Art on show at Allendale palace

THE ordinary becomes art at Allendale based creative Jackie Gorring’s Palace of Wonder and Creative Abandon.

Taking inspiration from the quiet, natural world around her, Gorring specialises in relief printmaking and sculpting.

“I also do a lot of drawing, I sew, I knit. I’m just a maker and that’s what I do, that’s what I love,” she said.

“I get quite stuck and quite bored with one process, and that’s why I go from printing to sculpture drawing to whatever I do. Everything I do is storing up information for the next thing.”

Of particular interest to Gorring is people and their actions, including friends, family, neighbours and even strangers she encounters in daily life.

“I’m interested in human condition,” she said. “I’m just interested in the human form and also people’s rituals and strange or amusing things they do.

“That’s what’s important to me, is my surroundings.”

These observations are transformed into pieces like A lemon tree is a wonderful thing, a print Gorring regards as particularly special.

“The story goes way back to about the 90s and it’s a picture that I’ve made up from memory of my husband sitting in a chair and his godfather,” she said.

“They’re just chewing the fat and they’re both smoking and in the background is a little old slab hut.

“Out of the blue the godfather would say things like ‘a lemon tree is a wonderful thing’, just throw that into the conversation randomly and the two people in it are both gone from this world now so it’s special.”

Although she’s been printing and sculpting since the 1970s, Gorring only moved to Allendale seven years ago, aptly naming her studio to reflect the fun, unique pieces within.

“It also comes from my love of naïve, raw, outsider art,” she said.

“I’m a bit of an outsider on the fringe and I always have been in terms of making the things I make. They’re not mainstream and I didn’t want a mainstream name.”

The Palace of Wonder and Creative Abandon is open from 11.30am to 5pm Friday to Sunday. For more information, search @palace_of_wonder on Instagram.