Marged Pendrell

Pendrell is one of North Wales leading sculptors exhibiting widely at Oriel Davies, Oriel Ynys Môn and recently Mostyn. Walking and collecting are central to her practise. Her reinterpretation of material and form combine both conceptual and minimal art practices whilst remaining strongly connected to the physicality of the land. The project represents a reconnection with an influential figure whilst facilitating new interpretations on place.

Marged Pendrell is working with

Richard Long

Blaenau Ffestiniog Circle

2011

This particular walk (walk 11 – Crimea Circle) became one that focused on time and space, with water and light becoming the predominant qualities. The clarity of reflection in the numerous lakes gave the landscape more of a physical depth, their reflections displaced the solidity of the landscape and fragmented the walk, giving an alternative narrative of movement through the landscape.

Experimental piece, working with peat as a material within a contained boundary of a circle of garden earth. Although this was a quick response to an idea, it was a strong statement on boundaries, isolation and had a political statement over and above the material.

It would be interesting to explore this idea on a larger scale in a gallery. The physical handling and manipulation of material plays an important part in my working process. The following installation explores the way the material contains the circle as a void.

As the walk was Terfyn y Twll, I decided to work with the hole, the cutout. I also decided to simplify the forms even further into geometric shapes, e.g. the grey slate tip alongside the green mountain became the two triangles. The boundary goes right through these triangles, the slate tip not being included but the green mountain is within the boundary. Walking through these two echoing shapes started my thought process of what is in and what is out of the National Park and to approach it as a cutout.

My chosen work for the project was Richard Long’s ‘Blaenau Ffestiniog Circle’. I first saw it exhibited in the inaugural show of the new contemporary galleries within the National Museum of Wales in 2011.

I was initially drawn to its identification with landscape and in particular with the landscape around where I live. The response to ‘place’ within this work was the slate quarry town of Blaenau Ffestiniog. The work is both conceptual and intuitive and involved the process of walking and collecting both of which are central to my own work. The circle is an archetypal form both culturally and historically. The concept of a ‘place’ being the structure for an experience or a process was what particularly drew me to this work. Slate as a material was another avenue that I was curious to explore, its history within the town and its origins within the geology of the land.

Combining the conceptual and the intuitive was what I initially engaged with. I began as did Richard Long, by drawing circles on an O S map. I based my circles on the land between my studio in Rhyd and Blaenau Ffestiniog. I then walked within and as near to this drawn circle. The intention was to keep the process as open and as intuitive as possible, not taking any preconceived ideas with me. I found myself drawn to document each walk as they happened as a complete and separate small concertina book. These were worked on, as much as possible, within the location. On certain walks I combined a photographic documentation which was later incorporated into my working journal, which I have kept throughout. These physical circular walks evolved and culminated in one long continuous walk of 5 separate days along the boundary of the Snowdonia National Park, the largest cut out circle on the map. This became a series of walks called ‘Terfyn y Twll’.

I intended to include a collaborative element within this project and invited an interested group of individuals to my studio early on in the project. I shared my process with them and we agreed that they would also each do their own circular walk of the area. These will be included as a “Collection of Circular Walks” within a book format.

My response to material became an important element of most walks but I wasn’t drawn to work on them within the landscape, as did Long. I collected these materials and on returning to the studio worked with these within a sculptural minimal form of a circle, as was used in the original work. The process of creating these sculptural circles was still an intuitive one, influenced only by the material, object or concept in relationship to the walk.

Reflecting on the work for this project, I realize how far reaching it has become and how much more there is still to develop. All the various expressions are a part of the whole investigative process and as such, move on from Richard Long’s solitary individual walks. The intention was to keep the walks as intuitive as possible which I succeeded in doing, however I did find myself drawn to research, in particular the traces of human intervention on the land. This in turn, informed my decisions on the’ Circle Series’ and led to the re-interpretation of form and material. Most of the circles in the series have a narrative element in relationship to the land where they were found.

The’ Terfyn Y Twll ‘series of walks along the National Park boundary brought a political element into the work, which altered the original intention of walking without a preconceived concept, but opened up new avenues in my working practice.

The overall process for this project has been an evolving one with all aspects of the work being of equal importance. I made a conscious decision not to aim for a finished piece to be exhibited, but to keep the focus on the original intention of the project which was to communicate the working process. The body of work is a much larger one than I had intended but my working process often manifests in series and as such, is best seen as an installation. There are elements of the practice that have encouraged a new approach interwoven with familiar territory. Ideas continue to develop as I continue to walk.