Godre’Glais
Collection Perc Tucker Regional Gallery
2015 53 x 130 x 4 cm
Recycled copper and timber 

2015

I was the first artist to travel from Townsville to Aberystwyth back in March 2012.  I was also the very first artist to reach the town house ‘Godre’r Glais’, that I shared with two other artists and so had my pick of the rooms.  I chose a top room with a rear view that rose up Penglais Hill, scaled the chimneyed roof tops, all the way up to the majestic National Library of Wales and beyond.  This view was to be my daily journey up to the studio and back.  

Much of my time there was spent traversing up and down Penglais Hill; from Godre’r Glais to that magnificent crinkled stainless steel studio, designed by Thomas Heatherwick; via the town centre; and right down to the pebbled beach. 

The hill had such an impact on me; I have devoted one of my artworks to that hill journey, again using recycled plastic rings as I did in Wales. Although, generally my greatest fascination was the seaweed I collected down at the bottom of the hill. 

As a child I was petrified of seaweed however, I eventually grew to be totally fascinated by its immensity, scale and enormous variety, so on route to Wales I went via Dublin and spent time at Trinity College’s Herbarium.  I trawled through their extensive collection of 150 year old Australian seaweed collected by the botanist, Professor William Henry Harvey from 1856-58. This whet my appetite further for the Welsh seaweed, so I spent considerable time ankle deep in layers of seaweed underneath the Aberystwyth Pier collecting and photographing it. 

Whilst there I did a few small experiments creating seaweed in recycled plastic however, this time I am extending that into new medium, recycled copper.  Copper and copper mining is synonymous with Welsh history and the colours of copper replicate the green, brown & red colours of seaweed.  It is also a metal which changes colour and reflects the changes I went through whilst there, this combined with the transient nature of seaweed; this too reflects the transitory nature of my journey from Townsville to Aberystwyth.