AN ambitious new art exhibition featuring sculpture and film opens this Friday evening at Tŷ Pawb.

The exhibition, titled 'Nine Nectarines and Other Porcelain' is artist, Molly Palmer’s first institutional solo show and aims to bring ambition and tenderness to Tŷ Pawb’s gallery, covering issues including mental well-being, behaviour and mythology.

The exhibition will form part of Tŷ Pawb’s wider Make/Play programme which runs throughout 2019-20 and feature a newly commissioned film work at its core. Making use of the unusual architecture within the gallery, Nine Nectarines and Other Porcelain will play with perspective, giving the audience a variety of viewpoints from which to consider the work.

For the duration of the exhibition Gallery 2 at Tŷ Pawb will be divided by a physical membrane; allowing two contrasting halves to sit side-by-side, permeating into each other. This reciprocal flow will manifest through sound and light.

The exhibition also relates to Tŷ Pawb’s advocacy of Welsh Government’s ‘Well-Being of Future Generations Act’ (2015) and attempts to evolve the linear narratives of fighting and overcoming difference from a normative mental health profile. This can result in combative behavioural patterns that damage our bodies and souls. Nine Nectarines… suggests that we turn our energy inwards and work together to create healing spaces.

The title of the exhibition is taken from a poem by Marianne Moore, while the work itself references Palmer’s research into the history of medicine undertaken at Welcome Trust’s library. The focus of this research was on magic as a technology of self-actualisation, looking at cultures within which magic was interwoven with science and medicine. Ritual and symbolism are utilised to reinforce cycles of wellness and create a balancing principle play.

Nine Nectarines and Other Porcelain will launch at a special event at Ty Pawb on Friday, May 31 at 6pm.