Now Showing

Ar Agor: Dydd Llun-Dydd Gwener, 10yb-5yh | Open: Monday - Friday, 10am-5pm  Am ddim | Free 

Ysgol Gelf, Prifysgol Aberystwyth University School of Art Buarth Mawr, Aberystwyth, SY23 1NG   

A palimpsest is a manuscript page from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for its reuse in the form of another document. The title of this exhibition invites us to regard landscape in these terms, encouraging viewers to observe traces of human intervention.

From the earliest times, people have left vestiges of their presence on the landscape, sometimes only faintly discernible. Dating from around 2,700BCE, and just one of many massive Neolithic monuments in the Walton Basin, the Hindwell Palisaded Enclosure in Radnorshire is a prime example. Excavation of post-holes by archaeologists has revealed an oval of 34 hectares, surrounded by some 1,400 oak posts, each with a girth of 70-80cm, and estimated to have stood six metres above the ground. Today it is visible only as crop marks in the driest of summers.

The works in this exhibition are responses to this and other British prehistoric sites. They speculate on their purpose and meaning, the rituals and activities which may have occurred there, and the beliefs of their builders. Although grounded in actual locations, the work does not record the topography

of specific sites, attempting instead to engage the viewer in a contemplation of a vanished and inexplicable past in order to reassert the value of mystery and the numinous in a world which largely esteems (and is predicated on) the empirical. Beyond this, there is an attempt to interrogate what motivates us to invent and develop rituals: whether to explain, control or mitigate the significant events of our lives.

Symbols derived from ancient artefacts, particularly the motif of the Solar cross, echo the circularity of many prehistoric monuments, and reference the arcane languages and symbols of later magical texts, which sought systems by which to approach the unknowable.

The archaeologist painstakingly strips away layers of soil to discover the past; conversely, these paintings seek to reveal meaning through the addition of successive layers.

 

Ymunwch â ni am sgwrs gyda’r artist Wayne Summers:

Join us for a talk with the artist Wayne Summers:

Dydd Mercher 22 Ebrill 2026, 4.00-5.00 yh

Wednesday 22nd April 2026, 4.00-5.00 pm

Palimpsest:

Paentio’r gorffennol/Painting the past

Wayne Summers

Arddangosfa PhD Exhibition     

Mawrth 2 March - Mai 1 May 2026 

Ar agor: Dydd Llun–Dydd Gwener, 10yb - 5yh | Open: Monday–Friday, 10am – 5pm

Am ddim | Free  

Ysgol Gelf, Prifysgol Aberystwyth University School of Art Buarth Mawr, Aberystwyth, SY23 1NG