Picking up the pieces

Too often dismissed as merely decorative, the art of mosaic takes centre stage at an exhibition this month featuring the region’s best practitioners

Picking up the Pieces is a mosaic art exhibition at the Kitchen Gallery at Cockington Court from 29 February to 26 April 2020. It brings together for the first time the work of over 20 mosaic artists based in the South West. Each artist has developed his or her own distinctive contemporary style and they all encounter and explore a surprising range of materials, traditional and non-traditional, in creating their compositions. The quality of work and diversity of styles brings greater public awareness of this ancient, but constantly evolving, art form.

Artists from the whole of the south-west region, including Bristol and Somerset, East and North Devon, Torbay, the South Hams, and Cornwall, have all made stunning and remarkable work for this exhibition. You will see pictures, panels, jewellery, sculptures and more, all made from carefully selected and shaped fragments, pieces and shards in a kaleidoscope of material, colour and form. Organised by an informal group of four Devon-based mosaic artists (Allan Punton, Janet Ventre, Alison Hepburn, and Manya McMahon) who say they realised that there’s a lot of talent in the southwest and wanted to bring more public awareness to this diverse and generally underestimated art form. This is the first event, they hope, of many to bring the beauty of mosaic art to a wider audience.

“Mosaic means different things to different people – you’d get a different quote from everyone,” says organiser Manya McMahon. “To me personally it’s all about making something beautiful out of broken, fractured pieces, and it’s a bit of a metaphor for life sometimes!”

CORINNA BARRELL