O-onn-gorse
O-onn-gorse : paper-bags, glass head black pins, glazed ceramic, gorse, hat-wire, echium stalks and blackboard paint, variable size, 2023.
Solo exhibition at the end of my residency at CMR Project Space, Redruth, Cornwall, UK, as part of Flamm Visual Arts Festival in Cornwall and in partnership between Creative Kernow and Art Night. Photos by@nickcooney_studiocooney and @anthony_prothero
O–onn–gorse, an installation by Leila Galloway, explores connections between the diaphragm and gorse using clay, paper bags, and wild gorse. Following the installation, Galloway collaborated with artist Mollie Goldstrom and OST on a food event incorporating gorse and reflecting on how diaphragms aid breathing alongside sensations of bristling and shuddering. The work is supported by holymolecornwall and involves a talk informed by the relationship between these resonant forms.
gorse (n.) Old English gors “gorse, furze,” from Proto-Germanic *gorst- (source also of Old Saxon, Old High German gersta, Middle Dutch gherste, Dutch gerst, German gerste “barley”), from PIE *ghers- “to bristle” (source also of Latin hordeum “barley;” see horror).
horror (n.) early 14c., “feeling of disgust;” late 14c., “emotion of horror or dread,” also “thing which excites horror,” from Old French horror (12c., Modern French horreur) and directly from Latin horror “dread, veneration, religious awe,” a figurative use, literally “a shaking, trembling (as with cold or fear), shudder, chill,” from horrere “to bristle with fear, shudder,” from PIE root *ghers- “to bristle” (source also of Sanskrit harsate “bristles,”. Also formerly in English “a shivering,” especially as a symptom of disease or in reaction to a sour or bitter taste.
diaphragm (n.) late 14c., diafragma, in anatomy, “muscular membrane which separates the thorax from the abdominal cavity in mammals,” from Late Latin diaphragma, from Greek diaphragma”partition, barrier, muscle which divides the thorax from the abdomen,” from diaphrassein “to barricade,” from dia “across” (see dia-) + phrassein “to fence or hedge in,” which is of uncertain etymology. Beekes suggests it is a substrate word and finds “no convincing correspondence outside Greek.”
Press release, 2023.
"...Of the several group and solo exhibitions, three stood out. CMR Projects hosted Leila Galloway’s O-onn-gorse, a room of green hanging forms (gorse, clay, walls lined with green striped paper bags) that tested organic analogies of emotional states of suspension while resembling a low – fi therapy centre with earnest intentions..."
The December 2023 – January 2024 issue of Art Monthly, review of Flamm by writer Martin Holman.
