The Autumn Gathering
A Studio Cennen Exhibition at Aberglasney Gardens, Llangathen SA32 8QH
A ten day exhibition opens Wednesday 28th October and runs til Friday 6th November. Entrance fee to the gardens will apply.
We return for a second show at The Mansion, Aberglasney Gardens at an auspicious time, the twilight of the year when the harvest of the land, allotments and kitchen gardens have mostly been gathered in. The organic Walled Kitchen Garden here led by Hattie Kerrs has been ablaze with the rich colours of Autumn flowers and produce, with the Crab Apple arch dripping with colourful gourds and the rich burgundy wine tones of Amaranth setting off the eye popping yellow of the Sunflowers. The sunny, warm days of this season contrast with the slight chill of the evenings.
And this is where we straddle the light and dark, the day and night - the Celts had two seasons - Beltain /Summer and Samhain / Winter - but this is the blurring time, the nuanced time of the evening before we dip into full darkness, the liminal space where later societies believed the veil between the real world and the spirit world was at its thinnest…when some cultures would lay an extra space at the table for their lost loved ones and others would light large fires to deter the evils spirits away.
The arts have always had their place in representing the importance of the harvest time - from the richly illuminated Medieval texts of the Book of Hours where the months of September and October would be illustrated by scenes of reaping the land, through to The Harvesters (1565) by Pieter Breugal the Elder, a masterpiece of perspective showing the toil and rest of the workers set in the vastness of the agricultural landscape and on to the well known agrarian scenes painted by Van Gogh with his intense yellows and ambers contrasted with his signature shadows of blue.
But the sceptre of death and the other world is never far some artists minds - see the disturbing Black Paintings made by Francisco Goya in his later life, the nightmare that is The Ghost of a Flea (1819) by William Blake, the surrealist spiritualism of Leonora Carrington or the life affirming abstract work by Victorian painter Georgiana Houghton who believed her work was guided by the spirits of the departed.
The Golden Age of Dutch Art created some of the most intensely depicted scenes of exuberant abundance in the still lives of impossible flower arrangements and tables overflowing with food and wine ( see the work of Rachel Ruysch ) but with always a subtle hint of death with a falling petal or slightly rotting fruit and sometimes not so subtle hint with a skull taking centre stage, a memento mori.
Who knows what our Autumn Gathering will reveal but with our Open Evening on All Hallows Eve we can be sure of a setting sun, a rising moon, and a fruit or two and even a skull…the gift of imagery is in the hands and minds of our artists.
