Bridgette Ashton

Bridgette Ashton moved to Cornwall in the mid-nineties, after completing her training in Brighton. Most of her recent shows have been outside Cornwall, including  'I dream of Europe' at the Russell Cotes Museum in Bournemouth in 2006, for which a catalogue was produced. Bridgette gave local audiences a chance to see some of this work again in 2007 at Artonomy in Truro (see Jason Walker, Cordelia Cembrowicz and Bridgette Ashton).

Most prominent in the collection were a series of zip-up cases made in soft pastel materials, like ornate make-up bags, each one corresponding to one of the countries of Europe as it was in 1982. These sumptuous works borrow from the aesthetic of cheap (and not so cheap) tourist trinkets and souvenirs, and flirt with notions of kitsch.

Ashton's photographs and photographic projects are less flamboyant, however. 'Postcard sent twice from Venice with a 30 year interval' (top) is self-explanatory example of conceptual art. For 'Gingerbread Caprice View of Europe' (above) familiar images of Europe made in gingerbread (itself frequently used as a souvenir and associated with the European fairy-tale of Hansel and Gretel) were photographed for viewing through a 'ViewMaster'. This familiar stereoscopic device, was invented in the early part of the 20th Century, and reached its peak in the 50s and 60s. Like her other work, it seems to speak nostalgically of a golden age of tourism, when the package holiday and cheap flights abroad were still a novelty.

Her art itself feels similarly itinerant, roving across boundaries, and between alternate conceptual strategies. This chameleon like quality serves to keep it fresh and interesting.