Trish Sidway - 'Remnants'

Wednesday 10 July - Sunday 4 August 2019

Remnants celebrates the freedom and joy of childhood.

Reflecting on her own childhood in post war England which allowed little freedom to play, Trish Sidway collects and manipulates found and discarded objects to create artworks which belie the rigid inflexibility of the materials used.

Her challenge is to transform these essentially industrial materials into something fluid and soft, reflecting the playful nature of childhood. The frequent interaction with her grandchildren is an unspoken but heartfelt narrative imbedded in these artworks. As a hands-on grandmother, Sidway continues to find inspiration in the spontaneity of the children’s play and their naive exploration of making art.

She welcomes the intense problem solving the materials present as she seeks to make the transformation into an artistic statement. Cutting, bending, welding and joining are all hard work. While in some ways her artwork is a homage to her father’s collecting and repurposing of found objects, for Sidway the artist’s journey is a celebration of fun and play rather than function and need. Remnants is not a discourse on the meaning of life, rather it is the potential of repurposing items with a previous history to create whimsical objects.