ELISION

I've often thought about the water that covers my figure lying in the mudflats of Butley Creek, this large body of liquid that slithers, twice daily, up one of Suffolk's salty throats. I've wondered where that water has been? It is lovely to be exhibiting alongside an artist who study's the movement of this water on the other side of the country, far out west on the Pembrokeshire coast. Have we shared the same water, has mine made it's way to him or visa versa, maybe we've pondered the same particles the same matter? 

The immersement of 'A Thousand Tides' (the title i've given my bronze man in the mud,) every day surprises me, he is caressed rather than battered, slowly submerged almost like a baptism an ablution. Adam knows this gentleness I see it in his paintings, that mud-aqua hue that permeates his work, matches perfectly the patina growing on my figure, which has lain in the mud for over seven years now. 

 The occasional broad brush gestures in Adam's compositions tug at something in me, they are like evidence of human activity hidden under the mud, deposited in clay, one that was lost an age ago, though perhaps remembered by the water. 

Water and memory are something I think about a lot, my wife a Homeopath talks of water's ability to store, to remember, to save and release, this is a powerful almost 'Quantum' notion. After all we ourselves are mostly made of it and we shouldn't under estimate its influence.  It is through water that my work first connects with Adam's. It provides a basis for our work and ideas to elide, blend and coalesce. 

I often think of my recumbent figure's as remains revealed by the absence of water, or the process of its departure, often that can take the form an ebbing tide in my mind, indeed one of the maquettes i'm showing is called 'Ebb' and in 'After the Flood' a fanning figure displays the detritus of a flowing river as it departs.

Other figures seem to want to signal, make contact or transmit, 'Pylon' is a good example, the derelict military radar research establishment on Orfordness might be a source for this, I detect this need in Adam's work too, his 'Boat' painting depicts a buried form, the lines leading from it could be sending or receiving a signal, It is also there in 'Two competing cranes' and 'Roads'.

I can't help but feel that Adam must have developed his knowledge and intimacy with the Pembrokeshire coast when he was employed as forager for a wild food company. Seeking out marsh plants for public consumption must surely focus the mind! That deep knowledge of fauna and topography is so implicit in the work, he doesn't need to illustrate or map the terrain for the viewer, he conveys the mood the feeling of a place with colour, gesture and a sensitive touch. 

I spent a lot of my youth rummaging through the marshes next to my family home on the Suffolk coast, they are my safe spaces, places to think and begin from. I find reeds have an uncanny ability to nurture and caress the mind. I think the empathy we feel for each others work is based somewhere in these shared experiences.

So we have genuine common ground even though that ground may be constantly shifting and changing. Adam's work takes that liminal estuarine theme head on, summoning mood and etheriality in his surfaces. I channel it through the handling of material, and through it witness and record a human experience, harvesting and foraging from a place and manifesting something physical from it. 

Here then are the Elision's we are talking of, but having written this I can't help but feel that the foraging is our common thread, that search for sustenance and nourishment in two unique but similar landscapes at opposite ends of the country. The methodology, material and aesthetic may differ, but when our minds are deep in the mud under that briny universal water, it is apparent to me that Adam and I feel the same things and spend inordinate amounts of time satisfying an urge to transmit and share them. 

   - Laurence Edwards, August 2023