Stars Stones and Bones

Exhibition at Salthouse Church on the north Norfolk coast by Britz and McGowan. Much of the work for this exhibition evolved out of a visual conversation between the two artists, a piece by one artist generating an answer by the other. The work explored the transformation of opposites and the cyclical processes of birth, death and renewal; it was also site specific to the architecture and meaning of the church. Just as the architecture of the church seeks to link earth with heaven, so the work explored polarities such as the above and the below, and microcosm and macrocosm, and played with the idea that an extreme can contain its opposite. It also reflected and highlighted the nature and pattern of the materials that make the church building.

Ceres - ink, charcoal, sand and coastal pigments on paper — Ceres – ink, charcoal, sand and coastal pigments on paper

Ceres – Liz McGowan – 115 x 215 cm

The inspiration and materials for this work came from the landscape of North Norfolk: its patterns and textures, its coasts and skies, its geology and its waterlands. We worked directly with the physical elements that combine to make this landscape – sand, clay, mud, starfish, flint and shingle – using these materials variously as drawing tool, medium and component. We also used the processes that have altered the shape of the land to make our work – processes such as the action of rain, wind and ice, and the deposition and scouring of earth.

Eclipse – razor shells – Liz McGowan – 122 x 122 cm

We made six drawings, each one six metres in length, using pebbles as mark-makers and coastal clays, muds and sands as pigments. They were inspired by the Norfolk esker, situated a few miles from the church, a winding ridge of sand and gravel, the remains of a stream that once flowed through a glacier.