Recovering Ground

Dates: Tuesday 20th September – Sunday 16th October
Times: 10am-4pm
Place: Silver Birch Gallery, The Rockfield Centre
Ages: All ages
Cost: Free

Art Exhibition

Artist Talk: Thursday 13th October at 6pm

Excerpts from the collaborative work of Lucy Gray and Leonie Charlton.

Recovering Ground is the collaboration between sculptor Lucy Gray and writer Leonie Charlton. Both artists live and work by Loch Etive on the west coast of Scotland and draw their inspiration from the landscape.  

Lucy collects materials from the environment and uses them in combination with traditional techniques and contemporary materials to create mixed media sculptures.  

Leonie Charlton writes poetry, creative nonfiction and fiction; much of her writing is based on a sense of place, and our relationship to other species and the rest of the natural world. 

Through being present in the landscape Lucy and Leonie weave together words, textures and emotional responses, and in the spaces where their disciplines meet they explore the layering of place and self.  

The exhibition is a symbiosis of sculpture and poetry portraying our interconnectedness with the rest of the natural world, arguably never more important than right now in the heart of the Anthropocene. The exhibition is an invitation to extend our eyes into other ways of seeing and to deepen our listening. 

Date: Thursday 13th October
Time: 6pm-7pm
Place: Silver Birch Gallery
Age: All ages
Cost: Free

Booking is essential for this event

Sculptor Lucy Gray and writer Leonie Charlton discuss their latest exhibition 'Recovering Ground'.

This will be an informal guided talk in the exhibition space, exploring the artists' inspirations, creative process and techniques.

Leonie Charlton

Leonie Charlton lives in Glen Lonan, Argyll. Publications include her travel-memoir Marram, published by Sandstone Press (2020), which was selected as Waterstones’ ‘Scottish Book of the Month’ in April 2022. Leonie’s poetry has been widely published in publications such as Envoi, The Blue Nib and Northwords Now. In 2020 she won the Cinnamon Press Poetry Pamphlet Award and her pamphlet Ten Minutes of Weather Away was published by Cinnamon Press in 2021. Leonie’s poetry has been described as having ‘an ache at the core of the beauty here, not of self-pity or of indulgence, but of empathy, of griefs, both human and beyond human, that held to the light, are recognised, and invite compassion’. Leonie is currently doing a PhD – with University of the Highlands and Islands – using creative writing as a way of giving voice to place, people and the non-human denizens involved in Scotland’s ‘deer question’. www.leoniecharlton.co.uk @CharltonLeonie  

Lucy Gray

Lucy Gray completed an Art Foundation course at Chelsea School of Art followed by a Fine Art Sculpture Degree at Central School of Art & Design where she achieved a 1st Class Honours Degree and was awarded the Phoebe Lleweyln Sculpture Prize. Following a print-making Diploma, also at Central School of Art & Design she began her training in the restoration of lacquered and gilded surfaces.  The influences of her continued work in this field can frequently be found in her sculpture. Lucy began sculpting full time in 2012 and has contributed / exhibited pieces to / in the following shows : 

The Discerning Eye 
The RGI 
Kranenburg & Fowler 
The Archway Gallery 
Oban Solo Show 
Glebe Place, London 
Sladmore Gallery, London 
Open Studio Argyll 
Isaac and Ede, St James's London 
Fresh Air Gloucestershire 
Darl-e and the Bear Woodstock 
The Jetty Gallery Oban 
Recipole Studios Acharacle