Working Artist Studios are delighted to open their 2022 exhibitions calendar with Wendy Dison’s solo exhibition: The Edge of Strangeness.
The exhibition has grown out of several years of thinking about the refugee and migration situation in Europe and making connections with other migrations and exiles, and with ideas of otherness and separation, both physical and psychological. Wendy references notions of displacement, inside versus outside, belonging, memory, symbolism and the making of symbols. The work includes construction and assemblage, collage, painting, monotype, drawing and handmade books.
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“In thinking about the edges and boundaries that confront the displaced I try to put myself at an edge, a challenge in my practice, somewhere where I don’t know the way forward so that the process reflects the subject. I am interested in symbols and motifs, both in how people adopt them as markers of meaning in their lives and in how I can use them in my art to make connections across different strands of work and set up signposts to guide the viewer.” says Wendy.
“The themes and concerns which activate my current practice have been woven through my work in different degrees in the past. In Stone Ghosts (Hallward Gallery, Dublin 2007) I explored absence and memory, and Crossing Place ( Liverpool biennial 2008, Tricycle London and The Brindley, Runcorn, 2009) explored migration and displacement with reference to Ireland and Irish communities in UK. These were exhibitions of paintings and for some years I considered myself primarily a painter. Since 2010 I have often worked collaboratively with artists from various backgrounds and disciplines and my own practice has broadened to include an assortment of techniques and methods. In 2018 my solo show The Sound of Ravens at Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, was a response to the death of my mother and addressed ideas around grief and absence through drawing, sculpture and assemblage.”
