Elysium Gallery, 210 High Street, Swansea SA1 1PE.
Opening event 6 Feb, 7pm. All welcome.
Exhibition continues to 28th March, Weds – Sat 11-6pm
17 Feb 7pm Online artist talk: Tuesday 17th February, 7pm
21 Feb 2pm Gallery talk: Deep Time, with Alan Bowring, Geologist and Fforest Fawr Geopark Development Officer.
In ‘Sighting’, Penny Hallas explores the complex nature of our perception and experience of place. A sighting can be something that simply happens to us, punching through our inattention, dismantling our expectations, or it can be a deliberate act of focusing in. Using but subverting traditional techniques and formats, such as the myriorama, along with home-made, idiosyncratic viewing devices, Penny examines the mechanisms by which we attempt to make sense of the world and to situate ourselves within it. How does a space, in the shape, for instance, of a building, an institution, a landscape, become personal, ‘meaningful’? What do we bring to it and what happens in us when the meanings are usurped or when such places are threatened, damaged or made unavailable? All of which raises social and political questions about power, access and control, and the impact of changing attitudes on social relationships, land and environment but it touches deeply too on our most intimate psychological responses. More ludic than documentary, Penny brings a spirit of play, fantasy, improvisation and mischief to her enquiries, arriving often in the most unexpected places, by means of entirely unexpected paths.