19th-21st Century British Drawings, Paintings & Sculpture

Angela Steel’s series of seven stained glass panels ‘Tangled Routs’ tells the powerful story of a girl incarcerated. The room she inhabits is filled with the fiery motifs of the childhood she tries to hold on to as she resists the change which adulthood bestows upon her.

A meditation on where she came from, where she is going, and what lies on the other side of the door, culminates in these seven new panels. Researching a once grand, now dilapidated burnt out house nearby to where she lives, used as a children’s asylum from the 1900’s, Steel uses this as her starting point, setting the timeline of the girl’s story so that her most tumultuous years span the world wars. In her physical desertion from her present circumstances and absorption of this parallel experience, the girl embarks on a personal journey far from where she is, yet still somewhat entangled in her surroundings.

The savage butchery of those caught up in war mirror her experiences in the asylum. As her outward appearance is ever more vacant, so her inner life is even more rich. This morbid fantastical escape parallels and transfers to the cell she inhabits. There is no safety on her journey, no safe haven. This powerful and imaginative story is exquisitely depicted in the panels of stained and etched glass reminiscent of medieval times. A graduate of Edinburgh College of Art in Drawing & Painting, Angela Steel turned to the medium of stained glass to challenge her skills and express her personal and imaginative ideas. She has honed her skills in residencies and master classes of Northlands Creative Glass, Lybster, and is a regular exhibitor in the West of Scotland. Compass Gallery is proud to present this solo exhibition, and include her work in the Scotland-wide tour of The Force and Form of Memory exhibition.