Abergavenny Museum is playing host to some impressive works by Welsh artists this year, all inspired by Monmouthshire’s own Arthur Machen, best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction.
This exhibition features artworks by Jon Langford, Pete Williams and John Selway, created to illustrate the writings of Arthur Machen (1863-1947). Machen drew inspiration from his native Monmouthshire, its landscape, history and Roman remains, as well as the strange and supernatural, the weird and the wonderful. World famous horror author Stephen King describing Machen’s The Great God Pan (1890; 1894) as “Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language”.
The exhibition showcases both original works, as well as print reproductions of artwork commissioned to illustrate recent reprints of Arthur Machen stories by the Newport based publishers The Three Impostors. This includes a new edition of one of Machen’s early works ‘The Chronicle of Clemendy’, which has just been launched as a series of stories set in medieval Monmouthshire, complemented by artist Jon Langford’s illustrations. There are also first editions of Machen’s works, manuscripts, letters and photographs.
Established ten years ago, The Three Imposter’s aim is to produce high quality, scholarly versions of interesting, rare and out-of-print books, along with other related new writing. Their first project was the republication of Arthur Machen’s three volumes of autobiography, continuing to reprint some of Machen’s novels, series of short Machen related stories, and also new and original works by Welsh authors.
The exhibition is now open and will run at Abergavenny Museum until December 18th 2022. It is free admission and open daily from 11am – 4pm except Wednesdays.
