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Petrified in Storyland, solo exhibition and catalogue.

Petrified in Storyland (solo exhibition and catalogue, from an artist residency in Wales) explores the relationship between Welsh mythology, cultural identity and visual residues in the landscape.

Childerley curated the exhibition and authored the catalogue, which explored how Welsh mythology impacts on contemporary life in Wales and how photography as a medium can be used to tell new stories concerned with topical issues referencing themes from traditional tales.

The project extended Childerley’s interest in documentary practice and storytelling and a variety of research methods were used to develop the idea including story collecting and interviews. The landscapes are site specific, places where events in Welsh myth and story are known to have occurred. Local people showed her favourite places that they knew were mythological; in some images they becomes subjects, in others people were already there. There is a timeless quality alongside reference to contemporary contentions such as the military fly zones, nuclear power and reservoirs that serve English cities. The photographs are snapshots across time, from sites, which have barely changed in a thousand years to others that are more modern inventions, considering the way myth and story are being memorialised in Welsh culture.

The exhibition explored issues surrounding the representation of story within the heritage industry. It fostered debate surrounding the manipulation of stories and characters to political ends and how mythology has been co-opted as a strong part of the national identity. There is a visual language of form and signifiers to allude to those found in paintings of Romantic Nationalism. As one of the artist’s critic’s said “Making a landscape photograph that is at once a story about the past and the present, the mythical and the real, is a complex procedure. Childerley uses both compositional strategies of landscape photography … and the landscape itself.”