ELLA YOLANDE
ELLA YOLANDE
Find Us in the Slip Spaces
Installation
VENUE
5. Cemetery Chapel, East Coker
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am – 5pm
Sun 25 May, 10am – 4pm
and
3. OSR Projects, West Coker (Film)
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am – 5pm
Sun 25 May, 10 am – 4pm
Tangled in thoughts about the vegetal, wildness, seeds and our messy, multi-species bodies, Ella Yolande’s practice is informed by queer ecologies, ideas of resilience, preservation and the more-than-human.
The Cemetery Chapel is inhabited by a textile archway embedded with medicinal and symbolic plants. Touching on ideas of thin spaces within folklore, the sculpture provides a portal through which to imagine what might lie just on the other side, moving just beneath the surface of our understanding of the perceived world.
Video at OSR Projects
But Why Tarnish the Beauty of a Flower uses recorded attempts to virtually access and experience botanical gardens and glasshouses via Googlemaps combined with 3D scans from Kew Gardens, to consider the colonial histories of these sites.
The video emerged from an online residency with 11:11 Residency in 2022, looking into botanical histories and the extraction and commodification of plants through the legacies of plant hunters.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Tangled in thoughts about the vegetal, wildness, seeds and our messy, multi-species bodies, Ella Yolande’s practice is informed by queer ecologies, ideas of resilience, preservation and the more-than-human. She works across video, 3D animation, sculpture, textiles and text, with references to speculative fiction, botanical architecture and protective wear. Through considering the history and medicinal properties of plants, as well as the need for mutual flourishing and rethinking the human body as individual, she explores our interwoven existence with our surroundings through playful thinking on speculative ecologies. Ella is currently based in London studying a Masters in Art and Ecology. Her work has been exhibited internationally at Skaftfell Seyðisfjörður, Melkweg Expo Amsterdam, Artcore Gallery Derby, with screenings including the Coventry Biennial 2024, Videoity’s Utopia Today 2024 and Fiber Festival 2021 with a solo exhibition in Nunhead Cemetery Chapel, London 2024.
DERMOT PUNNETT
DERMOT PUNNETT
Painting
VENUE
3. OSR Projects, West Coker
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am – 5pm
Sun 25 May, 10 am – 4pm
and
5. Cemetery Chapel, East Coker
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am – 5pm
Sun 25 May, 10am – 4pm
Working from personal photography and found images, Punnett utilises the effects of reproduction and pixelation on a painterly aesthetic. Within geometric abstractions, he plays on the impermanence of form, examining spaces observed or remembered or perhaps, irrationally desired; conveying an attempt to understand and internalize perception and experience, whilst reflecting on a sense of modern day anxiety.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Dermot Punnett was born in 1980 on the island of St. Vincent. He received his BFA from Falmouth College of Arts in 2004. Punnett went on to receive his MFA from Bath Spa University in 2007. His work is informed by studies in psychology, psychedelia, medieval art and the esoteric with imagery inspired by medieval, alchemical and visionary art of early manuscripts and modern reinterpretations of folklore. His paintings are an amalgamation of landscape, body, symbol and painterly abstraction. They are the crystallised impressions of an interior mythos connected to landscape, elemental nature and notions of soul. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including Charlie Dutton Gallery and A.P.T Gallery in London. He has also been featured in Arc magazine, a Caribbean contemporary arts publication and is currently represented by Tarpey Gallery in the UK and Nuedge Gallery in Barbados.
CHANTAL POWELL
CHANTAL POWELL
A Summoning
Sculpture
VENUE
5. Cemetery Chapel, East Coker
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am – 5pm
Sun 25 May, 10am – 4pm
A Summoning explores transformation, nourishment, and the cycles of life and rebirth, drawing on ancient myths, alchemical symbolism, and the symbolic language of the unconscious. At its core, A Summoning is an invitation to consider a new way of being—one that is fertile, nourishing, and deeply intertwined with the alchemical processes of life, myth, and the psyche.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Chantal Powell is a British artist whose practice is deeply informed by Jungian psychology, alchemical symbolism, and her personal exploration of the unconscious. With a PhD in psychology, she follows a Jungian art-based research approach, using artistic process to engage with archetypal material and the psyche.
Her current work examines the archetypal motif of dismemberment as a transformative process in myth, alchemy, and psychology. Drawing on figures like Osiris and the cosmic man, Powell explores the fragmentation of the self as a necessary phase for rebirth, where dissolution becomes creation. Through a feminist lens, she engages with the embodied and vegetal aspects of alchemy, rejecting mind-body dualisms and promoting a regenerative model rooted in nature and transformation.
Powell works across various mediums, including ceramics, glass, textiles, and painting, to express archetypal imagery. Her recent research into 15th- and 16th-century alchemical manuscripts informs her practice and blends with her exploration of mythology and personal inner work.
Chantal has exhibited at galleries and institutions across the UK and internationally, including The Lightbox Museum, Woking; La Boulangerie, Paris; and Guildhall Art Gallery, London. She is the founder of Hogchester Arts residency program, host of The Red Book Club, and a faculty lecturer at JungAcademy. Chantal also offers talks on archetypal symbolism and psychological alchemy and has co-curated exhibitions focusing on archetypally symbolic art.
ELAINE WONG
ELAINE WONG
Reflecting a shift (Barreiro – Terreiro do Paço)
Film
VENUE
8. Cemetery Chapel, East Coker
Fri 26 – Sun 28 May, 10am – 5:30pm
Projecting movement into space, Elaine Wong’s subtle interventions exist in corners and cracks, suggesting slippage into another time or place. The fluctuations of light are in fact small windows onto the motion of bodies of water. They are part of an ongoing attempt by the artist to unravel her own explorations of daily life and encounters with the world around her.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Elaine Wong works with videography, sound and installations. She is interested in the experiential quality of work. Her practice explores and unveils experiences of everyday encounters and inner conditions.
WILL CRUICKSHANK
WILL CRUICKSHANK
Plaster and thread works
Sculpture
VENUE
8. Cemetery Chapel, East Coker
Fri 26 – Sun 28 May, 10am – 5:30pm
The process of making is fundamentally important to Will Cruickshank’s sculptural works. He devises his own complex, makeshift machines, by repurposing parts from old cement mixers, bicycles, chainsaws and potters’ wheels. Most often these machines spool, wind, bind and overlay layers of yarn. But in the case of pieces on show here, the process is somewhat reversed, with the full force of pressurised water employed to shape spinning plaster objects revealing layers of thread embedded within. The resulting collection of works are mostly vessels, with a votive or ceremonial air – suggestive of both the water and the industrial technologies that formed them.
Video documentation of Will’s processes is on show at Dawe’s Twineworks.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Will Cruickshank has a multidisciplinary practice which often places an importance on colour, pattern and symmetry, whilst appearing to be connected to something unknown and sacred. His work is grounded in learning by doing, and thinking through making.