ALDWYTH IN RETROSPECT
Cocktails & Camellias
December 10, 2023This is Not: Aldwyth in Retrospect
October 16, 2024 – March 23, 2025
Gallery hours are Mondays – Saturdays, 9 am – 4:30 pm; Sundays, 11 am – 4:30 pm.
EVENTS:
Opening Reception:
Thursday, October 17, from 5 – 7 pm. Guest Curator’s Tour at 4 pm.
Free and open to the public.
Monday, October 28, 1-2 pm
$20 per person. Registration required.
Gallery Tours
- Thursday, December 5, 1-2 pm
- Saturday, January 25, 11-Noon
- Tuesday, February 25, 1-2 pm
Discovery Night at the Museum
Creative Collage: A Community Art Experience
Thursday, January 16, 2025, from 5 to 7.
$25 per person. Registration required.
Film Screening
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
PBS documentary Aldwyth: Fully Assembled, with director Olympia Stone.
Wine and refreshments at 5 pm, screening at 5:30 pm.
Now in her late 80s, the artist who goes by the single name Aldwyth, arrived on Hilton Head in 1967, and has lived and worked alone in an octagonal house overlooking a salt marsh for decades.
For most of her adult life she has maintained her seclusion from the larger art world while utilizing the history of art and ideas as a catalyst for complex found-object sculptures and increasingly epic-scaled collages that often recall medieval manuscripts.
This retrospective spans nearly 70 years of Aldwyth’s work, beginning with photography and moving through experimental painting, assemblage, and collage while touching on personal themes and fascinations that have remained remarkably consistent throughout her career.
A tireless innovator, Aldwyth’s self-imposed rules both limited and liberated her, allowing her work to be self-contained and self-referential. Each piece is an illustration of the description that defines it, and vice versa.
To preserve her critical perspective, Aldwyth almost never submitted her work to curators, jurors, galleries, museums, or grant panels. Once, momentarily loosening this personal regime to apply to the South Carolina Arts Commission for a fellowship, she ignored guidelines that specified a work sample as well as a resume. Instead, she submitted a work sample that was her resume, aptly title, resumé/re-sume. While such a contrarian attitude turbo-charged her creativity, it also insured that her work remained almost completely unknown. That application was rejected.
Fortunately, Aldwyth seems indifferent to rejection. She wants her work to be approached on its own merits and perceived through its own internal logic. If a viewer finds meaning and worth in it, great, but if not, it was just not meant to be.
This exhibition marks a pivotal moment when an artist who has spent considerable time and energy meditating on the nature of exclusion finally emerges to take her place in the pantheon of art history. After long decades spent working in the margins as an energetic and enlightened observer known only to a handful of friends and collectors, she now steps fully into the light for the rest of us to admire and appreciate.
–Mark Sloan, Guest Curator
This is Not: Aldwyth in Retrospect was curated by Mark Sloan (with associate curator Joshua Massey and curatorial assistant Tori Lusik) and organized by Curioso in collaboration with the Greenville County Museum of Art, in Greenville, SC, and the Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, NC.
This is Not: Aldwyth in Retrospect
October 16, 2024 – March 23, 2025
Gallery hours are Mondays – Saturdays, 9 am – 4:30 pm; Sundays, 11 am – 4:30 pm.
EVENTS:
Opening Reception:
Thursday, October 17, from 5 – 7 pm. Guest Curator’s Tour at 4 pm.
Free and open to the public.
Monday, October 28, 1-2 pm
$20 per person. Registration required.
Gallery Tours
- Thursday, December 5, 1-2 pm
- Saturday, January 25, 11-Noon
- Tuesday, February 25, 1-2 pm
Discovery Night at the Museum
Creative Collage: A Community Art Experience
Thursday, January 16, 2025, from 5 to 7.
$25 per person. Registration required.
Film Screening
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
PBS documentary Aldwyth: Fully Assembled, with director Olympia Stone.
Wine and refreshments at 5 pm, screening at 5:30 pm.
Now in her late 80s, the artist who goes by the single name Aldwyth, arrived on Hilton Head in 1967, and has lived and worked alone in an octagonal house overlooking a salt marsh for decades.
For most of her adult life she has maintained her seclusion from the larger art world while utilizing the history of art and ideas as a catalyst for complex found-object sculptures and increasingly epic-scaled collages that often recall medieval manuscripts.
This retrospective spans nearly 70 years of Aldwyth’s work, beginning with photography and moving through experimental painting, assemblage, and collage while touching on personal themes and fascinations that have remained remarkably consistent throughout her career.
A tireless innovator, Aldwyth’s self-imposed rules both limited and liberated her, allowing her work to be self-contained and self-referential. Each piece is an illustration of the description that defines it, and vice versa.
To preserve her critical perspective, Aldwyth almost never submitted her work to curators, jurors, galleries, museums, or grant panels. Once, momentarily loosening this personal regime to apply to the South Carolina Arts Commission for a fellowship, she ignored guidelines that specified a work sample as well as a resume. Instead, she submitted a work sample that was her resume, aptly title, resumé/re-sume. While such a contrarian attitude turbo-charged her creativity, it also insured that her work remained almost completely unknown. That application was rejected.
Fortunately, Aldwyth seems indifferent to rejection. She wants her work to be approached on its own merits and perceived through its own internal logic. If a viewer finds meaning and worth in it, great, but if not, it was just not meant to be.
This exhibition marks a pivotal moment when an artist who has spent considerable time and energy meditating on the nature of exclusion finally emerges to take her place in the pantheon of art history. After long decades spent working in the margins as an energetic and enlightened observer known only to a handful of friends and collectors, she now steps fully into the light for the rest of us to admire and appreciate.
–Mark Sloan, Guest Curator
This is Not: Aldwyth in Retrospect was curated by Mark Sloan (with associate curator Joshua Massey and curatorial assistant Tori Lusik) and organized by Curioso in collaboration with the Greenville County Museum of Art, in Greenville, SC, and the Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, NC.
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