'Dwelling' comes to London

Dwelling
 An Exhibition of New Works 

The House in the Oak Tree, 2014

 Long and Ryle Gallery, London 

   16th September - 9th October, 2015

For this series, I am exploring the concept of ‘dwelling’. I have created  a series of entirely new book-works, which explore ‘dwelling’ as an imaginative space. The works are in part, inspired by the folk stories they are carved from, but they also operate on a personal level.

The works include dwellings, such as lighthouses, wood cottages, tree-huts and houses, which appear to be inhabited as often they are lit up, but the scenes I have created are stark and the houses often solitary.

I have been inspired by water, by lakes, and by the sea. There is a sense that one needs to take a journey to travel to these dwellings.

Gaston Bachelard put it so eloquently when he wrote.

“Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home…. Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts—serious, sad thoughts—and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality”.

The material I choose to work with, ‘paper’ has an impermanence. I employ this fragile accessible medium to reflect on the precariousness of the world we inhabit and the fragility of our dreams and ambitions.  

“There remains a compelling reflection on the enduring human need to find psychological refuge in familiar places and spaces”.

“Thus the dream house must possess every virtue. How­ ever spacious, it must also be a cottage, a dove-cote, a nest, a chrysalis. Intimacy needs the heart of a nest. Erasmus, his biographer tells us, was long "in finding a nook in his fine house in which he could put his little body with safety. He ended by confining himself to one room until he could breathe the parched air that was necessary to him”.

 For more details contact Long & Ryle, 4 John Islip Street, London SW1P 4PX,

• t: +44 (0) 20 7834 1434 • e: gallery@long-and-ryle.com • tues - fri 10-5:30 sat 11-2:00