Refugee Week ~ Artworks
In June 2019 Amanda Jayne Jones invited artist and arts-coordinator
Niki Holmes of Participate Contemporary Artspace (PCA) and Arts Emphasis to curate an exhibition of visual and media arts at the PCA gallery in Ravens Meadow, Shrewsbury.
The response from the local creative community was empathetic and emphatic. The exhibition was well received by the public audience that attended the launch private view and the exhibition run.
Yet again the creative community has generously supported Shropshire Refugee Week and have also inspired the local community to express their thoughts about imagining the plight and promise of the refugees living here in Shropshire and elsewhere through imagery.
We hope that seeing these Artworks will provide an interesting range of angles through which to consider and celebrate the lives of refugees and migrants across the world.
Jill Impey
Four images from from the Artist's Cloud Series ~ 2020
Clouds I Shrewsbury, Charles Darwin
USA - Clouds IV, Plymouth MA, USA
Clouds II, Plymouth Hoe,
UK, Clouds III, Plymouth MA,
Oil on pre-printed postcards,
each 148 x 210 mm
Ian Steventon
Each one of these works was painted from the Artists imagination and represents aspects of the Shropshire landscape as he see them. They represent our belonging to the earth and responding to the surrounding landscape.
They are his interpretation of the beauty all around us. Also, to the artist they represent a sense of what is within each of us and what brings us all together, as we become one with and belong to the land in which we live, as much as the land of our birth.
Sue Challis
Care without Borders
2019
Oil on aluminium,
24.5cms x 24.5cms
Art by A.H - A Shropshire Syrian Lad
“The boy representing refugee kids thinking about War, immigration, and future for him and his country.”
" The eye with the hand inside it, representing people who are safe and the fear from Syria is coming out of them."
"The earth remembering itself when it was safe if and clean."
The Refugees Progress: Part one
Taking Flight ~War
On these Shores ~Boat
On the Wing ~Camp
Into a New Horizon~Lorry
Digital Montage
The Refugees Progress: Part two
Niki plans to collaborate with Shropshire Syrian and Other resettled people to develop the second part of the series that will depict the experience of people arriving and adapting to life in the UK.
'Welcome for those arriving,
lament for those lost on the way'
2019
Video and Music composition
Bewildered and Bewitched - Kupu Kupu Malam -
An Onnagata Kami Infests my Forest
2017
Video and Music composition
Shadow Image 9
Shadow Image 4
Shadow Image 2
Shadow Image 10
Digital Images
Part of Series in preparation for a participation workshop with Shropshire Syrian Families during refugee week
Corax (battering ram)
and
The Mother
2019
Stained glass with
personal heirlooms
"These are memorial pieces for my mother and her mother. The pieces placed on the frames and aside the designs belonged to my grandmother. She is the lady with the dotted dress and round glasses. The necklace with the photo, belonged to my grandmother. It is a photo of my mother, a little girl, during the WWII.
My grand mother had kept tools that belonged to our ancestor, whose father had found refuge in France coming from Poland, a much bigger country then. It stayed a mystery why he left Poland, and if he was from Poland. His family name is not from Poland. So,
I am not sure where he truly originated from before finding refuge in France. He married a French lady. His son became a glazier decorator. My grandmother unveiled the story and his son' s glass cutting tools the day I had told her I intended to become a stained glass artist. She gave it to me. And I placed the glass cutters along my grandmother portrait. I wanted memorials for my mother and her mother showing the mystery of the ancestor who had chosen to leave a country and find refuge to build a new life. Many of us have refugees roots."
Sohrab Samari
Imagine the world and all its people
Calligraphy of a Baha'i writing
Imagine
Calligraphy and Sketchbook showing a flowing development of ideas.