ALISON LOCHHEAD: CONFLICT – ABANDONMENT AND MIGRATION
Volcano Theatre, Swansea
Until Wed 30 May
What do memories and experiences look like? Hazy? Concrete? Colourful? Dark? Well, in the ongoing sculptural installation exhibition by Alison Lochhead, memories are – on first impression – simply heaps of earth and random materials. But if you look deeper, you will find in them stories of people and their hardships.
Alison believes memories are stored in the geology of a land and that the earth not only retains memories, but also hints at the injustices done towards the humans living on that land. By collecting materials and processing them in kiln, Lochhead allows these to reveal the past: scars, marks and burns. The alchemy of the kiln that makes this possible is also fascinating, because you don’t know for sure which materials will fuse together; will they reject one another, what will they eventually transform to? Even though we humans leave our mark on the land, not all of those marks are visible.
So, what you have are pieces of memories, but when they are united the result is a collective memory and reflection upon them. Lochhead lets your mind wander: an abandoned shoe, for example, makes you think about who wore it, how far they had travelled, and what conflicts they had seen. And that is what Conflict – Abandonment And Migration brings you: memories and past experiences of people over time.
Admission: free. Info: 01792 464790 / www.volcanotheatre.co.uk (HM)