"Art should seek to provoke

and agitate for change.''

Gayle Rogers, January 2011

 

 

 

 

Artist's Statement: Commemorative Networks

"My studies of the semi-rural welsh environment where I live celebrate a landscape where nature dominants, but the human spirit triumphs.  A re-occurring theme in my work is the exploration of a landscape where the living & dead co-exist.

Informed by my academic research into networks of commemoration I consider the funerary dedicatory practices of the living that have shaped and recycled the landscape over many years.

My current influences include Hundertwasser; his practice and environmentalist activism, Herge's Tintin adventures and Klimt's landscapes."  

Background

Graduating from a Fine Art degree course in the early nineties Gayle secured a blacksmiths apprenticeship and subsequently set up her own upholstery and furniture design business. Her business expanded to include theatre set and costume design and extensive commissions as a community and public artist.

After being awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Centre scholarship Gayle returned to full-time study (MA Furniture Design and Technology) in 2002. On graduating she worked as a design research assistant and part-time tutor of drawing, whilst developing her own design research.

In 2005 she embarked on a period of extended international travel collecting research data. She settled in South Wales in 2007.

In April 2010 Gayle was awarded a part time PhD studentship by University of Central Lancashire. Her academic research considers the specific networks of commemoration of the 1958 Munich Air Disaster, specifically those of Duncan Edwards.