Alison Lochhead

The body of work made by Alison Lochhead reflects upon the memory of actions and experiences of people over time. The earth retains the marks made by humans and the memory of their presence; the rocks, the buried walls, the bodies entombed and overtaken by nature, as in Pompeii, the shadows of death in Rwanda. Each persons memory and experience is different and only parts remain of each, there is no wholeness, only fragments, but when different memories are pieced together they make a collective reflection and memory. 

Alison works with different materials, all integral from the earth and with their own strengths and reaction to heat and to each other; iron, clay, oxides, wood. In the kiln alchemy takes place as the various materials are drawn together or reject each other, they are transformed. Some elements get lost and burn away, others fuse and create a different form. The materials perform randomly and the pain, the scars, the individual and collective conflicts and wars, the striving, the sensuous, the joys of living, emerge out of the materials reaction to the form and the fire. The reaction of the molten iron onto the ceramic, wood and other materials is equally unknown. Her most recent work is exploring the stories and marks made on the landscape by the artisanal metal and mineral mines in the Cambrian Mountains. Using mainly clay, cast iron, wood and rocks taken from the mines and put in the kiln, the materials represent the man made elements of the mines, the scars on the landscape and the memories from deep within the mines. 

Alison Lochhead Corgam, Bwlchllan Lampeter SA48 8QR