The Clayden Gallery at Quay Arts centre in Newport is hosting an exhibition by three artists who explored their experiences of place and culture through different mediums, whilst their individual conditions required each of them to self-isolate during lockdown.
Melanie Swan, Sylvia Radford and Amanda Seale have worked together since they met in 2018 and have exhibited together previously as part of a wider group show ‘Emergence’ in 2019 at West Dean College, West Sussex.
A Place to Call Home is open Monday to Sunday, 9am to 4pm until Saturday 2nd October 2021.
Melanie Swan
Melanie’s practice embraces traditional mediums and materials to create individual works and installations. Her studio is filled with collected objects and experiments, gathered over the years.
Separated from these treasures during lockdown, being unable to access her studio, she began a new collection which grew into her ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’, the source for new explorations in textiles and photography, including dyed and stitched silk panels and lumen prints.
Melanie is currently studying on the Tapestry foundation programme at West Dean College, West Sussex.
Instagram: @melanie.swan | Website: melanieswanstudio.com
Sylvia Radford
Sylvia’s paintings using the western tradition of oils on canvas, revel in exploring personal expression in a transnational context. As a British-Singaporean, having lived her life between the UK and South East Asia, her work engages with ideas negotiating identity, community and belonging, and more broadly the impact of hybridity on the social landscape of the modern global age.
Synthesizing memories and black and white family photographs, and drawing on observation and art history, she creates colourful paintings which also interrogate views of exoticism. Sylvia’s work ‘Morning Sun’ was shortlisted for The Viking Cruises British Art Prize, 2021. Sylvia shall be embarking on a Masters in Fine Art in September 2021 at West Dean College, West Sussex.
Instagram: @sylvia.radford
Amanda Seale
Amanda’s experience of horticulture and stitch underpins her fine art embroidery and rug making practice. Her work is informed by experiences gained from living in Devon, as well as Tokyo, Japan and also through recent research of traditional rug making practices in Morocco and in the UK especially the North of England. Inspired by the landscapes of Devon and Cornwall, where she now lives, her works express the deep connection she has to place.
Amanda captures the all-embracing physicality of colour and contour in her paintings, textiles and carved hand-tufted rugs. Amanda is currently studying on the Tapestry foundation programme at West Dean College, West Sussex.
Instagram: @amanda_seale | Website: www.amandaseale.uk
