Layered Memories of Conflict – Alison Lochhead

Deeply moving and incredibly poignant Layered Memories of Conflict takes us on a reflective journey through the futility of war and the scars it leaves behind. Building on the premise the land never forgets and it remains witness to the horrors we perpetrate upon it, Alison Lochhead uses these sculptures to reflect upon the memory of actions and experiences of people over time. Each person’s memory and experience is different and only parts remain of each, there is no ‘wholeness’, only fragments, but when different memories are pieced together they make a collective reflection and memory.

Alison works with different materials, all integral from the earth and with their own strengths and reaction to heat and to each other; iron, clay, oxides, wood.  In the kiln alchemy takes place as the various materials are drawn together or reject each other, they are transformed.  Some elements get lost and burn away, others fuse and create a different form. The materials perform randomly and the pain, the scars, the individual and collective conflicts and wars, emerge out of the materials reaction to the form and the fire.  The reaction of the molten iron onto the ceramic, wood and other materials is equally unknown.

For more information on Alison Lochhead please see https://www.canwoodgallery.org/portfolios/alison-lochhead/

Layered Memories of Conflict forms part of our Inspirational Art in the Sticks exhibition 1st July – 1st August 2017. Also on show is Vulgar Earth 1st July – 13th August 2017