Mineralogy Exhibition - Oriel 2, Oriel Wrecsam

Here is the text that accompanies my artwork in Oriel 2 at Oriel Wrecsam written by Steffan Jones-Hughes (Art Manager) and James Hedley John Harper (Gallery Assistant).

Rebecca F. Hardy is based in North Wales. She works in a range of materials, from mixed media, collage, sculpture, installations to photography. Recent projects have included explorations of internal organs, mental states and domestic objects.

As a young girl she would visit her grandmother in Dorset where there was a shop that sold rocks and minerals. This sparked a fascination in her which continues to this day. More recently she was given a 1945 edition of a Mineralogy Dictionary that had been found in a charity shop. This became the catalyst for this current body of work, which continues to develop the artist’s fascination with “collections”.

John Ruskin, a notable 19th Century art critic, had a love of rocks, geology and mineralogy. He believed rocks and minerals represented changes over a long period of time and also had religious and spiritual connotations – all of which can be read into Rebecca F. Hardy’s work - as well as bringing science and art together. Ruskin’s ideas pointed to the significance of order within disorder and his writings on the subject are believed to have inspired some of the early abstract paintings of the 20th Century.

Hardy has taken the pages of her Mineralogy Dictionary as a starting point and worked over them with drawing and print to produce a series of works which have a feel of museum cabinets or school text books with notes written on them. The original artwork is re-appropriated to create a personal response to the subject matter that goes beyond the subjective and into the realms of the sub-conscious and personal.

Crystal forms, such as those found within abstract architecture, are used as a metaphor for renewal and as visions of a better future. These emblems of hope resonate around Hardy’s work, amplifying its tenderness and emotional undertones, despite the hard crystal forms.