Silencing evokes the destruction of culture under oppression while revealing the enduring resilience of human expression, accompanied by poetry readings reflecting on conflict, resistance, and hope.

The charred books and typewriters at the centre of Alison Lochhead’s exhibition, ‘Silencing’, powerfully evoke attempts by oppressive powers and autocracies to silence all forms of dissent. Viewers are confronted with images of almost complete cultural erasure. And yet the just perceptible letters and language which emerge amidst these charred residues of destruction suggest hope, however precarious. ‘Silencing’ witnesses people’s determination to reassert their voice in the face of ever more extreme political and religious suppression. The fragility and yet substantiality of the ash and residue provide an image of the inextinguishable power of human expression.

Alongside the exhibition there will be evenings of poetry reading by Mike Jenkins, Patrick Jones, Abeer Ameer and David Ambrose. The chosen poetry reflecting on wars and conflicts, human resilience and hopes and dreams despite adversity and oppression.

The work made by Alison Lochhead reflects upon the memory of actions and experiences of people over time. The earth retains the marks made by humans and the memory of their presence and the injustices inflicted. Each person’s memory and experience is different and only parts remain, there is no ‘wholeness’, only fragments, but when different memories are pieced together they make a collective reflection and memory.

Alison’s work reflects on the injustices and traumas endured by humanity; referring to cross-cutting themes: devastated, abandoned and disrupted societies and lives, and chaotic journey travelled; and the destruction of accumulated cultural and historical capital. Her work despairs of the ongoing horror of conflict and war and the seeming inability of humans to learn from previous experience.

Alison is a Member of Royal British Society of Sculptors (MRBS), 56 Group Wales, and a member of Sculpture Network. Alison was selected to exhibit at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.