Jayne Gaze

Joined Artfinder: Oct. 2014

Artworks for sale: 68

(6)

Spain

About Jayne Gaze

 
 
  • Biography

    After nine years working from my studio in Spain I am back in the UK at The Artery Studios, Worcester exploring my 'Innerscapes' . The images are a reflection of my interior world and how I experience existence. They are memories, experiences, sounds and smells, feelings and emotions. They are loss, love, regret, joy and hope. They are people and places known, unknown, visited and left, both physically and emotionally and those I might yet visit in the future, imagine or dream about.

    A bit about me. I studied Art & Design graduating with first class single honours followed by a twelve month residency at Worcester Cathedral for which I won an Arts Council England Award. In the following year I was Artist in Residence at Worcester University and with Worcestershire Mental Health NHS Trust using art therapeutically and vocationally, with recovering mental health service users. Before leaving the UK I was Artist in Residence at Worcester Museum and Art Gallery.

    I often utilise the lexicon of cloth, in particular bandage, muslin and threads suggesting protection, injury and healing.

    Art for me is both an internal and external journey where I constantly learn about myself and about the materials and make sense of my world. To share it is both exciting and terrifying but is always a privilege.

    At present I am making work that is a response to my personal emotions and struggles of the past three years. It feels like a new beginning and I am excited to share that with the world.


     

  • Links
  • Education

    2010 - 2010

    Malvern School of Art

    2002 - 2002

    Worcester Technical College

    1999 - 2003

    Worcester University

  • Awards

    2010

    Worcestershire NHS Trust

    Achievement award for Working in Partnership

    Show more awards Hide

    2010

    Worcestershire NHS Trust

    Award for Patient, Staff and Public Engagement and Involvement

    2010

    Arts Council England

    For Art in Minds exhibition 'Reflections II'

    2005

    Arts Council England

    For the Kings Fund Project, Whitley Ward, Kidderminster General Hospital.

    2003

    Arts Council England

    Worcester Cathedral Artist in Residence 2003-2004
  • Upcoming Events

    There are no upcoming events

    Show previous events Hide previous events

    Previous events

    Event: I N N E R S C A P E S

    Dates: 7 Sep 2024 - 16 Sep 2024

    Venue: The Artery Gallery, Arch 28, Croft Walk, Worcester WR1 3BD

    The Artery Gallery presents a solo exhibition for one of The Artery Studios resident artists, Jayne Gaze BA

    INNERSCAPES features a collection of abstract and mixed media work created over the past two years.

    Over the past two years, through this body of work, I have allowed myself to intuitively explore my internal personal geography and make visual representations of my ‘innerscapes’.

    The images are a reflection of my interior world and how I experience existence. They are memories, experiences, sounds and smells, feelings and emotions. They are loss, love, regret, joy and hope. They are people and places known, unknown, visited and left, both physically and emotionally. They are loss, love, regret, joy and hope. They are people and places known, unknown, visited and left, both physically and emotionally and those I might yet visit in the future, imagine or dream about.

    As an artist this is my buried treasure for me to excavate, examine and record.

    Event: Beneath the Surface

    Dates: 9 Oct 2015 - 7 Nov 2015

    Venue: Museum of Royal Worcester, Severn Street, Worcester WR1 2ND

    An exhibition for World Mental Health Day by artists of the Art in Minds Foundation of which I am founder and Trustee.

    Event: Finding Futures

    Dates: 6 Oct 2014 - 24 Oct 2014

    Venue: The Hive, Sawmill Walk, The Butts, Worcester WR1 3PB

    Finding Futures, the 11th exhibition of Art in Minds Foundation (www.artinminds.org.uk)

    Event: Celebration

    Dates: 23 Sep 2013 - 28 Oct 2013

    Venue: Cotswold Gallery, Worcester University, St John's Campus, Henwick Rd, Worcester WR2 6AJ

    This was the 10th Anniversary Exhibition of Art in Minds Foundation (www.artinminds.org.uk)

    Event: Seeing in Colour

    Dates: 1 Feb 2013 - 2 Mar 2013

    Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Place, Worcester, WR1 1UH, UK

    To view images please visit the link below
    http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/seeing-in-colour/

    After sailing in the Western Isles of Scotland in the summer of 2012 I saw my world through fresh eyes and I could feel the colour seeping back into my soul.

    The work is directly influenced by the play of light and colour on the movement of water, direct exposure to the elements in all weather conditions contrasting with calm and tranquillity and a visual ‘eclection’ of objects, colours and memories from around this spectacular coastline.

    Event: Artist in Residence Exhibition

    Dates: 3 Nov 2012 - 30 Nov 2012

    Venue: Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum, Foregate Street, Worcester Worcestershire WR1 1DT, UK

    For the month of November 2012 I was a guest Resident Artist in one of two studios set up in the Old Library Project Space and exhibited restrospective works, new work and work in progress.

    Event: Open Exhibition

    Dates: 10 Sep 2012 - 6 Oct 2012

    Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Place, Worcester, WR1 1UH, UK

    An open exhibition organised by the Click Click Collective.

    Event: Former Glory

    Dates: 2 Jul 2012 - 7 Sep 2012

    Venue: Himley Hall, Nr Stourbridge, West Midlands, DY3 4DF, UK

    To view images please visit the link below
    http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/former-glory/

    In 2012, along with other members of the Enigma Group of Worcestershire Artists, I was invited to make new work in response to the upper rooms of Himley Hall in Dudley, not open to the public and untouched for decades. The outcome was Quintessence I, II and III.

    “The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former”

    I was born in my parents’ bedroom at Sheinwood Manor in Shropshire, a rambling, gracefully aging, Georgian farm house. The fabric of the building felt imbued with history, almost as though – if you were to peel back the tired wallpaper – you would see the very souls of the people who had lived there.

    When I first visited Himley Hall it evoked memories of my childhood home and images of its fading beauty began to resonate in my work.

    My aim was to explore these emotions and imbue each piece with fragility, atmosphere and intrigue. The result is a response, so subtle in parts, that it is barely a breath or a touch.

    Event: Connections

    Dates: 12 Mar 2011 - 7 May 2011

    Venue: Dudley Museum & Art Gallery, St. Jame's Road, Dudley, DY1 1HU, UK

    For images please follow the link below
    http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/connections/

    Connections was an exhibition brought together by myself and other members of the Enigma Alumini Group of Worcestershire Artists in 2009. My response was a series of ‘shrines’ utilizing recognisable images including The Kiss (Rodan).

    Shrine: receptacle of sacred relics;chapel of special associations;hallowed by some memory

    The making of shrines has long been part of the human experience. They date back to the beginning of recorded time and have been found almost everywhere in the world. They express the most basic human concerns, birth, life and death. A shrine was where people went to ask for help from greater unseen powers that governed their lives. Shrines gave tangible form to beliefs.

    My box assemblages, inspired by the concept of the shrine, for me represented an inward journey of discovery, exploring feelings and memories. My aim was to imbue each one with history, emotion and intrigue.

    I utilised family heirlooms, found, collected and constructed objects and ephemera.

    Each told a personal story.

    Event: Resident Artists Exhibition

    Dates: 10 Jan 2011 - 11 Feb 2011

    Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Place, Worcester, WR1 1UH, UK

    A collection of work by all those involved with Worcester Arts Workshop.

    Event: Reflections 2

    Dates: 1 Nov 2010 - 7 Nov 2010

    Venue: Cathedral Plaza, High Street, Worcester, UK

    Projected exhibition from an empty shop front in Worcester High Street.

    Event: Connections

    Dates: 5 Jul 2010 - 31 Jul 2010

    Venue: Weavers Gallery, Church Lane, Ledbury, HR8 1DW, UK

    For images please follow the link below
    http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/connections/

    Connections was an exhibition brought together by myself and other members of the Enigma Alumini Group of Worcestershire Artists in 2009. My response was a series of ‘shrines’ utilizing recognisable images including The Kiss (Rodan).

    Shrine: receptacle of sacred relics;chapel of special associations;hallowed by some memory

    The making of shrines has long been part of the human experience. They date back to the beginning of recorded time and have been found almost everywhere in the world. They express the most basic human concerns, birth, life and death. A shrine was where people went to ask for help from greater unseen powers that governed their lives. Shrines gave tangible form to beliefs.

    My box assemblages, inspired by the concept of the shrine, for me represented an inward journey of discovery, exploring feelings and memories. My aim was to imbue each one with history, emotion and intrigue.

    I utilised family heirlooms, found, collected and constructed objects and ephemera.

    Each told a personal story.

    Event: Worcester Open 2010

    Dates: 24 Apr 2010 - 26 Jun 2010

    Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Place, Worcester, WR1 1UH, UK

    Contemporary Open Exhibition.

    Event: Connections

    Dates: 7 Dec 2009 - 18 Dec 2009

    Venue: Cotswold Gallery, Worcester University, St John's Campus, Henwick Rd, Worcester WR2 6AJ

    Connections was an exhibition brought together by myself and other members of the Enigma Alumini Group of Worcestershire Artists in 2009. My response was a series of ‘shrines’ utilizing recognisable images including The Kiss (Rodan).

    For images please follow the link below
    http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/connections/

    Shrine: receptacle of sacred relics;chapel of special associations;hallowed by some memory

    The making of shrines has long been part of the human experience. They date back to the beginning of recorded time and have been found almost everywhere in the world. They express the most basic human concerns, birth, life and death. A shrine was where people went to ask for help from greater unseen powers that governed their lives. Shrines gave tangible form to beliefs.

    My box assemblages, inspired by the concept of the shrine, for me represented an inward journey of discovery, exploring feelings and memories. My aim was to imbue each one with history, emotion and intrigue.

    I utilised family heirlooms, found, collected and constructed objects and ephemera.

    Each told a personal story.




    Event: Reflections 1

    Dates: 26 Oct 2009 - 31 Oct 2009

    Venue: Cathedral Plaza, High Street, Worcester, UK

    Projected exhibition from an empty shop front in Worcester High Street.

    Event: Ten Threads

    Dates: 6 Oct 2008 - 31 Oct 2008

    Venue: Worcester Cathedral, 8 College Yard, Worcester WR1 2LA, UK

    The work of ten Worcestershire Artists exhibited in the South Cloister.

    Event: Open Contemporary Exhibition

    Dates: 7 Jul 2008 - 12 Jul 2008

    Venue: The Guildhall, High St, Worcester WR1 2EY, UK

    An exhibition of work invited from Artists across Worcestershire in response to domestic abuse.

    Event: Face Value

    Dates: 29 Oct 2007 - 3 Nov 2007

    Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Street, Worcester WR1 1UH, UK

    Self Portrature Exhibition.

    Self-portraits have been a method of self-exploration since humans first gazed at their own reflection in a pool of water. With the invention of the mirror came an even stronger fascination to capture one’s likeness. And even within the past ten years, the public’s fascination with the way an artist sees him/herself has led to exhibitions like the National Self-Portrait Collection in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

    Self-portraits, we have found, can be carefully staged to show the audience only what the artist wishes to project, or deeply revealing, inadvertently displaying feelings of anguish and pain. Self-portraits have been used to test new techniques, make a signature mark, launch into self-study, remember the past, and as a way to release emotion.

    Whichever way artists choose to construct their images, they are each forced to study their own personas both physically and emotionally. What do artist’s find when they search the mirror? For some the self-portrait is cathartic experience, a letting go of pent-up emotions. For others, the process reveals new insights about themselves and their work. For all artists, the self-portrait is an exploration, an opportunity to see beyond the image in the mirror and begin to search into the soul.’

    Event: Alumni Textiles Exhibition

    Dates: 21 May 2007 - 28 May 2007

    Venue: Worcester University, St John's Campus, Henwick Rd, Worcester WR2 6AJ

    An exhibition of textile work by Worcester Alumni Artists exhibiting group Enigma to coincide with the 2007 Degree Show.

    Event: Post Graduate Exhibition

    Dates: 22 May 2006 - 29 May 2006

    Venue: Worcester University, St John's Campus, Henwick Rd, Worcester WR2 6AJ, UK

    Exhibition staged by invitation of Post Graduates and Tutors Work to coincide with the Degree Show

    Event: Stitched

    Dates: 29 Apr 2006 - 26 May 2006

    Venue: Stroud House Gallery, Station Road, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 3AP, UK

    Textile exhibition

    Event: Textures of Memory

    Dates: 5 Nov 2005 - 23 Nov 2005

    Venue: Worcester Cathedral, 8 College Yard, Worcester WR1 2LA, UK

    For images please follow the link below
    http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/textures-of-memory/

    During my residency at Worcester Cathedral I began to experiment with print. I was given the opportunity to develop this work during a year as AA2A Artist in Residence at Worcester University in 2004-2005
    http://www.aa2a.org/artists/jayne_gaze

    ‘…Yet there is a space where small gestures slide into dreams, where the familiar turns. A place of quiet intensity. Where the textures of memory are smooth and white and velvet and blue. Where they absorb into linen and cotton and canvas and celluloid, are a mass of material, shadow and ghost, are as fine as hair, as ephemeral as light, as sharp as pins, as random as discarded thread. Where there is the will to repair and disrepair, to reveal and conceal, to caress and embrace, and to imagine and muse, and to invent and create and to remember and forget, and…’

    Event: Textures of Memory

    Dates: 10 May 2005 - 8 Jun 2005

    Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Street, Worcester WR1 1UH, UK

    For images please follow the link below
    http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/textures-of-memory/

    During my residency at Worcester Cathedral I began to experiment with print. I was given the opportunity to develop this work during a year as AA2A Artist in Residence at Worcester University in 2004-2005
    http://www.aa2a.org/artists/jayne_gaze

    ‘…Yet there is a space where small gestures slide into dreams, where the familiar turns. A place of quiet intensity. Where the textures of memory are smooth and white and velvet and blue. Where they absorb into linen and cotton and canvas and celluloid, are a mass of material, shadow and ghost, are as fine as hair, as ephemeral as light, as sharp as pins, as random as discarded thread. Where there is the will to repair and disrepair, to reveal and conceal, to caress and embrace, and to imagine and muse, and to invent and create and to remember and forget, and…’

    Event: Haven

    Dates: 8 Sep 2004 - 14 Sep 2004

    Venue: Rotherwas Chapel, Off Chapel Road, Hereford HR2 6LD, England, UK

    Haven Installation Art commissioned by English Heritage in association with Public Art Route for Heritage Open Days. A Public Art Route project in association with Eye Candy.

    The Chapel was converted into a place of discovery and ideas where 10 artists presented their curious findings.

    I was invited to exhibit with some wonderful artists and felt extremely humbled to be showing my work alongside one of my idols, Karen Truselle, who sadly died in 2008 at the age of 56 from breast cancer.

    Event: Translations, Transfusions, Transfigurations

    Dates: 16 Jul 2004 - 8 Aug 2004

    Venue: Worcester Cathedral, 8 College Yard, Worcester WR1 2LA, UK

    For images please follow the link below
    http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/translations-transfusions-transfigurations/

    Artist In Residence Exhibition.

    Essay by Lalitte Stolper, Research Fellow in Art, Worcester University.

    A sacred building, amongst other things, is where the living go to come to terms with death. Worcester Cathedral, for all its grandeur, its royal tomb and aristocratic engravings, has always found place for less renowned incisions against mortality. A cockleshell pilgrim lies under a marked flagstone, and amongst the cathedral’s treasures, as carefully preserved as King John’s shroud, we find the flayed skin of a thief who tried to strip the building of its sanctus bell. Examine the walls: everyone in particular seems to have scratched their name, to tell us they were here, to turn a personal moment into public eternity.

    The moment she enters the cathedral, the artist sees it as an inscribed – wounded – body. She projects onto it a personal body – that of her mother, who is dying. It is questionable to expose the private life behind the public artist – but impossible to explain these works without lifting that particular veil. Gaze translates, transfuses and transfigures her grief into art.

    Translations [Dean’s Chapel, wall]

    At first she keeps her distance. The stones are photographed, then replicated in layers of paper, glue and gritty carborundum. She digs into the surface for what is lost in this translation, but does not find all that she’s looking for.

    Transfusions [Dean’s Chapel, wall]

    She pares the newspapers of phrases she needs: “a study of loneliness, repression and destructive passion”. How much will she veil or unveil of mother’s control, her own resistance?

    Mourning both their lives, she returns to childish things – gets glue all over her hands, lets it congeal and dry, then peels off see-through skin. She soaks bandages in oil and pigment. They darken and smell pungent, and she remembers the removal of dressings. She takes the newsprint parings and rolls them with the glue-skins in the bandages – tight, tighter. She tears a window in a painter’s canvas, like the Jewish mourner tearing his suit, and orders the scrolls inside. They are messages, sent but unopened. Still not satisfied, she oils more bandages and pleats them into parcels: dark little gifts to ornament a mantelpiece.

    Transfigurations – [Dean’s Chapel, centre]

    At last she breathes. The works become bigger than she is and rise off the ground. Each one opens around a space her own size: translucent; un-torn; hiding nothing. She wonders if she is empty now too.

    She names the results of her labours as neutrally as she can, but they are still “very raw – the most real I’ve ever made.”

    Event: Symbiont

    Dates: 7 Jul 2003 - 1 Aug 2003

    Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Street, Worcester WR1 1UH, UK

    Video Instalation 'Symbiont' as part of Artery

    Event: Chapters of the Self & Mnemosyne and Metaphor

    Dates: 23 Jun 2003 - 26 Sep 2003

    Venue: The Art House, Huntingdon Hall, Chapel Walk, Worcester, WR1 3LD, UK

    For images please follow the link below
    http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/chapters-of-the-self/
    and
    http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/mnemosyne-and-metaphor/

    Final Degree Show Part 1. 'Chapters of the Self'. My initial inspiration came from a garment called a barrier, given to me by my mother. It had been worn by both of us, and darned and mended by both her and her mother (my nanna). The significance of this was echoed in the words I found written in my mother’s notebook that became both the catalyst and epitome of this project:

    ‘By starting each line in the thread above that in which the previous row finished, finishing in the thread below that in which it was begun’

    Being perishable themselves the textiles and images provide only fragmentary evidence of each woman’s life. The lines of stitches, the binding, seams, patching and mending symbolic of textiles skills handed down through generations, manifested in this body of work, each chapter has to be ‘read’ in order to make sense of and understand the whole.

    ‘As cloth makes manifest deeply held cultural values that may otherwise be imperceptible – in fact it may be a woman’s very crucial job to translate these ephemeral values into material objects’. Generations and geographies in the visual arts.

    Final Degree Show Part 2. ‘Mnemosyne and Metaphor’, is a response to a work by Caroline Barlett: ‘On the Shelves of Memory to Mnemosyne’ where hundreds of labels record the transition of the collected to the exhibited. It exploits the use of labelling to define physical and ethereal matter, presence and absence.

    By researching both archaeological and museum systems of retrieving, recording and exhibiting I have produced a piece that reflects both. In the same way that fossils are the physical imprints of what has been and passed but shaped the world, so does thought and experience shape our lives and our identity. The memories of these are often boxed away in our minds, sometimes too painful to open. It is these thoughts and experiences that I exhibit by ‘opening the boxes’. I appropriated systems of archaeology and museology and utilise themes of metaphor.

    Influenced by the work of Claudio Costa, ‘Anthological Ontology’, 1994 the pieces are almost entirely black to suggest the mind as the dark place where these memories are kept and concealed. The lids are all open; otherwise the contents could not be ‘seen’. The strength of the piece is in the labels, which are the only clues given to identify the ‘exhibits’.

    In making the memories of thoughts and experiences ‘tangible’, by opening the boxes and publicly exhibiting them, they become something to deal with or respond to. Like real artefacts in a real museum you are invited to put them into their context, perhaps socially, culturally or historically but more probably personally, physically and emotionally and like real artefacts, in doing so try to make sense of ourselves.

    “If you understand the parts of something you understand the whole”. Bridget Crump, curator of Worcester Museum and Art Gallery 2002


    Event: Light

    Dates: 19 May 2003 - 29 Aug 2003

    Venue: Park Attwood, Trimpley Lane, Bewdley, Worcestershire DY12 1RE, UK

    Outdoor Sculptural Textiles Installation ‘Light’

Links


Education

2010 - 2010

Malvern School of Art

2002 - 2002

Worcester Technical College

1999 - 2003

Worcester University


Awards

2010

Worcestershire NHS Trust

Achievement award for Working in Partnership

Show more awards Hide

2010

Worcestershire NHS Trust

Award for Patient, Staff and Public Engagement and Involvement

2010

Arts Council England

For Art in Minds exhibition 'Reflections II'

2005

Arts Council England

For the Kings Fund Project, Whitley Ward, Kidderminster General Hospital.

2003

Arts Council England

Worcester Cathedral Artist in Residence 2003-2004

There are no upcoming events

Show previous events Hide previous events

Previous events

Event: I N N E R S C A P E S

Dates: 7 Sep 2024 - 16 Sep 2024

Venue: The Artery Gallery, Arch 28, Croft Walk, Worcester WR1 3BD

The Artery Gallery presents a solo exhibition for one of The Artery Studios resident artists, Jayne Gaze BA

INNERSCAPES features a collection of abstract and mixed media work created over the past two years.

Over the past two years, through this body of work, I have allowed myself to intuitively explore my internal personal geography and make visual representations of my ‘innerscapes’.

The images are a reflection of my interior world and how I experience existence. They are memories, experiences, sounds and smells, feelings and emotions. They are loss, love, regret, joy and hope. They are people and places known, unknown, visited and left, both physically and emotionally. They are loss, love, regret, joy and hope. They are people and places known, unknown, visited and left, both physically and emotionally and those I might yet visit in the future, imagine or dream about.

As an artist this is my buried treasure for me to excavate, examine and record.

Event: Beneath the Surface

Dates: 9 Oct 2015 - 7 Nov 2015

Venue: Museum of Royal Worcester, Severn Street, Worcester WR1 2ND

An exhibition for World Mental Health Day by artists of the Art in Minds Foundation of which I am founder and Trustee.

Event: Finding Futures

Dates: 6 Oct 2014 - 24 Oct 2014

Venue: The Hive, Sawmill Walk, The Butts, Worcester WR1 3PB

Finding Futures, the 11th exhibition of Art in Minds Foundation (www.artinminds.org.uk)

Event: Celebration

Dates: 23 Sep 2013 - 28 Oct 2013

Venue: Cotswold Gallery, Worcester University, St John's Campus, Henwick Rd, Worcester WR2 6AJ

This was the 10th Anniversary Exhibition of Art in Minds Foundation (www.artinminds.org.uk)

Event: Seeing in Colour

Dates: 1 Feb 2013 - 2 Mar 2013

Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Place, Worcester, WR1 1UH, UK

To view images please visit the link below
http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/seeing-in-colour/

After sailing in the Western Isles of Scotland in the summer of 2012 I saw my world through fresh eyes and I could feel the colour seeping back into my soul.

The work is directly influenced by the play of light and colour on the movement of water, direct exposure to the elements in all weather conditions contrasting with calm and tranquillity and a visual ‘eclection’ of objects, colours and memories from around this spectacular coastline.

Event: Artist in Residence Exhibition

Dates: 3 Nov 2012 - 30 Nov 2012

Venue: Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum, Foregate Street, Worcester Worcestershire WR1 1DT, UK

For the month of November 2012 I was a guest Resident Artist in one of two studios set up in the Old Library Project Space and exhibited restrospective works, new work and work in progress.

Event: Open Exhibition

Dates: 10 Sep 2012 - 6 Oct 2012

Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Place, Worcester, WR1 1UH, UK

An open exhibition organised by the Click Click Collective.

Event: Former Glory

Dates: 2 Jul 2012 - 7 Sep 2012

Venue: Himley Hall, Nr Stourbridge, West Midlands, DY3 4DF, UK

To view images please visit the link below
http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/former-glory/

In 2012, along with other members of the Enigma Group of Worcestershire Artists, I was invited to make new work in response to the upper rooms of Himley Hall in Dudley, not open to the public and untouched for decades. The outcome was Quintessence I, II and III.

“The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former”

I was born in my parents’ bedroom at Sheinwood Manor in Shropshire, a rambling, gracefully aging, Georgian farm house. The fabric of the building felt imbued with history, almost as though – if you were to peel back the tired wallpaper – you would see the very souls of the people who had lived there.

When I first visited Himley Hall it evoked memories of my childhood home and images of its fading beauty began to resonate in my work.

My aim was to explore these emotions and imbue each piece with fragility, atmosphere and intrigue. The result is a response, so subtle in parts, that it is barely a breath or a touch.

Event: Connections

Dates: 12 Mar 2011 - 7 May 2011

Venue: Dudley Museum & Art Gallery, St. Jame's Road, Dudley, DY1 1HU, UK

For images please follow the link below
http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/connections/

Connections was an exhibition brought together by myself and other members of the Enigma Alumini Group of Worcestershire Artists in 2009. My response was a series of ‘shrines’ utilizing recognisable images including The Kiss (Rodan).

Shrine: receptacle of sacred relics;chapel of special associations;hallowed by some memory

The making of shrines has long been part of the human experience. They date back to the beginning of recorded time and have been found almost everywhere in the world. They express the most basic human concerns, birth, life and death. A shrine was where people went to ask for help from greater unseen powers that governed their lives. Shrines gave tangible form to beliefs.

My box assemblages, inspired by the concept of the shrine, for me represented an inward journey of discovery, exploring feelings and memories. My aim was to imbue each one with history, emotion and intrigue.

I utilised family heirlooms, found, collected and constructed objects and ephemera.

Each told a personal story.

Event: Resident Artists Exhibition

Dates: 10 Jan 2011 - 11 Feb 2011

Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Place, Worcester, WR1 1UH, UK

A collection of work by all those involved with Worcester Arts Workshop.

Event: Reflections 2

Dates: 1 Nov 2010 - 7 Nov 2010

Venue: Cathedral Plaza, High Street, Worcester, UK

Projected exhibition from an empty shop front in Worcester High Street.

Event: Connections

Dates: 5 Jul 2010 - 31 Jul 2010

Venue: Weavers Gallery, Church Lane, Ledbury, HR8 1DW, UK

For images please follow the link below
http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/connections/

Connections was an exhibition brought together by myself and other members of the Enigma Alumini Group of Worcestershire Artists in 2009. My response was a series of ‘shrines’ utilizing recognisable images including The Kiss (Rodan).

Shrine: receptacle of sacred relics;chapel of special associations;hallowed by some memory

The making of shrines has long been part of the human experience. They date back to the beginning of recorded time and have been found almost everywhere in the world. They express the most basic human concerns, birth, life and death. A shrine was where people went to ask for help from greater unseen powers that governed their lives. Shrines gave tangible form to beliefs.

My box assemblages, inspired by the concept of the shrine, for me represented an inward journey of discovery, exploring feelings and memories. My aim was to imbue each one with history, emotion and intrigue.

I utilised family heirlooms, found, collected and constructed objects and ephemera.

Each told a personal story.

Event: Worcester Open 2010

Dates: 24 Apr 2010 - 26 Jun 2010

Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Place, Worcester, WR1 1UH, UK

Contemporary Open Exhibition.

Event: Connections

Dates: 7 Dec 2009 - 18 Dec 2009

Venue: Cotswold Gallery, Worcester University, St John's Campus, Henwick Rd, Worcester WR2 6AJ

Connections was an exhibition brought together by myself and other members of the Enigma Alumini Group of Worcestershire Artists in 2009. My response was a series of ‘shrines’ utilizing recognisable images including The Kiss (Rodan).

For images please follow the link below
http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/connections/

Shrine: receptacle of sacred relics;chapel of special associations;hallowed by some memory

The making of shrines has long been part of the human experience. They date back to the beginning of recorded time and have been found almost everywhere in the world. They express the most basic human concerns, birth, life and death. A shrine was where people went to ask for help from greater unseen powers that governed their lives. Shrines gave tangible form to beliefs.

My box assemblages, inspired by the concept of the shrine, for me represented an inward journey of discovery, exploring feelings and memories. My aim was to imbue each one with history, emotion and intrigue.

I utilised family heirlooms, found, collected and constructed objects and ephemera.

Each told a personal story.




Event: Reflections 1

Dates: 26 Oct 2009 - 31 Oct 2009

Venue: Cathedral Plaza, High Street, Worcester, UK

Projected exhibition from an empty shop front in Worcester High Street.

Event: Ten Threads

Dates: 6 Oct 2008 - 31 Oct 2008

Venue: Worcester Cathedral, 8 College Yard, Worcester WR1 2LA, UK

The work of ten Worcestershire Artists exhibited in the South Cloister.

Event: Open Contemporary Exhibition

Dates: 7 Jul 2008 - 12 Jul 2008

Venue: The Guildhall, High St, Worcester WR1 2EY, UK

An exhibition of work invited from Artists across Worcestershire in response to domestic abuse.

Event: Face Value

Dates: 29 Oct 2007 - 3 Nov 2007

Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Street, Worcester WR1 1UH, UK

Self Portrature Exhibition.

Self-portraits have been a method of self-exploration since humans first gazed at their own reflection in a pool of water. With the invention of the mirror came an even stronger fascination to capture one’s likeness. And even within the past ten years, the public’s fascination with the way an artist sees him/herself has led to exhibitions like the National Self-Portrait Collection in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

Self-portraits, we have found, can be carefully staged to show the audience only what the artist wishes to project, or deeply revealing, inadvertently displaying feelings of anguish and pain. Self-portraits have been used to test new techniques, make a signature mark, launch into self-study, remember the past, and as a way to release emotion.

Whichever way artists choose to construct their images, they are each forced to study their own personas both physically and emotionally. What do artist’s find when they search the mirror? For some the self-portrait is cathartic experience, a letting go of pent-up emotions. For others, the process reveals new insights about themselves and their work. For all artists, the self-portrait is an exploration, an opportunity to see beyond the image in the mirror and begin to search into the soul.’

Event: Alumni Textiles Exhibition

Dates: 21 May 2007 - 28 May 2007

Venue: Worcester University, St John's Campus, Henwick Rd, Worcester WR2 6AJ

An exhibition of textile work by Worcester Alumni Artists exhibiting group Enigma to coincide with the 2007 Degree Show.

Event: Post Graduate Exhibition

Dates: 22 May 2006 - 29 May 2006

Venue: Worcester University, St John's Campus, Henwick Rd, Worcester WR2 6AJ, UK

Exhibition staged by invitation of Post Graduates and Tutors Work to coincide with the Degree Show

Event: Stitched

Dates: 29 Apr 2006 - 26 May 2006

Venue: Stroud House Gallery, Station Road, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 3AP, UK

Textile exhibition

Event: Textures of Memory

Dates: 5 Nov 2005 - 23 Nov 2005

Venue: Worcester Cathedral, 8 College Yard, Worcester WR1 2LA, UK

For images please follow the link below
http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/textures-of-memory/

During my residency at Worcester Cathedral I began to experiment with print. I was given the opportunity to develop this work during a year as AA2A Artist in Residence at Worcester University in 2004-2005
http://www.aa2a.org/artists/jayne_gaze

‘…Yet there is a space where small gestures slide into dreams, where the familiar turns. A place of quiet intensity. Where the textures of memory are smooth and white and velvet and blue. Where they absorb into linen and cotton and canvas and celluloid, are a mass of material, shadow and ghost, are as fine as hair, as ephemeral as light, as sharp as pins, as random as discarded thread. Where there is the will to repair and disrepair, to reveal and conceal, to caress and embrace, and to imagine and muse, and to invent and create and to remember and forget, and…’

Event: Textures of Memory

Dates: 10 May 2005 - 8 Jun 2005

Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Street, Worcester WR1 1UH, UK

For images please follow the link below
http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/textures-of-memory/

During my residency at Worcester Cathedral I began to experiment with print. I was given the opportunity to develop this work during a year as AA2A Artist in Residence at Worcester University in 2004-2005
http://www.aa2a.org/artists/jayne_gaze

‘…Yet there is a space where small gestures slide into dreams, where the familiar turns. A place of quiet intensity. Where the textures of memory are smooth and white and velvet and blue. Where they absorb into linen and cotton and canvas and celluloid, are a mass of material, shadow and ghost, are as fine as hair, as ephemeral as light, as sharp as pins, as random as discarded thread. Where there is the will to repair and disrepair, to reveal and conceal, to caress and embrace, and to imagine and muse, and to invent and create and to remember and forget, and…’

Event: Haven

Dates: 8 Sep 2004 - 14 Sep 2004

Venue: Rotherwas Chapel, Off Chapel Road, Hereford HR2 6LD, England, UK

Haven Installation Art commissioned by English Heritage in association with Public Art Route for Heritage Open Days. A Public Art Route project in association with Eye Candy.

The Chapel was converted into a place of discovery and ideas where 10 artists presented their curious findings.

I was invited to exhibit with some wonderful artists and felt extremely humbled to be showing my work alongside one of my idols, Karen Truselle, who sadly died in 2008 at the age of 56 from breast cancer.

Event: Translations, Transfusions, Transfigurations

Dates: 16 Jul 2004 - 8 Aug 2004

Venue: Worcester Cathedral, 8 College Yard, Worcester WR1 2LA, UK

For images please follow the link below
http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/translations-transfusions-transfigurations/

Artist In Residence Exhibition.

Essay by Lalitte Stolper, Research Fellow in Art, Worcester University.

A sacred building, amongst other things, is where the living go to come to terms with death. Worcester Cathedral, for all its grandeur, its royal tomb and aristocratic engravings, has always found place for less renowned incisions against mortality. A cockleshell pilgrim lies under a marked flagstone, and amongst the cathedral’s treasures, as carefully preserved as King John’s shroud, we find the flayed skin of a thief who tried to strip the building of its sanctus bell. Examine the walls: everyone in particular seems to have scratched their name, to tell us they were here, to turn a personal moment into public eternity.

The moment she enters the cathedral, the artist sees it as an inscribed – wounded – body. She projects onto it a personal body – that of her mother, who is dying. It is questionable to expose the private life behind the public artist – but impossible to explain these works without lifting that particular veil. Gaze translates, transfuses and transfigures her grief into art.

Translations [Dean’s Chapel, wall]

At first she keeps her distance. The stones are photographed, then replicated in layers of paper, glue and gritty carborundum. She digs into the surface for what is lost in this translation, but does not find all that she’s looking for.

Transfusions [Dean’s Chapel, wall]

She pares the newspapers of phrases she needs: “a study of loneliness, repression and destructive passion”. How much will she veil or unveil of mother’s control, her own resistance?

Mourning both their lives, she returns to childish things – gets glue all over her hands, lets it congeal and dry, then peels off see-through skin. She soaks bandages in oil and pigment. They darken and smell pungent, and she remembers the removal of dressings. She takes the newsprint parings and rolls them with the glue-skins in the bandages – tight, tighter. She tears a window in a painter’s canvas, like the Jewish mourner tearing his suit, and orders the scrolls inside. They are messages, sent but unopened. Still not satisfied, she oils more bandages and pleats them into parcels: dark little gifts to ornament a mantelpiece.

Transfigurations – [Dean’s Chapel, centre]

At last she breathes. The works become bigger than she is and rise off the ground. Each one opens around a space her own size: translucent; un-torn; hiding nothing. She wonders if she is empty now too.

She names the results of her labours as neutrally as she can, but they are still “very raw – the most real I’ve ever made.”

Event: Symbiont

Dates: 7 Jul 2003 - 1 Aug 2003

Venue: Worcester Arts Workshop, 21 Sansome Street, Worcester WR1 1UH, UK

Video Instalation 'Symbiont' as part of Artery

Event: Chapters of the Self & Mnemosyne and Metaphor

Dates: 23 Jun 2003 - 26 Sep 2003

Venue: The Art House, Huntingdon Hall, Chapel Walk, Worcester, WR1 3LD, UK

For images please follow the link below
http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/chapters-of-the-self/
and
http://jaynegaze.com/gallery/mnemosyne-and-metaphor/

Final Degree Show Part 1. 'Chapters of the Self'. My initial inspiration came from a garment called a barrier, given to me by my mother. It had been worn by both of us, and darned and mended by both her and her mother (my nanna). The significance of this was echoed in the words I found written in my mother’s notebook that became both the catalyst and epitome of this project:

‘By starting each line in the thread above that in which the previous row finished, finishing in the thread below that in which it was begun’

Being perishable themselves the textiles and images provide only fragmentary evidence of each woman’s life. The lines of stitches, the binding, seams, patching and mending symbolic of textiles skills handed down through generations, manifested in this body of work, each chapter has to be ‘read’ in order to make sense of and understand the whole.

‘As cloth makes manifest deeply held cultural values that may otherwise be imperceptible – in fact it may be a woman’s very crucial job to translate these ephemeral values into material objects’. Generations and geographies in the visual arts.

Final Degree Show Part 2. ‘Mnemosyne and Metaphor’, is a response to a work by Caroline Barlett: ‘On the Shelves of Memory to Mnemosyne’ where hundreds of labels record the transition of the collected to the exhibited. It exploits the use of labelling to define physical and ethereal matter, presence and absence.

By researching both archaeological and museum systems of retrieving, recording and exhibiting I have produced a piece that reflects both. In the same way that fossils are the physical imprints of what has been and passed but shaped the world, so does thought and experience shape our lives and our identity. The memories of these are often boxed away in our minds, sometimes too painful to open. It is these thoughts and experiences that I exhibit by ‘opening the boxes’. I appropriated systems of archaeology and museology and utilise themes of metaphor.

Influenced by the work of Claudio Costa, ‘Anthological Ontology’, 1994 the pieces are almost entirely black to suggest the mind as the dark place where these memories are kept and concealed. The lids are all open; otherwise the contents could not be ‘seen’. The strength of the piece is in the labels, which are the only clues given to identify the ‘exhibits’.

In making the memories of thoughts and experiences ‘tangible’, by opening the boxes and publicly exhibiting them, they become something to deal with or respond to. Like real artefacts in a real museum you are invited to put them into their context, perhaps socially, culturally or historically but more probably personally, physically and emotionally and like real artefacts, in doing so try to make sense of ourselves.

“If you understand the parts of something you understand the whole”. Bridget Crump, curator of Worcester Museum and Art Gallery 2002


Event: Light

Dates: 19 May 2003 - 29 Aug 2003

Venue: Park Attwood, Trimpley Lane, Bewdley, Worcestershire DY12 1RE, UK

Outdoor Sculptural Textiles Installation ‘Light’


 

Biography

After nine years working from my studio in Spain I am back in the UK at The Artery Studios, Worcester exploring my 'Innerscapes' . The images are a reflection of my interior world and how I experience existence. They are memories, experiences, sounds and smells, feelings and emotions. They are loss, love, regret, joy and hope. They are people and places known, unknown, visited and left, both physically and emotionally and those I might yet visit in the future, imagine or dream about.

A bit about me. I studied Art & Design graduating with first class single honours followed by a twelve month residency at Worcester Cathedral for which I won an Arts Council England Award. In the following year I was Artist in Residence at Worcester University and with Worcestershire Mental Health NHS Trust using art therapeutically and vocationally, with recovering mental health service users. Before leaving the UK I was Artist in Residence at Worcester Museum and Art Gallery.

I often utilise the lexicon of cloth, in particular bandage, muslin and threads suggesting protection, injury and healing.

Art for me is both an internal and external journey where I constantly learn about myself and about the materials and make sense of my world. To share it is both exciting and terrifying but is always a privilege.

At present I am making work that is a response to my personal emotions and struggles of the past three years. It feels like a new beginning and I am excited to share that with the world.