Antonia Dewhurst Preswylio, Dwell

Antonia Dewhurst Preswylio, Dwell . Weekends 1st-2nd, 8th-9th, 15th-16th October 2011 10am-5.30pm In her inaugural exhibition at The Last Gallery Antonia will produce a multimedia installation exploring the meaning of home. Preswylio, Dwell explores personal ambivalent feelings about what or where constitutes home. Antonia is intrigued by the rhythms and rhymes set up within a multilayered approach and how different media and processes can suggest the passage of time, taking images from the realm of record and documentary into that of imagination and memory. The hermit’s hut…is the essence of the verb ‘to inhabit’. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space. At the end of the 18th century in Wales, in response to the poverty, homelessness and overcrowding generated by the Enclosures Act, there was a peak in the tradition of the Ty Unnos (Welsh - one-night house). If a dwelling could be raised between sunset and sunrise and have smoke emerging from its chimney at dawn, the builders could keep the house and the land as far as a hammer could be thrown from the four quarters. The tradition continued even into the 20th century and lingers in structures built by migrant workers in South Wales in the 21st. Similar traditions exist as far away as Turkey and echo in the barn raisings of the USA, the Kalkoot of Finland and the tent cities growing on the urban margins of America today. The need to build against a time constraint resonates with the imperative for shelter throughout human experience. Antonia’s practice is founded in drawing and making; she is interested in using multimedia installations as vehicles for exploring the region where documentary and record overlap with memory and imagination and for investigating our complex relationship with home. Originally from Bangor, Antonia Dewhurst lives and works in North Wales.