Silvy Weatherall: Another Man's Treasure

30 September - 12 November 2016
Overview

Another Man's Treasure, was a wunderkammern of works by Galloway-based artist Silvy Weatherall: paintings, sculptures, disarticulated animal and bird skeletons and their remnants. Silvy finds use for objects that have lost their function or have been discarded: "the thought of making something out of 'nothing' appeals to me hugely.” 

Silvy has incorporated feathers, animal bones and spent shell casings, largely sourced from her husband's game dealing business, into artworks to highlight both their beauty and the wider context of their original use. Repetition within a composition features in several of the exhibited works, drawing attention to the wider uniformity and subtle discrepancies in the natural patterns of each object. 

An indiscriminate collector, Silvy has made use of an amassment of clock faces, jewellery, and broken china spanning more than twenty years. When brought together in her artworks, these articles that once shared the same purpose now demand attention in isolation; in this context, the craftsmanship that went into their creation and the unique characteristics of their forms are given prominence. 

Equal importance is also given to questioning the history of individual objects - who has made them and for whom were they made? What series of events has allowed for their disposal? A series of exhibited paintings, Furniture Store, document the weathered excess stock of a local furniture dealer, stacked to the rafters and "lying outside like bones in an open graveyard, composting back into the earth." 

Silvy's  works have been influenced by the artistic output of several world cultures: Indian mandalas, gilding and Japanese kintsugi ceramic repair. By drawing upon traditional artistic practices in the repurposing of found objects, she recontextualises the ordinary to bring their visual qualities and deeper significance to the fore. Silvy has previously undertaken artist's residencies in the Philippines, Spain and France.

Installation Views