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Mary Vivienne

Barry (home) Cardiff (studio)
I am a visual artist working in Butetown Artists Studios in Cardiff Bay. I make two and three dimensional work, and am the founding curator of 'Open Books- Artists and the Chinese Folding Book'.
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Concepts My central concerns are with image, memory, identity and landscape. I find that different conditions of light challenge habits of perception - where or what are things ? My work uses various illusionistic devices to portray this ambiguity of the nature and location of things, and to reflect their forms and qualities. I am also interested in the use of books and notebooks as repositories of an artist's thinking processes. Whereas in my 3D work I am exploring space dimensions, in my books I am more concerned with time.

Influences Aesthetic/Formal concern, Emotions, Environment/Ecology, British, own gender (Female), mythology, issues of identity, personal histories, the link between visual art and contemporary music. Career path Qualifications: 1990 BA Hons, Fine Art, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff Teaching Experience: 2007 Workshops, Newport City Museum and Art Gallery 2006 Collage workshops, UWIC, Cardiff 2005 3D workshops, UWIC, Cardiff 2004 Collage workshop and guest lectures, Chinese University of Hong Kong 2003 Collage workshops for UWIC 2002 Workshops for UWIC, Cardiff and Newport City Council Schools Programme 2000 Workshops for Camarthenshire College, Faculty of Art and for Permanent Waves Women's Arts, in Barry (part of their Isolated Communities project) 1999/00 Occasional Lecture, Foundation, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.

Areas of work: Exhibiting, Practice-based research, Curating and writing.

Collections: New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge; Broken Hill Proprietries Collection, Australia;  Australian National University Collection; British High Commission, Canberra; Contemporary Arts Society for Wales; Newport Museum and Art Gallery - Education Collection; Sanshang Museum of Contemporary Art, China. Private collections in Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Europe, Hong Kong, and USA.

In 2007 the finding of my first son, lost through adoption in 1963, but found via my work in the New Hall Art Collection, inspired a whole new body of work, Hush Don't Tell, which, together with a large number of related books and journals absorbed my attention for the next four years.

Since 2011 I have been engaged with a project called Open Books.  This has taken the form of a series of exhibitions of Chinese folding books.  I am both an exhibitor and curator of the project.  The initial exhibition, selected and curated by me, opened in the National Library of Wales in 2012.  it has since been shown in Cardiff, Bristol and Hangzhou in China in 2013. In Brisbane and Canberra in Australia, as well as in Hong Kong in 2014.  In 2016 it opened in Ottawa, Canada, and in early 2017 in Jaipur, India. Negotiations are now ongoing for Korea and US. Every new country adds local artists.  It grows as it tours.  Links to catalogues for this project:

Paper Exchange catalogue    http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/9352614-open-books-paper-exchange

Canada OPEN BOOKS CANADA A LIVRE OUVERT 15/09/16  http://www.blurb.com/b/7350471

Australia 14/04/14  http://blur.by/1iMGKNX

China 22/10/13  http://blur.by/1ddIOQ6

Wales 2012  http://www.blurb.co.uk/bookstore/detail/3318049

My work has become more focused on working in books over the last few years, both in codex form and in Chinese folding (or concertina) books.  My medium is primarily a mixture of collage with drawing and watercolour.  I have become particualry concerned with a calligraphic language of 'found' or 'given' marks. These for the most part are rubbings from the natural environment. Fragments of these combine with drawn marks to create roaming landscapes across linked pages. A 'mark' at one scale refers to something quite different at another scale.

Over the last year I have made work in which I mount multiple related images together, either as single images diplayed close together in groups, or as multiples of related images within one frame. I have also revisited the idea of working within wall-mounted boxes.

A catalogue: 'A Calligraphy of Landscape, The Landscape of the Found and Given Mark' by Mary Husted, was published through Blurb books in March 2018. This can be viewed on their website.

I continue to be actively engaged with Open Books and a new development in the form of a paper exchange between Welsh and Chinese artists resulted in an exhibition of work by 11 Welsh artists and 11 Chinese artists in 2019 in Cardiff Bay, attended by a group pf our fellow Chinese artists and opened by the First Minister, Mark Drakeford. A return exhibition was due in 2020 in Hangzhou, China, but has been postponed due to the pandemic. We now have an Open Books website:

https://www.openbooks-international.org/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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