Hallow,
sacred, sacral and precious are the
first epithets that come to mind
confronted by Neville Ferry’s
‘objects’ or ‘stones’ in space. The
titles he has given to his rich
collection of works expose his
vision and concept, unravel the
source of his effervescent
inspiration, emphasise the drumbeat
message his works suggest and
convey.
The
works are elemental, primordial,
primitive, rough and uncouth. They
resemble nature or better still they
evoke nature’s message – strong,
vibrant and triumphant. They are
nature itself. They are rocks or
stones or ceramics with the property
and propensity of stone. They are
pebbles or sizeable chunks of our
garigue. If only stones could speak.
But his do speak! They are eloquent
testimony to man’s primitive
instinct and expression of sentiment
and emotion. His is a symbolism not
of numbers but of textures. His
dialectic is texture, tactile and
tangible.
No
wonder the charismatic mystic
Bernard of Clairvaux writes
repeatedly in his letters that: ‘We
learn more in the woods than we do
from books. The trees and the rocks
will teach you things you cannot
learn elsewhere’. Neville surely
subscribes to the vital properties
rocks have.
Rocks
and mountains have character. Like
man they age and deteriorate.
Erosion makes them old. Lashed and
battered by rain, wind and extremes
of temperature they become gouged,
pitted, scratched, dented and
corrugated. Stratification reveals
the story of time. Neville’s
‘stones’ ring like bells, they clang
and peel.
The
artist’s first love was archaeology.
Over the years to his initial love
Neville added mythology and
auxiliary disciplines like
psychology, anthropology,
ethnography, sociology, comparative
religion and religious history. And
he must have realised the truth in
Arthur Cotterell’s dictum that
‘Mythology possesses an intensity of
meaning that is akin to poetry’.
Let
nature be your master and poetry
will melt your heart away. Neville’s
inspiration is our megalithic
culture but especially the temple of
Mnajdra. This enclave is a time
tunnel, an escape into infinity.
Standing on the cliff edge you can
hear the sea breaking on the rocks
and distance renders the sound just
a caressing whisper of ‘truth’ –
nature’s language. The cool inland
breeze blowing from over the sea
softly fingers and tickles the
megaliths and dampens your parched
lips with brine.
The
salty taste, the smell of wild
thyme, the buzzing of bees and the
scent from wild flowers according to
season act like opium or balsam. The
night sky studded with stars, the
August dew falling like rain,
sunrise and sunset, changing season,
the cry of seagulls, the music of
silence stimulate sacral meditation.
The spell becomes a reverie, food
for man’s expression. Neville
imitates nature as art is possession
and speaks through his stones.
The
texture he recreates is redolent
with symbols, a direct result of the
four elements: earth (clay), fire
(the kiln), water and air (light and
space). The four elements are
physical forces helped by time, by
mother nature – the four seasons, by
day, night, dawn, and dusk, by the
sun, moon, stars and planets. So to
his textural symbolism he adds that
of numbers.
Nature,
time and space are man’s best
friends, man’s educators. Neville
demonstrates such wisdom in the
textures of his stones covered with
the patina produced by millennia –
eroded, pitted, scratched, polished,
covered with lichen and moss,
reflecting the colour of the soil,
minerals and environment including
passing clouds and steadfast
firmament. As in Hopkins’ poetic
strain: pied beauty – stippled,
dappled and freckled.
Andre
Malraux stated that the raison
d’etre of the Romanesque style
was to ‘transform signs and symbols
giving them life through the
manifestation of a spiritual truth
that the universe reveals
unconsciously and which it is man’s
duty to bring to light’. Through a
similar process Neville exploits
texture, the tell-tail sign on
stones to reveal the miracle of
creation.
‘Forms
come before images and ideas. Ideas
divide us. Forms bring us together.
Forms can comfort and heal. They
satisfy our profoundest need. This
is not the need to understand. It is
the magical need to ‘feel’ that we
understand’. In such assertion
Francesco Clemente (1952-) reveals
the power emanating from forms, the
same power expressed by Neville’s
megalithic forms. They are a
universal language that comforts and
heals. This ‘feeling’ of
understanding that exudes from the
stones is therapy to the soul and
spirit of man. Fulfilment follows
quickly.
Goddesses, idols, torsos, phallic
stones, menhirs, relics, shrines,
niches, trophies, votive columns and
gifts (titles of works) convey a
sense of pantheism, a belief in gods
and goddesses, a pagan and heathen
stance. Yet Neville’s works are
imbued with spirituality. His
reference to rite ritual and
ceremonial is enshrined in
propitiation, in invocation, in
sympathetic magic, in animism. His
works are amulets and talismans.
They are so overpowering. No wonder
the new power wielded by the church
in the Middle Ages was based less on
organisation than on introducing
religious practices that appealed to
the humble (the cult of relics) and
to the powerful (donations,
pilgrimages and crusades). Pagan
ritual, relics, amulets, gifts and
ceremonial so effective and powerful
are as old as the hills.
His
torsos and goddesses are poems to
the fertility cult, to sacred
maternity, to matriarchy, to life’s
regenerative cycle and lustful
vigour, to sexual symbolism, to
hedonism, to nature’s infinite
potential for regeneration, for
resurrection and victory over death.
His
works convey the feeling of spring
after the thaw, like dawn that
swallows night, like light that
destroys the shadows of darkness
that fills space and time with
delight. Neville is an
existentialist. He can merge heaven
and earth, religion and
spirituality, heathen and Christian
belief, classical and romantic
culture, myth and reality,
superstition and belief, liberty and
bonding. Myth, magic and mystery is
his realm.
21. 04. 2005 E.
V.
Borg
