Vessel IV

Wilder Gallery is delighted to open its doors and invite you to view, What I See I Will Never Tell, a group exhibition featuring new and recent works by Joana Galego (b.1994, Cascais, Portugal), James Owens (b.1995, United Kingdom) and Rebecca Truscott-Elves (1990, Kent, United Kingdom).


'What I See I Will Never Tell' explores stories untold, personal narratives and memory.

The title, What I see I will never tell, derives from script on the side a miniature antique cup found by James Owens in an antique shop in Crystal Palace, London. Just as the anonymous cup has witnessed stories and histories untold so too do the ceramic handmade vessels and objects by Rebecca Truscott-Elves.
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In ancient times, shards of pottery were bestowed upon a traveller so that they might be recognised on their return.These fragments could then themselves be reunited in an act of symbállein – ‘to put together’. In absorbing the shards of stories contained within Joana Galego and James Owens’ works, iterations of ceramic vessels become a family of strange onlookers with their own tales to tell, their own glances to cast. The qualities of clay, redolent of earth itself and domesticity, here appear watchful – wrenched from the private sphere, adopting an uneasy sense of perpetual observation. These cavities, captured by fire at the point of imminent collapse, help cultivate a constellation of gazes within and between paintings, artefacts and visitors alike.