LETTERS FROM MEDUSELD | THE CHAPEL, ABERGAVENNY

29th June- 19th August 2023

This summer we are very excited to return to The Chapel with a new exhibition, Letters from Meduseld. Our 25 fresco paintings are being exhibited over two floors in the beautiful 19th century baptist chapel, in Abergavenny, with The Art Shop & Chapel.

Letters from Meduseld is a celebration of hospitality and gathering. The frescoes play out real and imagined stories of exchanges, ingredients and possibilities from a metaphorical meduseld (OE mead-hall). This could be somewhere legendary and fabled, otherworldly, or universal; an illusory layered tapestry that exists within a few millimetres of plaster; there and not there, a memory and presence.⁠

“Laughter is the brightest
in the place where food is good”

— Irish proverb

Here, in dining and feasting, the raw material of food and drink is elevated into something transcendent and powerful by the act of convening and sharing it. The word has the dreamlike intangibility of memory but, as a place, its fundamentals - shelter, communality and victuals - are very human; real and necessary regardless of time. It also holds undertones of sweetness and joy, with medu (mead) referring to the fermented honey drink.

With a nod to the centrality of the early Germanic hall as an anchoring and unifying place to receive guests and host celebrations, these frescoes explore something joyful and timeless. The plaster is laid on and stripped back repeatedly leaving very little depth of material. What appears is an illusory layered tapestry that exists within a few millimetres; an invitation to read and enjoy the seen and unseen.

In process, the frescoes are grounded in the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. They are painted in wet lime and marble plaster with the friction of spatulas and trowels and blades, and dried by the air. They are rooted in materiality and physicality and yet reaching beyond this to create a central space both internally and externally which nourishes, comforts, and connects.

“Dining is and always was a great artistic opportunity.”

— Frank Lloyd Wright

Beowulf’s shining Heorot hall stands as a symbol for all good things; Babette’s Feast enacts an intimate drama of culinary metamorphosis and bringing people together; The Bloomsbury Cookbook documents the commingling of family, friendships, homes, food and art - everywhere there are many dishes to be savoured and inspiring stories to be told. These frescoes are a space to explore some of them.

Letters from Meduseld is presented in the setting of the Chapel. It is a place of gratitude, nourishment and congregation in its original ecclesiastical purpose but also today in the conversations and workshops it hosts and the food it serves. Sharing food at table is a simple act but also a privilege. With this is mind, Aster Muro is donating a percentage of their exhibition sales to The Trussell Trust and Magic Breakfast, two charities working in the UK to provide food to those in need.

Please find the exhibition details below and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Dates: Thursday 29th June - Saturday 19th August 2023
Opening Times: Tuesday - Saturday, 10-4
Address: The Chapel, Market Street, Abergavenny. NP7 5SD
Tel: 01873 736430

To purchase frescoes please contact The Art Shop. Collectorplan is available.

*Circle of Berries*, *High Table*, and *We do one thing or another* (2023), pigmented plaster on board, all 60 x 40cm.

Exhibition: Letters from Meduseld
Date: June 2023
Medium: Pigmented plaster on board

Notes: Sobremesa is on display in The Art Shop window on Cross St. and all other frescoes are being exhibited in The Chapel on Market St. To purchase frescoes, please contact THE ART SHOP & CHAPEL directly. Images click through to The Art Shop website where you can view prices and details. Collectorplan is available for all works.