture of writing as a form of drawing, trying to find common ground for writing and visual art to cohabit. Using the same pathways from mind, through brain, to hand - utilising those same conditioned (hand-writing) reflexes to create a unique visual language of mark-making that shares many formal elements with writing, without the encumbrance of literal meaning… Expressing emotions whilst avoiding the deliberate formation of word-language and so, perhaps, circumventing the cultural dogmas often attached to words and languages. One perceptive visitor described this as, "a tiny form of dance, recorded visually". The results are gathered into the book, Scanner - Printer.

"Please come to have a look... and enjoy!"

You can find an on-line archive of past exhibitions by Remy Dean here.

Location and opening hours for Entropy / Extropy can be found here.

A Sunday in London: A Study in Sherlock

“Enter through the bookcase…” thus begins your adventure into the realm of Sherlock Holmes. One of the main missions of the weekend was to visit the major Sherlock Holmes exhibition currently at the Museum of London…

The exhibition is divided into several sub-sections but is broadly divided in two, with the first half setting the scene and focussing on the Victorian London of Sherlock Holmes, the London in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lived and made authentically present in the stories. The London of the era is so well evoked in - and integral to - many of the stories that this has led many (particularly Americans, it seems) to believe that Holmes was indeed a real historical personage and not a fictitious character. Here you can see paintings and photographs depicting various aspects of Victorian London, often with a quote from a specific story next to it, highlighting the relevance of the artwork and the authenticity of the text.

Views of Victorian London - photogravure prints by Alvin Langdon Coburn

Amongst the well-selected works, which include Whistlers and Monets, I particularly enoyed a row of photogravure prints by Alvin Langdon Coburn, the American photographer who was a huge influence on the Futurist. He is one of the first photographers to make bold, balanced compositions of light and dark with the ‘modern’ city as his source material. The Futurists believed that he showed cities in a positive way and managed to capture their light and abundant energy (both physical and cultural). Futurists believed that cities were machines for living and were necessary to build the future, by facilitating cultural and technological changes at an accelerated rate due to the density of population enabling a rapid exchange of ideas. The images in the exhibition are beautiful examples of Langdon’s work and of the photogravure etching technique, with a very distinctive atmosphere. I have seen some of these images before, but looking at the real things closely is a different experience. The surfaces have a certain quality that cannot be captured through modern glossy printing and certainly not conveyed over a screen. 

The immortal Sherlock Holmes
(click image for reviews or to purchase catalog on-line)

The second half of the exhibition is about Sherlock Holmes, the character, and how he has changed and developed significantly, whilst remaining essentially the same. There is a filmed interview with Conan Doyle in which he explains much of his thinking and intentions behind the character and his motivations for creating the character in the first place: He enjoyed the genre of whodunit detective stories, but was frustrated because the crime scenario was always set up and then the detective, or inspector, would solve the case either without explanation - he would just know whodunit - or else there would be a torrent of clues right at the end as the case was solved that the reader had not been privy to. He would rather have had the challenge of ‘role-playing’ the detective character and working out the clues throughout the story, hoping to solve the case before the denouement and then waiting in suspense to see if he had it right. So this is what he always tried to achieve with a good Sherlock Holmes story.

On display are a few ‘holy relics’ of Serlockania, such as the original, hand-written manuscript for The Tangled Skein, with that title struck out and A Study in Scarlet added instead. In a cabinet opposite this, there are also some pages from Edgar Allan Poe’s original manuscript for Murders in the Rue Morgue, featuring the detective, C Auguste Dupin, said to have been the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. So the story of Sherlock begins with the stories, then the exhibition explores how different illustrators have contributed to the enduring visual identity of Sherlock and Watson. It is obvious from portraits of Conan Doyle on display that, from the start, the appearance of Dr Watson was based very closely on the author. The visual identity of Sherlock Holmes developed quickly, though tentatively, until the illustrations for the stories appearing in The Strand magazine were commissioned to Sidney Paget who consolidated the aquiline features and accessories we still associate with the character.

Watson and Holmes as visualised by Sidney Paget for The Strand

After establishing the origins of Holmes, the exhibition climaxes with a chamber showing items form the Museum of London’s collection that would be identical to items mentioned in the stories: coats hats, shoes, canes, chemistry supplies, smoking paraphernalia, a violin, medical equipment, make-up and wigs worn by actors of the era that would have been useful for the master of disguises... There are also authentic props from some of the film and television production, including Benedict Cumberbatch’s unique coat.

There is also a very interesting ‘thread’ to this section of the expo demonstrating, with the use of actual artefacts of the time, some of the observations and deductions made by Sherlock Holmes. Such as the spatters on the cuffs of a typist’s blouse made when re-inking a ribbon for the, then new, writing machine. The cuts and cracks in the sole of a shoe which could be matched to a cast of a footprint left in mud at a crime scene. The discovery of finger-printing techniques placed in context with the contemporary, and the now debunked, concept of the physiognomy of criminal types.

Numerous screens showed the many and varied actors who have portrayed Homes and Watson, including some of my favourite versions - Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely, Christopher Plummer and James Mason, and for me the definitive pairing of Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke… The whole exhibition brought back poignant memories of seeing them both perform in the two-man play The Secret Of Sherlock Holmes at the Wyndam’s Theatre back in 1989(!?). I had interviewed Jeremy Brett over his pre-performance steak dinner and he had made a note of my party’s seat numbers… and during the performance he delivered a key line directly to us… a lovely gift and a treasured memory.

(An extract of this interview first appeared in Outlook Magazine and here you can read the fuller interview with Jeremy Brett as it later appeared in The Scrawl.)

A fascinating exhibition that manages to stay focussed on meaningful content and examines the many elements that have contributed to making a man that never lived into an immortal. Elementary, of course! 

Tom Hunter's photography beautifully showcased on this scale model
of Ellingfort Road in the early 1990s

We then had some time to spend in the main collections of the Museum, so we started in the Twentieth Century and I was particularly impressed with the beautiful fusion of model-making and photography that forms the piece titled The Ghetto. This 3D artwork authentically documents Ellingfort Road in the early 1990s when it was scheduled for demolition. It is a collaboration between photographer Tom Hunter and model-maker, James MacKinnon. The walls and doors and shop-fronts of the model, along with interiors glimpsed through windows, are surfaced with photographs of the actual doors, walls and wallpapers. Look in through some of the windows and you see back-lit miniature transparencies showing some of the people who lived there at the time, in situ. This is a loving personal monument - Hunter was, and still is, one of the street’s residents - to what could have become a forgotten part of London life.

From the 1900s, we then travelled back in time via the Victorian Walk, to before that era of Holmes and Watson, exploring the London of the past… the Great Fire, the Globe Theatre and the Great Bard, the Great Plague, the Danelaw, the Romans… we finished with artefacts excavated from the Temple of Mithras discovered in the City. The cult of Mithras was an early Roman religion with many elements inherited from Ancient Egypt, it was a dominant cult at the time of Jesus and there are many parallels with Christianity. All very interesting, though Mithras' traditional Phrygian cap does make him look rather like he was balancing a guinea pig on his head …and did Serapis, the god of the Mithran underworld, balance a pot of yogurt on his? No that is his modius - a corn measure representing the fertility of the earth above him...

Mithras and Serapis - once you see the guinea pig... 

As we were leaving the museum, there was an added writer-related bonus: a mini Paddington exhibition with his famous hat, case and duffle coat as realised for props in the recent film adaptation. The attention to detail was impressive, with the toggles bearing (sic) the scratch marks caused by little fumbling claws. What thrilled me the most was seeing the typewriter used by Michael Bond to write some of the early books. I was born in the year of its manufacture and some of my earliest bookish memories are going to the children’s section of our local library, with my brother, to borrow the latest Paddington adventure. We read them as they were published and then had to wait impatiently for the next.  The first few were out before I could read, so I have cherished memories of listening to my older brother read them to me – oh, how we laughed and laughed at the antics and adventures of the funny little bear... He was as real to me as Sherlock Holmes!

Michael Bond's 1965 Olympia typewriter

A hugely enjoyable and educational weekend in London rounded off with a Sunday spent at the Museum of London before heading back up north, stopping for a welcome KFC at Oxford Services, minutes before they shut down for the night… much needed coffee was consumed.

A Day To Remember

The photography of Chino Otsuka, Jonathan Meades and Tom Wood

In the artist’s statement for the exhibition, Processed Memory, I made the observation that the photograph has become synonymous with memory. Adverts often use photographs and the visual language of the photo album to imply personal histories and tales of recollection. Lately, our memories have become increasingly digitised. Ferb (of Phineas and Ferb) made the point that, “Fame is fleeting, but the internet is forever”. Increasingly, digital pictures are the way that we remember and store our memories of people and places.

Recently, a very good friend of mine e-mailed me some pictures from our college days that he was about to upload to his facebook page. I saw them and the memories came flooding back, my mind’s eye could rerun some of the events depicted in crystal clarity including details of dialogue and gesture, but also there were a few people and places that I had no response to… Who? Where? Not a clue. (Perhaps if one can fully remember their student times, then they were not doing it properly! A bit like the 60s.) The point I am getting at, here and now, is that our culture is increasingly remembering more and more through stored images, or more exactly we are experiencing digitally and then storing digitally – occasionally sharing digitally – and perhaps our individual, organic engagements with these events are less deep and the memories less fixed in our actual substance – the ‘eye’ bypasses the ‘I’ and feeds directly into the ‘i-’. Are we becoming careless with our memories? (Was that a Duran Duran song?)

In the olden days, the photograph was a valuable thing. A film could hold 24 or 36 exposures before you had to take it to the chemist for processing, or – if you were an audio-visual student, professional photographer or hobbyist – unravel the spool in total darkness and work alchemy to develop the ribbon of film itself and then make prints from it. Each frame actually cost money, and the effort and organisation involved in retrieving those images added to their value. Because of these constraints, the taking of each photograph was a deliberate choice. The act of considering, deciding and taking the photo had already fixed the people and places in memory. The shared experience of shuffling through the pack of processed pictures with friends, or laying out a photo album to show to others, taking time to select the best and discard the boring… this was all part of a ritual of remembering. It made photographs more meaningful.

Now, we upload vast amounts of photos to ‘streams’ and ‘buckets’, fill gigabytes of hard-drive with stored images, we ‘tweet’, we ‘instagram’… teenagers, and ‘agers' in general, 'selfie' all day long and lean close to friends to pout at a tiny lens and… well, that’s that. Our culture is storing huge amounts of pictures in the form of visual data, pictures taken ‘in passing’ snapped almost at random then stored and at best glanced at once or twice… the majority of these pictures are never looked at again. Ever.

Who has the time to sift through thousands of pictures accrued over the last few years and do anything meaningful with them? When will we get round to selecting the best and discarding the boring? Sharing? “I just uploaded a picture onto facebook”, “check out my tumblr photostream”, “I just tweeted an instagram” – really? Well done. In the days of ‘proper’ photographs this would be the equivalent of pinning a picture to a tree in a forest – someone may even find it and slip it into their wallet to use later, just like some random stranger may download your most flattering ‘selfie’ to enjoy in their own particular way… is this now the measure of the value we place on our memories, and on ourselves?

Marshall McLuhan said that all media are extensions of some organic, human faculty and that photography is certainly an extension of the eye and the memory. New media is extending those faculties further still: this keyboard I am tapping on is an extension of my hands and my voice, this blog is a projection of my mind, the screen you are looking at is an extension of your eyes, the internet systems joining these faculties are extensions of the human brain. Or is that balance beginning to tip the other way?

These thoughts have been sparked off by seeing the work of three photographers who have really maintained the integrity and value of the medium. As creatives, their approaches are quite different – only really linked because they are important photographers and because I recently saw their work on the same day.

I discovered the work of Chino Otsuka via a tweet (look who’s talking, now!) and I quickly glanced at a selection of her images on-line… then I looked again, and again, each time for longer and longer. There was something truly poignant and poetic about her images that deliberately explored personal memory. The images were ‘haunting’. Though the places and events depicted were unlike anything from my own past, there was something that touched me deeply. It is difficult to put into words, as all successful art is… it was if I had just experienced her memories. The imagery struck a chord in me that resonated with my own experiences.

Chino Otsuka: Photo Album

From the 'Tokyo 4-3-4-506' series, a photograph of a silhouetted child behind a curtain, backlit by a sunny day – the shadow, the way the light gleamed on some wood, the patterning of plaster on a wall – the details were all meaningful to Otsuka, and I knew of very similar things, all be it a different window, the light of another day in another place… a different interior entirely. What’s more, this effect was not isolated in this single image, picture after picture resonated deeply yet softly. I think I was feeling hiraeth – a Welsh word that is difficult to translate – Wikipedia describes it as, “a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, or an earnest desire for … the past,” which is close to how the photographs affected me, although they showed images from, and reconstructions of, another person’s past.

I immediately amazon-primed her book, Photo Album. By coincidence, Pidgin Snaps, a Boxette  - 100 postcards by Jonathan Meades (which I had ordered a couple of months earlier but which had been ‘lost in the post’, returned to depot, cancelled, re-ordered, designated out-of-stock, eventually re-sourced and despatched) arrived the same morning…

100 postcards from Pidgin Snaps by Jonathan Meades

The format harks back to a time before we posted pictures to the internet – back then, we sent picture post cards to particular people, often with a personal message on the reverse. Perhaps with some irony, Meades (who has been known to use irony on occasions) has published this set of quirky images so that a multitude of individuals, not personally acquainted with the artist, can experience his ‘expo-in-a-box’ of un-sent postcards in the gallery of their own homes. We must also remember here that ‘those times’ are not ‘long gone’ – there is nothing to stop you from posting these cards to your friends, with the addition of your own personal message on the back, except that they are so beautiful/intriguing/educational/weird/wonderful that you will want to keep them to peruse time and time again…

I have not yet had sufficient time to absorb the collection in any depth, but a few really stand out on the first shuffle through. I appreciate the aesthetics of reflections that transform the surroundings into vibrant abstracts, distilling the essence of a place into colourful compositions. The ‘straight’ landscape photographs are also impressive, many with broody lighting that transform the familiar into dramatic, cinematic scenes.

One image shows a fence dividing a rugged hillside, something we may refer to as ‘countryside’. On one side of the fence the country is brown and rocky, on the other it is green and mossy. The land has become a record, a memory, of centuries of land management by two different owners. The weather, the soil, the climate, the longitude and latitude… none of these things have had a greater effect on the land than the actions of humans. It is a beautiful image with a profound subtext about our effect on the environment and reminds us that nearly all of the British countryside is artificial.

There is more about Pidgin Snaps here at the publisher's website. 

Jonathan Meades has built a career out of seeing things differently – finding the extraordinary in the everyday and sharing his childlike wonder and keen intellect with us so we may also pause and look around us to find for ourselves the fascinating stories hidden in a local colloquialism or in the pattern of brickwork on a shop front façade… he is a polysemic-semantic-Romantic and an expert archaeologist of etymology… (!)

You can read my extensive Scrawl interview with Jonathan Meades here...

On the morning that these wonderful photographic memoires arrived, via our cheery rural postperson, we had to satisfy ourselves with a very brief ‘scan’ of their content before heading off to attend an arts workshop hosted by Tim Pugh and then take in the Tom Wood exhibition at Oriel Mostyn Gallery in Llandudno…

The work of Tom Wood is deceptively simple: seemingly straightforward photographs of people and places. He is prolific, and has been so for decades, diligently photographing his surroundings and the people he meets. The people in these fixed images have changed, or gone, yet here they are, as they were. Insignificant moments fixed as monuments to their humanity, with all its terrible faults, heroic failings and trifling triumphs. These people may have a starring role in their own life, but are not celebrities – they are individuals made significant by being singled out from the masses. We see their faces and feel we may have known them, somehow our own memories of friends, neighbours and relatives surface and intertwine with these strangers, yet all we are shown is their surface, on the surface of a print.

Tom Wood is 'Photie Man' - an overview of his earlier works

Photographic exhibitions often tend toward the technical, almost clinical appreciation of composition and process – “ooh, the richness of the print”, “look how immaculate the window mount is”, “the exposure must have been such-and-such with a f-stop of thingy and I bet there was a lens”… Here it is the personal response of the viewer, and their own memories associated with each image, that lends these pictures their depth. There are subtle signifiers that spark off our own reminiscences – “my mum had an apron like that”, “my cousin used to have those shoes”, “I can imagine how she felt”, “remember that wallpaper”, “her hair looks so 1980s”, “y’know that picture of nan”… and that is how many of the viewers in the gallery were engaging with the work – as fellow humans. Talking to each other, entering into a dialogue with the people, places, past and present.

I once likened Tom Wood’s approach to that of a wildlife photographer: capturing naturalistic, un-posed pictures of the human animal in their habitats. Though he strongly resented those remarks, maintaining that he respects his subjects and often builds relationships with them that have spanned decades, I still had that (to me, positive) impression at the Mostyn’s current exhibition titled, Tom Wood: Landscapes. Tom is a ‘people person’ so we see quite a few townscapes and farmscapes – most of which are inhabited.

The photographs of abandoned interiors are amongst my personal favourites. The people were long gone, but we saw the space where they had lived. We were looking into what had once been personal spaces, reading an implied narrative of families growing and declining, times changing for better or worse… Those crumbling, cluttered rooms had borne witness to comings and goings, births and deaths. They were relics of lives lived with their measures of happiness… perhaps some deep sadness. Now they were preserved in the museum of the photographic image and their stories, real or imagined, could touch our own.

Otsuka, Meades and Wood all manage to make the mundane magical: Otsuka takes moments remembered from her own childhood and makes them resonate with our private memories – the minutiae become mythic; Meades transforms the familiar into wonderland stage sets – things we may walk past everyday become arresting and intriguing documents of our past; Wood allows us to take a longer look at things we may otherwise simply glance at, introduces people we would dismiss as ‘ordinary’ – he curates a museum of memories that catalogues people and places who could easily be forgotten… stories, theirs and ours, may have more in common than we first suspect.

Look longer at the moment, for the past remains present.

More photos were taken in the past 12 months than in the rest of history as our lives are increasingly digitised http://t.co/Ki7fLUrR70
— BBC World Service (@bbcworldservice) February 8, 2014

A Friday in Prague...

Itinerary: Old Town Hall and City Gallery, Museum of Communism, Mucha Museum
See also A Tuesday in Prague + A Wednesday in Prague + A Thursday in Prague

The Pavements of Prague...

Just off the Old Town Square, a ‘fake’ wedding is being photographed by an array of very well equipped photographers. The bride and groom are intermittently primped and pampered and arranged in relation to a stretch limo decorated with white ribbons. The bridesmaid models are brought on and off for the shoot and the happy couple repeat their kisses… We suppose it is a publicity shoot for a car-hire company, or a wedding package company as the gallery we are here to visit shares its entrance with a visitor centre and the town hall - often used for grand weddings…

There is some irony here as the City Gallery is currently hosting the 2013 Press Photo Exhibition. Two floors of professional reportage photography from around the world, showing almost every aspect of human life (and a bit of death, too), natural and artificial disasters, extreme moments in sport, candid peeks into subcultures and cults… all very impressive and a few truly affecting. I appreciated the human visual stories, but enjoyed the land and wildlife sections more (see my personal favourite below). Any visitor who could look away from the wide variety of powerful, glossy pictures, would see some of the building’s original C14th and Renaissance features, including wooden beams, painted with twining vines.

A cute what? It is a new parrot hatchling at Zoo Praha
by Thomas Adamec (photograph, 2013, Prague)

Then an interlude for shopping and for me to help Sparky seek out his old friends, Abby and Cynthia. On our way to their last known address I manage to track down a bottle of the most potent absinthe on the market, a measurable 34 grams per kilo of 'active wormwood' (or so the label claims), and at seventy-two percent alcohol this could be classed as a fuel. Maybe there is a reason why it is in what looks like a big aftershave bottle.

The shop where Sparky’s friends used to reside has been replaced by one that exclusively sells glass souvenirs. It looks like our mission to reunite him with his little soft friends of old is destined to fail. Then we spot another shop further down the same street that specialises in traditional wooden marionettes and we decide to give it a try. Amongst the puppet cast of what must be every well-known fairy tale or nursery rhyme, who should we see, put aside on a table of reduced ‘surplus stock’? 

L - R: Abby, Sparky, Cynthia - the happy-ending hat-trick!

Abby and Cynthia! They had waited four long ears (sic) for Sparky’s return. Finally they were free and were looking forward to a special screening of Harvey on our return to the UK… Mission accomplished! (There’s a bigger back story here: on my last visit to Prague I had run out of money and failed to purchase Abby and Cynthia, settling for Sparky instead, who was an instant hit and family favourite back home… but what kind of cuddly could possibly follow the distinctive little dog? Perhaps his little magical friends from the city of magick could do the trick…)

'Tesla girls - electric chairs and dynamos...'

Prague's Museum of Communism is worth a visit regardless of your political stance. The three rooms are cluttered with a wealth of retro chic, Constructivist graphics, propaganda and works of Socialist Realism. On show you will also see chilling remnants of the cold war, chemical warfare environment suits, grainy black and white photos of research establishments that look like something from Quatermass or a Kate Bush video, gulags and prison cells. There is also a cinema showing informative and visually interesting films from, and about, the (not-so-long-gone) Czech communist era. The whole gallery strives to give 'both sides of the story' all be it from a post-communist Czech context. This museum of living history reminds visitors that a great many of the people you meet in Prague will remember this period all too well, some will have been part of the Communist Coup in 1948, and many would have played their part in the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

Fittingly, we round off the art tour with the Mucha Museum. Though a small museum, this is a must for any visitor interested in the cultural heritage of Prague, or in the life and work of this important artist. The collection here is small, but well-selected with a cross section of his print work and some fantastic glimpses of sketchbook pages. The life-studies are simply amazing, and his life is inspiring. It is worth sitting through the short film biography that loops in the little viewing area - informative and ultimately very moving. 

The film briefly explains his colour theories: he stated that, “Black is the colour of bondage. Blue is the past. Yellow, the joyous present. Orange, the glorious future.” With knowledge of this code, we can re-evaluate the stained glass window in St Vitus Cathedral and the wonderful Slav Epic. Mucha is far more than an illustrator of history; he is a mediator and master story-teller… an important influence on the development of the narrative image through to modern advertising, comic books and cinema.

Prague has proved to be a most pleasing city. This 'art tour' has been full of contrast and satisfying surprises and I will now look to the glorious future and enjoy an orange on the flight home.

Homeward bound - Sparky enjoys his crisps.

...Another successful arts tour! The visit went without a hitch, thanks to the help and support of Travelbound.

'Processed Memory' - Photographs by Remy Dean

The exhibition is on show this summer, until 7 September 2013, at Oriel Maenofferen Gallery, Llyfrgell Blaenau Ffestiniog Library, Canolfan Maenofferen, Blaenau Ffestiniog, LL41 3DL. Telephone: 01766 830415.

Alongside the photographs, there is also a small exhibition of 3D work by the potter, Jane Williams.

The following is an artist's statement from Remy Dean that accompanies the current exhibition:

'Processed Memory' Exhibition Poster

I am…

…a writer, teacher and visual artist…

…son, brother, husband, father and friend…

…”a dream to some, a nightmare to others”…

…the sum of my memories.

The exhibition you are currently adding to your own memories grew from an accident. An album of family photographs I had taken in the 1980s was forgotten about and left in the bottom of a box in a damp cellar. Over time the action of the elements ate into the surface of some of the photographs and ‘destroyed’ the image. Amongst these pictures was the last portrait I had taken of my grandfather, and also a photograph I had won my first competition with.

Particularly today, the photograph has become synonymous with memory. This connection is overtly used in advertising campaigns. Both the photograph and the memory are parts of a process, and these processes are always ongoing. They both involve the act of seeing: utilising photochemical reactions (on film, photo-sensor, or retina) and an attempt to ‘remember’ using chemicals (print, screen or cortex).

'View from Pompidou', photograph by Remy Dean (C) 2013

I liked how the ‘destroyed’ pictures had not remained passive, they had become organic and recorded the effects of their environment. The patterns were quite beautiful. Likewise, our memories are not passive, they are affected by time, age, emotion and environments. So I experimented with ‘destroying’ other pictures using similar organic, analogue processes. These traditional prints became ‘chemographs’, which, in many ways, is what our memories are.

You will also see a few ‘traditional’ landscape photos, some of the Moelwyn mountains that so majestically define our skyline, and have done so for millennia - well beyond the scope of human memory. I see these old friends nearly every day (though sometimes they are entirely shrouded in clouds), and they always look different. They remain the same, yet continually change. They never get old.

'Moelwyn: Midwinter', photograph by Remy Dean (C) 2013

I am fascinated by these two time scales – the instant of the photograph and the eternal that surrounds us. The moment of an experience, the lasting effects of memory. Memory and identity have been a recurring theme in my fiction stories and my recent non-fiction book, Evolution of Western Art (2012) is my take on some examples of great art, representing moments captured, and now remembered, from a period of more than 40,000 years… One of the photographs you may have seen in my last exhibition here at Oriel Maenofferen appears on its cover and was taken from my series of ‘drawings with light', Ghosts of 1513, a small selection of which are exhibited here (and will not be publicly shown after 2013).

I hope you enjoy seeing and remembering and thanks for sharing.

A selection of photographs shown in this exhibition are now featured in an on-line gallery (Pinterest)

Summer Exhibitions at Oriel Maenofferen Gallery

Exhibition of Work by Creative Arts Students from
Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor, now on, until 3 August...

Followed by:

'Processed Memory': Photographs by Remy Dean
from 7 August - 7 September. 
Alongside the photographs, there will also be 
a small exhibition of 3D work by the potter 
Jane Williams

Opening hours and gallery info here...

2012... that was

Yuletide greetings 
and all the very best 
for 2013, Year of the Serpent!
+
dates for the diary:
This summer, 7 August - 7 September 2013, there will be an exhibition of photography by Remy Dean at at Oriel Maenofferen Gallery, Llyfrgell Blaenau Ffestiniog Library, Canolfan Maenofferen, Blaenau Ffestiniog, LL41 3DL. Telephone: 01766 830415.

Night / Light - On-line Catalog

The slideshow displays some of the images from Night / Light by Remy Dean, exhibited at Oriel Maenofferen Gallery, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Summer 2011. There were 45 images in total, all photographs except for two sketches from the 360 series. This was Dean's first solo show.

1. Postcards From The Ghosts Of 1513 (18 images) [£135 series / £16 per pair]
2. Moelwyn, Night Won’t Fit In My Camera [postcards £1 each]
3. Culture Jam Caerdydd [postcards £1 each]
4. Dim Distance [£450]
5. Soluna, Storm Clears Over Llan Ffestiniog [£40]
6. Penygwndwn Mood [£55]
7. Moelwyn, Impending Snowstorm [£66]
8. Early Morning Rain [£75]
9. From The 360 Series (drawing, 2010) [£108]
10. From The 360 Series (drawing, 2010) [£108]
11. Tanysgringlas [£75]
12. Fire Calligraphs (diptych) [£125]
13. London, Above Below [£75]
14. Welcome Home [£55]
15. Direction Of Light # 1 [£145]
16. Direction Of Light # 2 [£145]
17. I Am, You Are, We Are (triptych - after Malevich) [£450]
18. Creased Composition: Shining Through [£98]
19. Nightscape: Cloud Cross [£40]
20. Emotional Systems [£75] / West-East
21. Nightscape: Sky Portal [£350]
22. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Mae West and Cary Grant [£350]
23. Elevate Me [£75]
24. Speed Of Life [£75]
25. Without Limits [£75]
26. Self Noir: Women ‘n’ Whisky [£1,600]
27. Moelwyn, In A Misty Morning [£145]
28. Moelwyn, Weather Changes [£145]

I would like to thank all of those who visited Oriel Maenofferen Gallery to take a look at my work, and all those who helped organise and publicise the exhibition.

Selected photographs from this exhibition are now featured in this on-line gallery (Pinterest)

Postcards From The Ghosts Of 1513

The Past: Five Centuries Ago…

During one of his voyages of discovery, the Conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon, sighted a peninsula of land, initially thought to be an island. He claimed the land in the names of Ferdinand and Isabella. As it was during the Spanish Festival of Flowers, in the Spring of 1513, he named the land ‘Florida’. He had already heard tales amongst natives of Puerto Rico, of the lands of Benimy to the north, where there sprang an ancient and sacred Fountain of Life…

Juan hoped that he had finally found those mythical mystical lands.

Five Hundred Years Later: The Present…

Within a time span of months, Remy Dean was able to visit Spain and Florida, documenting that journey from the EU to the US by capturing light from two continents. The photographs were presented as paired images, each pair comprising one image made in Spain and one image made in Florida. Whilst visiting the Kennedy Space Centre, Dean was mindful of the arduous journeys undertaken by the voyagers of five centuries ago and thought of the voyages of discovery as yet unmade.

This series of 18 images was displayed as part of the NIGHT / LIGHT exhibition in the form of paired, postcard-sized pictures. They are also available in a small bound edition, part of the 'Pocket & Purse Gallery' from Questing Beast Books, which will not be reproduced after 2013.

NIGHT / LIGHT - recent photography by Remy Dean

Night / Light - an exhibition of recent photography by Remy Dean will be on show this summer until 10 September 2011, at Oriel Maenofferen Gallery, Llyfrgell Blaenau Ffestiniog Library, Canolfan Maenofferen, Blaenau Ffestiniog, LL41 3DL. Telephone: 01766 830415.

Apart from the Ghosts of 1513 series, which spans the Atlantic from Spain to Florida, most of the images have been made in and around the Blaenau Ffestiniog area and deal with light and movement. There are 45 pictures in total. Alongside my photographs, I am pleased to say, there will be an opportunity to see some small-scale sculpture work and a hand-pressed book by Mark Eaglen.

Here, by way of an 'artists statement' relating to the exhibition, is an extract from an interview with Remy Dean conducted by Kim Vertue:

Why did you choose photography as your medium?

Photography attracts me for many reasons. Almost by definition, it is representational because it mimics our own visual interaction with the world we share. I am interested in the relationship of subject, technology, human action and a time constraint of a few seconds. The resulting images range from fairly traditional landscapes to pictures that are closer to abstract expressionism. The aesthetic of light set in darkness also appeals to me. Many Magicians and religious orders wear dark cloths to represent the void, where creative and spiritual powers are born. The light from stars has travelled vast distances through the void of space to inspire both the poet and the scientist. I am interested in images where captured light can give the impression of being a solid construct, or where light can transform a solid structure, such as a building, into an insubstantial ghost-form.

What or who are the main influences and inspiration for your work?

Compositionally, I look at Joan Miro, Kazimir Malevich, Cy Twombly, Franz Marc, Kandinsky and Klee. Conceptually, I look to Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Beuys. Poetically, I think my work is under the influence of many… William Blake, Richard Long, Scott Walker, Andrei Tarkovsky, David Lynch, David McComb, John Foxx… the Gothick Romantics…

How do you see your work developing?

The weather, natural light effects and moods of the mountains can change in a moment and I would like to attempt to capture more of the transient conditions that only people who are lucky enough to live here, in Snowdonia, really get to know. I will also continue exploring technological and human interfaces and possibly become more interventionist, to the point of staging visual fictions…

(An image from the Ghosts of 1513 also appears as the cover image for the book Evolution of Western Art...)

Selected photographs from this exhibition are also featured in this on-line gallery (Pinterest)