Hiraeth—a Welsh word that speaks to a deep longing for a place, time, or person that may never have been, or may never return—forms the emotional backbone of this exhibition. Through the works of Alice Gavalet and Helen Downie, we are invited to explore the complexity of this ache—an intangible, bittersweet yearning for something elusive and forever out of reach.
The works in Hiraeth speak to the space between presence and absence, memory and longing, identity, and loss. Using the language of ceramics and portraiture, both Gavalet and Downie create objects and images that evoke hiraeth—a deep, personal desire for the unreachable, beautifully captured in their distinct visual languages.
In Alice Gavalet’s ceramics as well as in her guéridons, the line between utility and art dissolves. Her vibrant, playful vessels and bowls—shaped from large slabs of clay and adorned with intricate, geometric patterns—transcend their function as mere objects. These pieces, often anthropomorphic and distorting traditional forms, invite us into a space where the familiar collides with the unknown. The colorful patterns, which evoke tartan fabric and architectural grids, suggest a world both structured and free flowing. The fluidity of her ceramic pieces—deformed, twisted, and reimagined—becomes a metaphor for how we carry the weight of memory, desire, and longing. Each form is a fragment of something lost or forgotten, a quiet rebellion against the idea of completion or perfection.
Helen Downie’s portraits and a still life painted under the pseudonym Unskilled Worker, are rich with layers of emotional depth, vulnerability, and nostalgia. In one of her striking pieces, Romantic Comedy (2024), a naked woman sits at a table holding a pear, her nakedness both vulnerable and defiant. She is framed by portraits—one of a stately British lady dressed in period attire, and another depicting two young women in historic dresses, evoking a time long past—and is surrounded by symbolic objects. The woman’s stillness and the surreal nature of her surroundings create a layered narrative about identity, time, and memory.
In Solfeggio Revisited (2024), Downie channels a similar sense of yearning, this time through the visual metaphor of a floral still life. The exuberant flowers, reaching toward the ceiling from a small green vase, evoke an emotional tension between restraint and overflowing vitality. The abundance of color and life, juxtaposed against the calm simplicity of the lilac tablecloth beneath, speaks to the complexity of desire—its potential to both overwhelm and uplift. The flowers’ towering height invites a contemplation of unfulfilled longing while their natural beauty offers a quiet kind of solace.
In another of Downie’s works, The End of Salad Days (2024), a young woman in a lilac hoodie sits at a table, gazing inward. Behind her, two Picasso paintings add an additional layer of narrative, grounding the scene in art history while simultaneously distancing the figure from the past. The young woman’s presence, both contemporary and enigmatic, contrasts sharply with the distant, abstracted faces in the Picasso works, highlighting the tension between personal longing and historical distance. The simple, flower-patterned tablecloth ties the scene to the everyday, but the quiet isolation of the figure suggests a deeper search for identity and meaning.
Through the works of Gavalet and Downie, we are reminded that even amidst overwhelming emotion, imperfection, absence, and the ungraspable, there is beauty in the search itself. This exhibition invites us into worlds where desire not only fuels emotional expression but also shapes the creative process.
