Back in the Spring of 2023 I was asked to be part of the RCA’s ‘Bigger Picture’ trail. Knowing that my art would be displayed at Ty Aberconwy I was excited by the possibilities. The arts and heritage industry had taken a battering during Covid and had forced the National Trust to close its properties. Unlike many of these buildings Ty Aberconwy remained closed long after the worst of the Pandemic passed.
The closure of the oldest merchant’s house in Wales was particularly sad as the community had lost another much loved connection to the past. Whilst the house was not on the scale of Conwy castle or Plas Mawr it represented the residents and changes of the town in ways that the larger more well known buildings did not. The everyday people. During the 600 + years of history it had been a home, a shop, a hotel, a coffeehouse and a museum changing hands multiple times and existing throughout some of the most turbulent times of history.
CONSIDERING THE ART…
To me time is not always best represented as linear. It consists of layers. A house such as Ty Aberconwy embodies and embraces this concept. It’s easy to look at the town and see the castle, the walls, Medieval, Tudor or Georgian buildings that remain and see nothing but beautiful buildings with historical importance. But in between these physical monuments lie secrets caught within the fabric of the walls, bricks and paving stones. The forgotten people; their footsteps lost in the bustle of modern day streets where they leave nothing but faint echoes.
With this in mind I wanted my art to blend the known and unknown, the tangible and intangible, the physical spaces and transitions to create one picture that would encompass all. I also wanted the project to be a way of bringing the community together in our similarities and differences and show that a house is more than just a building.
