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Artist Exhibitions:
From 2000
Solo Exhibitions
2000 ‘Oil, Water’, Centre for
the Visual Arts, Cardiff, UK
2001 Terry Setch
Retrospective: Royal West of
England Academy, UK Bristol;
University of Wales Institute
Cardiff, Howard Gardens
Gallery; Cardiff Glynn Vivian
Art Gallery, Swansea, UK
2002 Collins Gallery, Glasgow:
Scotland Wrexham Art Centre,
Wrexham, north ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Art Space Gallery
Michael Richardson
Contemporary Art
www.artspacegallery.co.uk
84 St. Peter's St
Islington, London, N1 8JS
020 73597002...
Further Information
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Artist Reviews:
Major UK Reviews since 2000
2000 The Post, Chance to Put
Focus on Art (Oil & Water),
Jan 20, colour image
2000 The Western Mail, 8 Feb,
colour images
2000 Penarth Times, Have Paint
Will Travel for Artist, 28
April
2000 Telegraph, July 15, 'And
the revolution's still not
here', ...
Further Information
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Collections:
UK Collections
The Tate Gallery, London, UK
National Museum and Galleries
of Wales, UK
Victoria and Albert Museum,
London, UK
Welsh Arts Council, UK
British Council, London, UK
Glynn Vivian Museum &Art
Gallery, Swansea, UK
Arts Council of Great Britain
Contemporary Arts Society of
Wales
Wakefield City Art Gallery
Coleg ...
Further Information
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Statement for Terry Setch
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Terry Setch – Lavernock Point
I have been using the pollution of the local beach, particularly the plastic detritus, as my major subject since the mid 1970s, long before concern about the damage caused by the ubiquitous, none biodegradable plastic became widespread in this country.
I concentrate on a two-mile stretch of the local beach, between Penarth and Lavernock Point. I have regarded that area, the beach, cliffs and the margin with the waters of the Severn estuary, as my place. I have observed it, worked in it and thought about it almost daily since I settled in Penarth in 1969. It has become for me the source and inspiration for ideas about the genre of landscape and about living within an environment. And it has been the catalyst for ideas about painting as an activity, about finding forms of visual expression for the experience of powerful phenomena and about how images assume an identity.
The paintings in the Lavernock Point series can be described as a personal response. They engage with the sensation of being in a sharp terrain of ancient geology, of clambering over rocks and becoming so familiar with the surroundings that you can interpret from where water breaks or in the shifts and ridges between land and island how this place has altered and persisted over millions of years.
At the same time I am responding to how another landscape painter saw this two-mile view. I perceive continuity between place, painting and the wider possibilities of painting. In 1897 the Impressionist Alfred Sisley made several paintings on the cliff edge at Penarth, looking towards Lavernock Point. At much the same time the inventor Guglielmo Marconi sent the first telegraph messages across water between the Point and the island of Flat Holm. This place, it could be said, has been objectified by the echoes of both achievements: they are harbingers of the modern era.
For that reason three canvases in this series have as their point of departure my personal reflection on Sisley’s work in Penarth, specifically the painting now in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. That is, a painting is as much the channel or filter for how I ‘picture’ landscape as my physical and emotional absorption in the landscape itself. From that point, I attempt to find counterparts in paint and matter for what I see and sense within both the place and the painting.
The forms that these sensations can take in painting this series have occupied me almost every day since April 2009. I have regularly worked in series since the early 1960s and the support of the Bryan Robertson Trust has galvanised my thoughts into this new sequence. It consists of numerous small paintings in pigment and wax on panel and, which took me by surprise but now seems absolutely appropriate, of larger images in acrylic mixes and terracotta on canvas. I have not used acrylic for years.
In the forefront of my mind has been the prospect of a mighty barrage across the estuary, from Lavernock Point on the Welsh side to Brean Down near Weston-super-Mare on the Somerset coast. This man-made reef of concrete and high-technology is still a plan – albeit one with government backing – and if built it will harness the power of the tide for domestic and industrial energy.
It will also alter irrevocably the ecology of the region. Today the Severn estuary tides rise and fall at least 40 feet and at certain times are much greater. At their lowest some of the oldest rocks in the world are exposed as well as revealing a range of dinosaur and other fossils embedded in the slabs of rock. We can see how the topography has changed over centuries.
Because it is alive the terrain never stops changing although change is now most often brought about by man rather than nature. For a time Lavernock Point was a dumping ground for fly tippers, stolen cars and general rubbish. The tidal current has long added to this accumulation the flotsam and the jetsam from passing shipping. This is what my work is about, despoiling the landscape.
I observe the flux, change, fusion, growth and dissolution in the landscape caused by a multitude of agents. And in the light that further animates the landscape nothing stays still. It can be violent and frightening there. I attempt to bring that restlessness, that urgency to make new things on the foundations of the old, into my painting.
Terry Setch
February 2010
Terry Setch by Martin Holman published by Lund Humphries, UK. ISBN 978-1-84822-023-2.
Available from Amazon or online from http://www.ashgate.com
Given the 2009 Bryan Robertson Trust Award UK to produce a series of paintings about Lavernock Point.
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