Theatre of Objects, 2025
Group Exhibition - Turner House Gallery, Penarth, Wales
12th April - 18th May 2025
Object theatre
presents
Theatre of Objects
An experiment in collaboration
Theatre of Objects is an exhibition that presents an experiment in collaboration between four artists. It is the result of material exchange that embraces overlap, borrowing and running away with one another's ideas. It is the culmination of a two-year project during which surprising confluences have come to light. Using the method of 'rotate and respond' and the metaphor of the 'laboratory' as ways to structure our project, has fostered our common preoccupations such as paper construction, ubiquity and curation.
In Theatre of Objects, the 'laboratory' is made explicit by the discrete display of objects in the lower gallery. These were our first experiments made in response to the 'origin artworks' that we circulated amongst ourselves at regular intervals.
The exhibition in the upper gallery represents work made during the second year of the project as a direct consequence of our 'rotate and respond' experiment. Each artist's work has remained distinctive while at the same time bearing the hallmarks of others created and critiqued alongside them.
Object Theatre is a group of four artists: Anne Gibbs, Chris Nurse, Heather Parnell and Frances Woodley. The group's name neatly identifies a common feature within our pre-existing practices, one that has continued into our collaboration, that is, an enthusiasm for creating visual drama out of thingness.
Object Theatre is a creative theatre of operations with a collective performative aspect which includes the exhibition of our work. Object Theatre has no rules or prescriptions. It is a working group in which individual practice is generated in an environment of supportive criticism and collaborative creative development. We meet for a whole day every couple of months, a practice that requires commitment, trust and reciprocity. Talking and eating together and visiting exhibitions and archives as a group is a reminder that art is a social, societal and radical activity as well as a creative project of work.
The Artists:
ANNE GIBBS
Anne Gibbs is a freelance artist and maker based in South Wales. Her multifaceted practice spans public commissions, teaching in schools and communities, and lecturing in universities across the region. She studied Fine Art, specialising in printmaking, later completing an MA in Ceramics at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff. Anne has exhibited both nationally and internationally including Greece, Canada and USA, and she has undertaken residencies in the UK and USA. Her achievements include awards from the Oppenheim John Downes Memorial Trust, Wales Arts International and the Arts Council of Wales. She was also awarded the Purchase Prize at the National Eisteddfod, Wales (2023) by the National Museum Cardiff. Her work is held in public collections in Wales, USA and Korea. Annes’ artistic practice draws inspiration from still-life painting, cabinets of curiosities, and collage. She gathers natural materials and man-made objects from diverse sources, which she transforms, reconfigures and re-presents in new contexts.
Website: www.annegibbs.co.uk Instagram: @anne_gibbsartist.
CHRIS NURSE
Chris Nurse was born in London and lives and works in Wales. He studied Painting and Printmaking at the Central School of Art and the Royal College of Art, before completing a Rome Scholarship at the British School in Rome and a Cheltenham Fellowship. He has worked in various roles as a Principal Lecturer in Art Practice at University of South Wales, including latterly as curator of the Museum Art Collection and gallery, Oriel y Bont. He has exhibited widely across the UK and internationally in Japan, USA, Germany and Italy. His work elevates the quotidian, the ubiquitous objects of everyday life, popular culture and systems, into playful, absurdly serious paintings, prints, models and assemblages. His work can be found in public and private collections in UK and USA.
Website: https://chrisnurses.wordpress.com/ Instagram: @chris_topher_nurse
HEATHER PARNELL
Heather Parnell, divides her time between her studio practice, art education and Arts in Health. She is the recipient of awards and scholarships from the Leverhulme Trust, British Council, Arts Council of Wales, and Wales Arts International, engaging in residencies, curation and exhibitions in Egypt, Japan, Italy and the UK. In recent years she has undertaken several collaborative projects with partners in Japan. Heather has spent many years in the role of public artist, also commissioning artwork for healthcare building developments. She studied Fine Art at Manchester and Exeter and a Masters at USW. Heather lives and works in South Wales, where she has a studio. Her practice uses printing, drawing, paper construction and installation to focus on the overlooked objects of everyday life—especially the trivial, redundant and close to hand. She retrieves them, takes them apart, reclaims and transforms them, to endow them with value through her time, attention and curiosity.
Website: https://heatherparnell.wordpress.com/ Instagram: @heatherwinterparnell
FRANCES WOODLEY
Frances Woodley was born in Germany and lives and works in Cardiff. She is an artist, collaborator, writer, curator and educator. Her cross-disciplinary practice currently focusses on digital and material printing, painting and collage used to make images supported on paper and small-scale paper constructions. Her studies include Ceramics (Cardiff), Masters in Fine Art Printmaking (Manchester) and Art History (OU) and a PhD, Contemporary Conversations with the Still Life Tradition (Aberystwyth, 2017). Recent authored publications include At Cross Purposes: Three-way conversations between two artists and a curator (2023) and 'Reproductions and Reimaginings: Reflections on an Interconnected Practice' in Painting, Photography and the Digital ed. Carl Robinson (Cambridge, 2022). Frances was Head of Visual Arts at USW (2001-2011). She has exhibited in the UK and abroad and is represented in Welsh public collections and ArtUK.
Instagram: @franceswoodleyart
