The Land is Yellow, the Sky is Blue - Marc Wilson
Festival Exhibition
Location: Bay View Shopping Centre
Open: 7th October - 31st October. 11am-4pm (Mon,Tue,Thurs,Fri,Sat)
Artist Talk - Tuesday 24th October 5pm
Talk in the exhibition space (NOT Oriel Colwyn) - FREE - now sold out
Past Event
©Marc Wilson
The Land is Yellow, the Sky is Blue.
Photographs - Marc Wilson // Words - Anna Nekrasova
“The blue and yellow of Ukrainian flag symbolise the clear blue sky above the fields of wheat that cover our land.”
“In the Ukrainian language, the concept of 'zemlya' or ‘land’ has several meanings. It is the territory and the soil cultivated by the hard work of the people. It is the Motherland."
‘The Land is Yellow, the Sky is Blue', is about Balakliya, a small village in central Ukraine - the homeland of Marc’s wife and family. The work is the basis of a dual-language book in English and Ukrainian combining the photographs Marc made in this place from 2019-2021 with text written in the shadow of the current war.
©Marc Wilson
They are stories filled with dreamy childhood memories and an anxiety shaped by the backdrop of war.
When Marc arrived in the village for the first time, more than a year after he first visited Ukraine, he found a place that was both dreamlike and solid.
©Marc Wilson
Balakliya is filled with life: children learn to swim in the river, animals are walked daily through the village to pasture, conversations are lengthy and full, water is drawn each morning from the well, meals meant to fuel a hard day’s work are created with tenderness, evenings are spent under the stars, walking home in absolute darkness.
Connected to the outside world but impervious to its meaningless distractions, the essence of life is found here in all its simple and complex forms.
©Marc Wilson
The production of the book of this work has just been successfully funded on a Kickstarter campaign with over 240 pre-orders with the book due for publication in October this year.
It is available (to pre-order) at: www.marcwilson.co.uk/book-print-sales/p/theland
Marc Wilson
Born in London, Marc’s studies took him from Sociology to Photography and he has been making photographs ever since. His images document the memories, histories and stories that are set in the landscapes that surround us.
Based in the UK, Marc works on long term documentary projects, including ‘A Wounded Landscape - bearing witness to the Holocaust’ (2015-2021) and ‘The Last Stand’ (2010-2014). His aim is to tell stories through photography, focusing at times on the landscape itself, and the objects found on and within it, and sometimes combining landscape, documentary, portrait and still life, along with audio recordings of interviews and sounds, to portray the mass sprawling web of the histories and stories he is hoping to tell.
Solo exhibitions include Side Gallery, Newcastle, The Royal Armouries Museum, Oriel Colwyn and Focal point Gallery in the UK and Spazio Klien in Italy. Group shows include those at The Photographers Gallery and the Association of Photographers gallery, London, and internationally at The Athens PhotoFestival and Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Marc’s work has been published in journals and magazines ranging from National Geographic, FT Weekend and The British Journal of Photography and Raw Magazine to Wired and Dezeen.
All festival exhibitions are FREE to visit.