‘An autumn breeze wafts cold air,
along with the fallen brown leaves.’
The brown leaves in the park, the ochres, reds and yellows of the trees foretell the winter months to come. Autumn, like the breeze, is a fleeting moment that will soon turn into winter. The wood, grasses, paper and stone in the works presented in Breeze conjure a sense of movement, change.
Juliet and Jamie Gutch’s mobiles are created from different undulating leaves of wood, sometimes incorporating colour on one of the sides. The different elements of each sculpture are in perfect balance, they glance past each other, suggesting an intention to touch, but never doing so.
Using elm, sapele and colour paper, each mobile is about balance. “Through our work we want people to wonder about balance and to experience what happens when balance is lost, not found or restricted in some way.” The leaves on the mobiles move, dance, fluctuate, cast shadows, mesmerising the viewer.
Juliet and Jamie both studied languages, at Birmingham University and Cambridge University. Juliet and Jamie were commissioned to create an ambitious 12-metre mobile in John Lewis at Stratford for the 2012 London Olympics, which was inspired by larks flying across East End marshes. This year they completed a large scale commission for the reception area of Northumberland Hospital.
Brenda Hoffman presents a series of works entitled "Aleph, rue de Charonne" after Jorge Luis Borges’s tale The Aleph. In this work Borges tells the story of a man who finds a hidden point between the steps of the stairway that led to his basement. Through that point it was possible to see the universe and all that happens in this world: past, present and future. For many years Brenda lived in a flat on the Rue de Charonne where she had an Aleph on the ceiling, through which she could glimpse the sky. The same yet different sky, sometimes of an intense blue, sometimes dark, menacing, tempestuous, with clouds, the same sky since the universe was created but always changing. The sky, just like the movement of time, is permanent like the seasons, but our passage through the earth is just fleeting.
This series of photographs is presented as a concertino in jewel like handmade glass boxes. The photographs can be displayed extended or simply hung in the boxes, treasured like a little piece of sky.
Brenda Hoffman was born in 1975 in Buenos Aires, Argentina; she lives and works in Paris. In 2003 Brenda obtained the Paris Youth Adventures scholarship, funded by the city of Paris. In 2010, she was awarded 1st Prize at the Festival Photo Saint-Germain-des-Pres.
Patricia Swannell’s prints and watercolours are brooding and meditative, conveying notions of balance, beauty in nature, memory and longing, which are enduring themes in her practice.
“My current work explores images of things that are ephemeral, things that are passing to memory. I am trying to express the beauty and value of something fleeting but recognised, in balance with the sadness of its loss. They are images transition, images suited to autumn.”
These new works follow Patricia’ project, Legacy; A Reciprocal Tribute, at the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Wood, Leicestershire which opened exactly a year ago. Some reference photos will record the growth of the woodlands in just its first year, a fleeting moment in the life of trees.
Patricia trained at City and Guilds of London Art School and has been showing with jaggedart since 2007. Her focus on environmental matters is also reflected in her work for The Royal Botanic Garden Kew at Wakehurst Place which highlights the conservation work of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank.
Kazuhito Takadoi’s work is deeply involved with nature, through both the medium and his subject. Working with grasses, twigs and branches that he grows in his allotment or back garden, Kazuhito’s works turn the ephemeral into permanent. “Most of what I use are materials that would end up on the compost heap. I like to make something with it that will keep forever”.
Sowing each blade of grass through the paper, as they dry and mature they embark on a subtle colour shift, comparative to seasonal change. In Ni (Missing) the opulence of the gold leaf, red and green grass is more evident by the absence of a section, emphasising the notion of how both transient and robust things are in nature. The use of a branch with no bark in Snow conjures the rawness of nature in the winter months.
Kazuhito trained in Agriculture and Horticulture in Japan the US and in the UK, before studying Art and Garden Design. Kazuhito has been showing in jaggedart since 2007.
Jude Tucker's graceful sculptures and carvings in stone depict organic shapes such as seeds and leaves. The ephemeral delicacy of her subject is underlined by its translation into an immutable form. Time is halted - a moment preserved - in the sensitively rendered works.
Jude is inspired by the natural world and is conscious of the strong, yet at times, subtle links between natural life forms and us. Often working with single blocks of stone, Jude follows a method devised by sculptors in India when using alabaster, achieving a magical translucency in the material; a process that she learnt there. Sometimes the stone also offers natural fragments of partially fossilised shells that Jude manages to bring through onto the body of the sculpture. Jude’s understanding of form and the behaviours of different types of stone she uses, as well as to engage intimately in the creative dialogue, is partly a result of a conscious decision to avoid the over use of machines and to carve as much as possible with hand tools. Using a variety of different stones, Jude's intricate works celebrate natural beauty and form.
Jude Tucker trained at City and Guilds in stone carving. She is the first woman to have been commissioned to carve grotesques for St George’s Chapel in Windsor. Jude was awarded the Bernard Noble Sculpture Prize in 2011 and has been showing in jaggedart since 2007.