Sandy Curry
The Fenton Arts Trust Artist in Residence 2006-07
"My residency at Watts gallery has taken me outside the academic artistic environment. This has at once renewed and created an exploratory path for my artistic practice. I have been working within the Gallery, organising an outreach project and running workshops. Such a wide range of influences has encouraged me to review and reflect on my past work. This process of evaluation continues up to the final show at Watts Gallery in response to these many influences.
‘Physical Energy’ and the nostalgic relationship visitors seem to have with the horse and rider, to me embodies all Watts’s philosophies that resonate in titles such as ‘Hope’, ‘Progress’ and ‘Destiny’. My response is a body of paintings that convey the intimacy and strong connections visitors feel to the Gallery.
Here the reach of history and nostalgia are heavy and have led me to explore the visual relationships formed within the architectural space of the Gallery. I have attempted to evoke a dialogue with and to draw attention to, the nexus of layered, metaphorical and instinctive meanings."
Sandy Curry, September 2007
