Blaenau Ffestiniog artist Remy Dean is celebrating the success of the online gallery he set up two years ago.
It has gone from strength to strength, Remy says, becoming the most visited online gallery using the Medium platform.
“I have been curating ‘The Signifier: six: shot: gallery’ for two years now and in that time it has showcased a variety of artists, styles, and visual media. It has hosted 24 exhibitions, one each calendar month, showing six linked images from each featured artist. Some of those artists were already internationally known and respected, others have won major accolades since appearing.”
Conceptual artist and sculptor Darren Neave was shortlisted for the Ingram Prize, American photographer Bonnie Lautenberg has since been appointed by the White House to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts (PACA).
Closer to home, Welsh potter Elin Hughes won the National Eisteddfod of Wales Young Artist Scholarship, The Craft Pottery Charitable Trust Grant, and the Dr Daniel Williams Educational Fund Grant. She has also specialised in wood-firing techniques and was co-leader of Oxford University’s ‘Anagama’ project before taking up the Young Artist Residency for Wood Firing at the International Ceramics Research Centre in Guldagergaard, Denmark.
The first exhibition was Remy’s Ascurator.
“I led by example with the first exhibition that rang in 2021 with examples from my concept-driven series, The Stars, At Our Feet, a profound contemplation of our place on Earth within our portion of the cosmic timescale — a poetic journey that started with the found poem of a quarry-worker and ended with the death of stars… which was also a beginning,” Remy recalled.
“With bold and beautiful, almost minimalist, charcoal drawings, Stephen Green continued this thematic conversation about the land that ran through all our exhibitions for 2021.
“His Porth Annwn Variations series took us on another trip into deep time through portals that link the land with the ancient mind.”
More artists exhibited their work online in the following months, and then, exercising curator’s privilege, Remy launched the 2022 programme with a set of fresh Biodes.
“These abstract photoreactive prints retain a vestige of landscape fused with botany, biology, philosophy and foody aesthetics,” said Remy.
“They are intended to be printed on appropriate vessels and shown as a distributed exhibition on anyone’s kitchen shelf. Since the six shot showcase, Signifier has added a range of mugs printed with 12 different Biodes.
The gallery’s most recent showcase - and the second from an artist working in Canada - was Tanya P Johnson’s Wisdom Engines: Technologies for Evolution and Happiness.
They are intricate, illustrative ‘blueprints’ for profound self-change to create positive ripples that can touch others.
With imagery from nature, mathematics, mysticism, magic, and alchemy, Tanya P Johnson invites people to forge a deeper appreciation of the beauty and interconnectivity of our microcosms and the great macrocosm.
The themes tackled here make it the perfect December six shot showcase to span the Winter Solstice and usher in the new year.
What does this year hold for the gallery?
Visit medium.com/signifier/two-years-of-the-six-shot-gallery-6a068a1ed1f8 to find out.