Gareth Hugh Davies
Olion

13 December 2008 –24 January 2009

A touring exhibition originated by Oriel Myrddin, Carmarthen

The imagery in this remarkable series of paintings that make up the exhibition ‘Olion’ is recognisable to most of us. Conifer forests, leaden skies, rain clouds, bungalows, horizons, roads, tracks – this is standard topography of a post-industrial ‘hybrid’ South Wales. Yet Gareth interprets his surroundings, and engages with the landscape around him with an individual and innate sensitivity. His paintings articulate the troubling issues of loss, isolation and fear that the absent figure, when removed from the landscape, can suggest. His work takes us to an enigmatic world: a territory that is simultaneously familiar and deeply disturbing. The trees may not be indigenous, the architecture not characteristic, the land-forms not typically ‘Welsh’, but this visual vocabulary, these references still surround us on a routine and daily basis. These staged and stilled dramas, which tale place in roads, houses and forests that we seem to know, express nuances of menace that destabilise the viewer. And yet these paintings also seem to offer some comfort; in the darkening forest a glowing light illuminates the front porch of an isolated home. Is this refuge?

Only the really talented artist can transform the ordinary, and render the non-visual and the atmospheric in such a way that he or she can speak to us of things we do not understand. Gareth’s paintings ask profound questions, and they invite us to do the same.

Meg Anthony
Oriel Myrddin Gallery Manager

Website: www.orielmyrddingallery.co.uk/

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Oriel Mwldan Patron Mary Lloyd Jones