All's Well That Ends Well
Architectural Echoes – All's Well That Ends Well, 2012
Stacey Coughlin
Using architectural decoration and elements of design that are purely non-functional, I have created patterns and designs to celebrate the essence of the Old Parsonage and the space within.
These are the small parts that make the whole – forms, shapes and features that make the place and what we consider to be it's character.
Within in my work to-date, these elements have been the faded, everyday parts of buildings that we might not notice surrounding us, but sub-consciously they are still a huge part of our environment and can affect our behaviour. These pieces of work explore our 'visual ownership' of spaces that we exist within – even in the presence of 'greatness of creativity' and celebrity. The Mandala-like design enables us to meditate and reflect upon these 'parts' our visual world is made from – the decorative beauty that embellishes spaces that doesn't need to exist, but does purely through our innate desire to communicate our human behaviour of Expression.
At the Old Parsonage there were two ideas that developed as I visited the space and worked upon this piece. Human nature has a habit of adapting to our surroundings; no matter how grand. Even the most amazing 'shock and awe' power-architecture must have seemed familiar to its occupants.
As I visited the building at the start of another chapter of its life, there was this overwhelming sense of character through these features and designs that make the space. They remain here and have been chosen to still tell a story. I wanted to create a piece that displayed this initial sense of astonishing presence as a way of encapsulating some of those parts. It will never be the space – but a reflective motif of what creates it.
As I was developing my own research of the building and its inhabitants I found that Fletcher Moss and I had a shared admiration for architecture and wanted to preserve our heritage and visited the homes and buildings across the country.
And so through visually honouring the space, I also wanted to pay tribute to the man that recorded these spaces that I admire and captured the essences of buildings that have since been lost.
"God save you, pilgrim. Whither are you bound?" All's Well that Ends Well – the quote starting Fletcher Moss's publication "Pilgrimages to old homes, mostly on the Welsh border". 1903
- Stacey Coughlin, November 2012
