This will be the venue for my next exhibition: the South Cloister at Worcester Cathedral. The exhibition opens on 3rd May and runs until 21st May.
The project has its roots in SOIL, a volume of poems by Catherine Swire which was published in October 2021 by The Artel Press, Liverpool. The poems and associated essays consider the layers of trauma, history and human intervention in the landscape of the Herefordshire/Worcestershire borders.
I have mainly concentrated on two of the poems – Chantry Song and The Maker. Chantry Song refers to the exquisite tomb in the Cathedral of Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII. He died at the age of 15 at Ludlow Castle a few months after his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Henry VII was devastated as Arthur was intended to become the embodiment of the Tudor dynasty. He had the elaborate tomb carved in London and sent up to Worcester Cathedral. Eventually the crown passed to the ‘spare’, Henry VIII.
The other poem The Maker refers to Richard Twygge who with Thomas Wodeshawe had a workshop in the grounds of Great Malvern Priory. They were responsible for much of the exceptionally beautiful medieval stained glass in both Great Malvern Priory and Little Malvern Priory which is a few miles to the West. Both were originally Benedictine monasteries which were dismantled by Henry VIII.
Download the exhibition catalogue
The South Cloister at Worcester Cathedral is the perfect setting for this body of work. There will be three large charcoal landscape drawings and 3 figure drawings plus portrait studies for the figures and three small paintings of the Black Worcester Pear.
I shall post more information nearer the time.
16 March, 2023