ART Central FRIENDS hosted a talk by ceramicist Tracey Baker and photographer Jon Pountney in Art Central Gallery, made available to the group through the kind offices of Tracey Harding and the Vale of Glamorgan Council.

Tracey Baker, who graduated about four years ago from Howard Gardens, and who has had a life-long interest in horses, spoke to the group about how she became inspired to learn about the role and fate of the war horse during the Great War. She described the technical details and difficulties of producing her sculptural pieces especially the cast taken of the leg from her own horse. She showed illustrations to clarify her points and the sources of her inspiration from as far back as the sculptural horses from the Chinese dynasties to modern day. She then finished off her talk by walking around the displays and talking about items around the exhibition and giving lots of information about the use of horses during WWI. She is obviously very passionate about her subject and the processes taken in producing her work.

Jon was very light-hearted in his talk to FRIENDS; he explained how, with consultation with Tracey Harding, he had come to the idea behind this exhibition. At sometime in the past he had been told that anniversaries were a great place to start when formulating ideas for a project. He also wanted to use the camera given to him by his grandmother many years before. The camera, given to his grandfather by an Italian prisoner of war in World War II, was a German Voigtlander made in the 1930's. As it hadn't been used for many years, the lens had been contaminated by fungus so producing a ghostly but atmospheric slant to his photos. He spent many hours on his own going round churches in the Vale of Glamorgan looking and photographing war memorials and on the way found many hidden treasures such as the war graves in Llantwit Major; this was also a surprise to many of the audience.

He explained that as many of the images were photographed as late as November 11 this year, the light was not always as good as could be especially in the old churches, however Jon felt that this too helped to give atmosphere to his pictures, which he hopes will now go on tour to other galleries.

Art Central FRIENDS next talk is by Helen Sear, Wales's representative at the 2015 Venice Biennale on December 4 at Art Central Gallery, King Square, Barry at 7.30pm. You can become a member of FRIENDS on the night.