Angela Davies is doing a residency at Chirk Castle

Her work deals with themes of time and space, particularly the change in natural and manmade
She works with sculpture, projections, installation and performance.
Here is an explanation from a statement on her website
'Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future...'
Burnt Norton Four Quartets, T S Eliot
The work conveys an emerging cultural dialogue between past and present. The relationship between
land and mythology is explored to create ecological, ephemeral light-installations with the intersection
of architectural, sculptural and organic form.
The message of marking time is achieved through manipulating space and using textiles, particularly
lace. This fine open fabric provides a technical and historical framework. Lace is fragile, desirable and
precious and occupies a territory, a threshold of space. It contains a pattern, structure and order, a
cultural narrative, that of the people that worked collaboratively within communities to create it. These
elements are explored, re-interpreting the lace to
act as a metaphor, investigating and mapping the
traces of human activity.
Hand cut and laser cut silk lace screens are
installed with light systems to evoke movement,
light and shadow. The concept of human error
within the artwork amplifies the human touch and
the handmade. The juxtaposition of tradition with
new methods of technological processes
interconnects the concept of marking time with
past and present to illuminate an illusion of a
future. To challenge the position of craft through
engaging with materiality to create a new material
that epitomises the defining characteristics of lace.
The machine works as a tool and maps the hand
drawn, it has become the shadow of the pencil, the
shadow of the past.
She showed us a picture of a piece of her work
called spirals


After graduating she taught English as a foreign language while painting and then travelled for two years
and wasnt quite sure how to pursue a creative career, so she became a teaching assistant in an art class
in a local school, and received payment for employment based training. She made art while teaching
and started to explore assemblages and collages and exhibited her work.
She wasnt fulfilled so she went onto a textiles course in 2012, and she resigned teaching to focus on the
course. She met an arts advisor from the Arts Council Wales and had the idea to do more installation
based work.
Manchester craft faire
In Helfa Gelf 2012 they used empty shops as studio space around town. There are three indoor markets
and a lack of creative space in town, so Angela and other artists got permission to use the space in the
market as a studio space and to exhibit work. She says it was good to network with other artists and
make connections.
For the A Sense of Place exhibition, they had the support of Glyndwr university students who responded
to a brief to convey their interpretation or experience of Wrexham. They invited the choir to open the
exhibition
She then made an application to arts council to use the peoples market as studio space and to involve
public in the creative process which is what excites her, as she feels galleries can sometimes be
exclusive. It took her 5 months to write the application.
Angela started infusing technology and craft, to create light projections onto sculptural forms.
These are some pieces she did for her MA they are very small


Fragile landscape







She started to collaborate with an engineer so she could integrate light systems into her work, using
LEDs .

Last City










She has become more interested in responding to different spaces

Angela discovered an old Parish in Minera been on market for a long time, so she got permission from
the estate agent to gain access to building to record her work as she thought it would be an interesting
space to respond to.
She showed us more examples of her work.
Angela then moved on to talk about her recent work Golau, her residency at Chirk castle, she applied for
arts council Wales funding and spent 5 months arranging meeting etc, and made a map of Eglywys
valley, and explored the area around Chirk as she is interested in responding to the place.
She is interested in lace as a metaphor the idea of lace having network lines and almost becoming a
map within itself.
Angela spoke to the education officer, her idea was to do a 5 month residency at Chirk to respond to the
site to make site specific installation.
Two weeks later she started her residency, she investigated the landscape and collaborated with other
artists, a filmmaker Karen Herald, a musician Francesca Simmons, Paula Budd who works in theatre, Ant
Dickinson who is interested in deconstruction, Angelina is a painter and a Butoh dancer, which is a
Japanese art form which responds to body natural human body movements.
She focused on researching the place, collating information, and walking in the landscape to get a sense
of place and perspective. The ambiguity of your place in the landscape, standing in a different place
shows a different perspective and feel she likes to play with micro and macro settings in photographs.
Angela mapped the borders of Offas Dyke and traced her journey
She has been attending a lace making class in Coedpoeth and finds it meditative.
Angela likes looking at things from new perspectives and making discoveries. It was daunting at first
because she didnt know what aspect of Chirk to focus on, but you need to be selective to meet
deadlines, really focus on what youre interested in at an early stage.

She is interested in the architecture of the castle and was shown the drawing plans for the rooms.
Angela showed us an 18
th
century stumpwork at Chirk castle, which looks two dimensional but it is
actually three dimensional, she is interested in these features and drew some ideas from this.

Angela played us a recording of the Clock tower at Chirk they were thinking about the idea of
manipulating time and place.
As part of the project she occupied a place at Ruthin craft centre, she did work in that studio, and talked
through her ideas, reflecting and contemplation is a really important part of practice.


She started to draw, and created a lace map based on her drawing mapping the landscape. She
collaborated with musician Francesca Simmons and shared a piece of music she composed in response
to the map. The music was creepy and atmospheric, they like playing with ideas of craft and technology
Angela says that having quiet time but being able to contact other creative people has been a great
opportunity.

Angela made two light installations
based on the idea of time passing
through them. She had to decide
what kind of lights to work with,
RGB lights were too dramatic, and
so they used LED instead. Here is a
good explanation of the piece
entitled Light on Time, found on
her website:
I was developing a response to my
research - the concept of the
snowdrop symbolising life and
correlating to the 'snowdrop walk'
which features strongly within Chirk
Castle's calendar. For me, the
emphasis on new beginnings was an important element to explore. I responded to the 'murder hole
room' within the Adams Tower - historically, this space was used to project hot water and sand to
invaders to the castle. In development of this, I etched shards of glass and assembled these fragile
snowdrop structures (see image). I worked closely with Ant Dickinson for Ant to develop sound and
programming to illuminate the snowdrops in the response to the sound of glass.
In January she met with the council they tested out the building and shared her research with them, to
see what they felt about the project. She said it was an exciting process and a positive experience. They
started making flyers translating to Welsh etc
She showed us a recording of a clock chiming and her performance work with Angelina, who she has
made about seven films with. These pieces are based on the passage of time and responding to the
landscape, the way Angelina dances is not in the typical sense, she uses very small, slow movements
which respond to her environment.
Angela says it is easy to underestimate the amount of time it takes to install the work, it was really hard
to install the screens for example.
Usually 1000 visitors at St Davids and on that day there were 2000, so it was very successful.
Her website is www.angeladaviesartist.co.uk
And her email address is angeladavies80@AOL.com