Glimpse – Brendan Stuart Burns

Like Dorcas Lane, from Lark Rise to Candleford, I have one weakness: gardening, making jam, art (goes without saying) and books.

A foolhardy old friend suggested I get rid of all the books in my home and get a e-reader (no product placement here). But that misses the point. I have books so old that when I open them they smell of the time when I read them, their pages orange with age. And I know the end pieces, the little illustrations, even the acknowledgements, off by heart. It’s all about the paper stock, the scent of ink, the font choice, the heft.

So when I was given Brendan Stuart Burns book Glimpse to review I was excited before I’d even seen it. It is gloriously lavish: juicy thick paper stock, sympathetic design, colour reproduction and the attention to detail that includes an embossed slip cover evoking the indentations left on the sand by a departing tide. Burns and designer Andy Dark have pulled out all the stops to make a bibliophile’s bosom heave with joy.

Glimpse is many things, but it is not a catalogue (though it’ll be launched at St David’s Hall on May 11 at the private view of his exhibition). Nor is it one of the plethora of self-published artists’ books, made for the hazy purpose of marketing, despite the fact that it has been privately financed by an enthusiastic patron.

Oh no, this book is an extraordinary exposition of an artist’s practice, made up of material from Burn’s obviously fruitful year-long residency at Oriel Parc in St Davids, Pembrokeshire.

A bit of background:
Oriel Parc is part of the Pembrokeshire National Park’s visitor centre in Wales’ tiniest city, St Davids. When the Collection of Graham Sutherland works were taken from Picton Castle, in the south of the county, and stored in the National Museum Cardiff, the Friends of Graham Sutherland lobbied hard for a new home in Pembrokeshire for Sutherland’s works made in response to the coastline. Eventually Oriel y Parc (gallery of the park, literally) was built, with the notion of showing works from NMW’s extensive collections of Sutherland works and emphemera, but giving those works a context with displays about the coastline and, most importantly, inviting artists to make their own responses to this ancient and beautiful landscape that flaunts its geology, marine biology and ancient legends in the exceptional western light.

The light and landscape have drawn artists to Pembrokeshire for centuries and the population is still dense with artists today. Burns has been visiting for over 20 years, making field drawings, taking photographs and then producing his beautiful jewel-like works, thick with paint and encaustic, back in his studio in Cardiff. He was a natural choice to be the first artist in residence at Oriel y Parc.

I lived in Pembrokeshire for 16 years and every time I saw a Burns’ canvas I thought “yes, that’s it, that’s what it’s like”, even though we’re not talking about representational work here, it isn’t abstract either, but what I suppose you could call representational abstraction.

I know no other artist who quite captures the gelatinous light of a Pembrokeshire beach at low tide as Burns does, and his canvases prompt comparisons with those outrageous Victorian aspic confections (“if it tastes good, let’s suspend it in jelly”). There is an innate understanding of form and mass in the drawn and painted references to geological and found forms and an absolute understanding of colour in the palette that conjures up mineral deposits, lichens and the marine flora and fauna spewed up by the tides that lash the coast. It is no surprise that writers, such as Professor Tony Curtis (who has written far more eloquently than I could in the book), are moved to poetry in response to Burns’ work.

Art historians and critics Mel Gooding and Dr Anne Price Owen also write enthusiastically and well about Burns, providing a critical context for his practice. Curator Sally Moss, the real driving force behind the residency, offers a more modest written contribution, which belies her sheer derring-do in getting the residency established in the first place and her insight into Burn’s work and how it might sit alongside the Sutherland oeuvre.

The book is full of images of the work, the printing and reproduction quality so high you can almost smell the paint and wax, fear that the charcoal will come off on your fingers.

But there are also the photographic studies, map references and, perhaps most importantly for other artists wrestling with a body of work, the journals.

Burns’ year-long journey to the work seen in the forthcoming show is minutely detailed in an honest and engaging way. Concerns about paintings that weren’t working jostle with the adaptation to a new working environment – one that was open to the public every Thursday – and the thought processes, the drawings, artistic frustrations, breakthrough moments.

Here is everything you need to know about the difference between looking and seeing.

As the residency draws to a close, there’s a building sense of urgency to get works finished, to explore and record as much as possible and the impending feeling of loss that comes with imminent departure. He has bonded with his studio, found its hot spots for working, adjusted to the rhythms of working 9-5 when the centre is open. He has also negotiated his way through the not always complementary agendas of the two organisations behind the residency – Pembrokeshire National Coastal Park and National Museum Wales, although he is discretion itself about this.

I had meant to skim through the book, when I met Burns during the hang at St David’s Hall, but found myself rooted to the spot, reading on and on, while the hanging team bustled about to get the work on the walls. As I got to the last few journal entries – reflective, poignant – I remembered the time when I had been an artist in residence myself, far from home, and that intense relationship with the work that builds up when there are none of the familiar distractions. And how very hard it is to leave when there is still much to be said and done. And yes, a little tear did form.

This is a special book that shouldn’t just be left on a coffee table (though at £75 you’ll want to show if off), but read and absorbed by artists of all disciplines, art lovers and anyone who wants to understand the creative process. It is also a beautiful object in its own right and I’ll be buying one and finding book-friends on my shelves for it to sit next to.

Glimpse will be on sale for the special exhibition price of £50 during the show at St Davids Hall. You can also buy it here for £75 See more about the production of Glimpse on Brendan Stuart Burns Website where there are also more images of the work in the exhibition. I would also highly recommend Tim Collier’s blog about the book.

Glimpse, the exhibition, runs at St Davids Hall until 13 June 2012.

Creative Wales

The Arts Council of Wales recently announced the latest batch of Creative Wales recipients, including two Creative Wales Ambassadors. The cat, which has been wrestling in its sack for several months since the decisions were made, was finally let out of the bag at the awards event hosted by Galeri, Caernarfon (the first North Wales ceremony).

Now this is a scheme that is very dear to my heart, established not long after I started working for the Arts Council of Wales in 2002. Unlike other schemes this one allows artists to step away from their day-to-day commitments and focus on a period of experimentation, research, trial and error. It is important because it recognises that there might be some failures which, we all know, are never truly failures but rather prompts to reflect, digest and move forward.

It is, however, a tricky beast. I have watched artists’ brains on the verge of explosion as the research period leads them off in many directions at once. On the plus side this creates fodder for the years to come, but focusing down to the most fruitful areas for creative pursuit can be difficult – seeing the wood for the trees from the middle of a forest in a storm – can be hard. This is where a critical friend or a professional mentor can help to shape the work at hand.

When I was trying to prepare artists for what might lie ahead I found it easier to draw as I went along, which resulted in a series of strange beasties that I called The Art Centipede (the illustration below is a mock up I did for g39′s closing show are we not drawn onward to new era and seems to have fewer legs than I usually managed). It’s not easy to explain the creative process as it’s so particular to each individual artist, but I had noticed a pattern forming at certain points in the Creative Wales process.

It should also be said that the post CW period can be very tough. Going back to the daily grind, but this time with a mind stuffed full of potential projects and fizzing to start realising them. That’s why it’s so important to keep talking to potential galleries or supporters while the project is ongoing to stimulate a bit of interest for the next stage.

I’m glad to see so many visual  artists make the cut again (three major and three lesser awards plus an arguable seventh in Simon Whitehead) – this scheme is almost tailor made for individuals used to working alone, albeit with an inclination to collaboration, and applied artists and writers often do well here too. Luckily ACW have laughed in the face of the winds of recession and upped the kitty by £50,000, recognising that investment in creative individuals to think and dream will bear fruit for everyone further down the line.

On the visual arts front there’s a picture forming – winners have had support earlier on in their careers by the galleries and organisations who make it their business to give emerging artists space to develop. g39, for example, can boast a relationship with five awardees and another is on his way to an exhibition in their new space. They are: S Mark Gubb, Simon Fenoulhet, Miranda Whall, Simon Whitehead and Craig Wood, alongside future g39 exhibitor Paul Emmanuel (winner of last year’s Welsh Artist of the Year). They were too modest to mention that the g39 staff can claim a total of four CW awards between them: Anthony Shapland, Michael Cousin (also a CW Ambassador) and Sean Edwards (who runs the Welsh Artists’ Resource Programme Warp).

So early support is obviously vital, but there’s still no commercial infrastructure to represent artists in Wales, apart from the sterling efforts of agencies such as Mermaid and Monster. Those few who do have commercial representation often have to look outside Wales for this. Artists who have come out of the Creative Wales process often pick up big solo shows: Sue Williams* went on to be one of only two Welsh artists included in the Artes Mundi Prize exhibition. Tim Davies, one of the very first AM artists (2004) got his CW award and went on to represent Wales at the Venice Biennale of Art in 2011 and is now on the board of Artes Mundi. Both Simon Fenoulhet (after his first CW award) and Andrew Cooper have had big solo shows at the ever-supportive Newport Museum & Art Gallery (which I’ve already covered in previous blogs – Andrew Cooper here and Simon Fenoulhet here), but what next? It seems a lot of artists are running to stand still in Wales.

And faced with the inevitable criticism about spending money on artists when the economy goes to hell in a handcart, it’s worth remembering that the spend on arts in Wales can, if equated to the expenditure being spread over a year, amount to a morning (with time off for tea and recession-friendly, poor-quality biscuits) of the Welsh Government’s budget. And behind all of this is the still very serious question of how artists’ awards are treated by HMRC. While the big boys of the creative industries get new tax breaks in the latest budget, the approach to these awards is patchy across tax offices. Some will be taxed on it, others not and I was once told, by a helpful HMRC officer, not to ask the question as it would result in everyone being taxed. Yet the creative and cultural industries still come in as the sixth biggest earner for Wales (way ahead of sport btw), and those big commercial enterprises feed off the original ideas of our artists. So go figure.

Culture Colony were in Caernarfon for a series of conversations around Creative Wales, with past and present recipients teasing out what it is. You can watch them here

*As an aside, but to illustrate the press reaction to artists here’s a little anecdote for those of you who have bravely read to the end of this: A Sunday Times journalist, casting around for a new story after the expenses’ scandal had stalled, cornered me for a quote about Sue Williams’ perfectly serious exploration of sexuality through body casting. I had no notion that the whole thing would turn into what I now, still shuddering, refer to as ‘Buttock Gate’ (I’m not linking to this or it’ll all rear up again, do your own googling). The story went viral and it’s deeply disturbing to see yourself (mis)quoted in many languages, while the illustrative pictures accompanying the story go from the artist in her studio to a random nymphette in a pair of lacy pants. Journalists eh!

Moving Images

As I write this I’m getting ready to go to a conference about curating video at the University of Westminster. I’m going because I’m part of a team that are preparing to unleash a festival of artists’ moving image work across Cardiff this autumn and I need to feel up to speed with current developments.

Some time ago, when I was still working for the Arts Council of Wales, I noticed that artists’ moving image work was burgeoning in Wales, but there weren’t many platforms for it, despite the very sterling efforts of galleries and arts organisations. I also noticed that it was becoming a key component part of the Artes Mundi prize and exhibition (and the next offering will be no exception) and a chance visit to one of the Artes Mundi lunchtime talks in 2010 started me thinking and led to an article in one of blown magazine’s ezines about what makes this art form special (you’ll have to scroll through to find the story).

While setting up a short-lived commissions pot for artists’ moving image for ACW I’d pulled together a specialist team to deliberate on who should get grants. After we’d doled out the money we all got talking and all felt that there should be somewhere for this work to go. And so Fourth Wall . Pedwaredd Wal CIC was born, and from it Outcasting:Fourth Wall – the aforementioned festival – began to set out its stall, with support from ACW’s festivals fund.

The fourth wall bit might throw readers a bit, but it refers to that moment in a film or a play when a protagonist turns to the audience and speaks to them directly, breaking the narrative spell cast by the more formal story lines of traditional dramas. We feel that artists’ moving image already does that – communicating directly and tapping into the audience’s own experience. And the festival is a physical manifestation of the excellent Outcasting – an international platform for artists’ moving image started by Michael Cousin here in Cardiff. For O:4W Cousin joins Ruth Cayford, of St David’s Hall (and Cardiff Council), to curate the festival, which will manifest in all sorts of places and spaces across Cardiff and link to all the moving image activity going on across Wales.

The festival is programmed across a period of time when there are lots of festivals, exhibitions and events going on across the Welsh capital, and we’re aiming to link in with as much as we can. The aim of the festival is to be as visible and accessible as possible, while giving artists as much creative freedom as we can and getting maximum visibility for this work.

If you’re an artist working with moving image and this sounds up your street then follow this link and let us know what you might propose.

If you’re a rich philanthropist, or a company not clobbered by the recession and wanting association with something that really reaches a public, then please email me (always worth a try).

Our thanks go to the Arts Council of Wales and Cardiff Council, who have clasped us to the bosom of Cardiff Contemporary (partially explained here) and the host of organisations and individuals across Wales who’ve already shown their support. Please keep an eye on the web site (still under serious development) www.4wfilm.org to see how things are shaping up.

Studios – Where Art Happens

Last week I was in Margate for the National Federation of Artists’ Studio Providers‘s  (NFASP) AGM and a series of events designed to bring artists and studio providers together to share experience, intelligence and generally bond. The day was hosted by the exceptionally friendly Turner Contemporary, who kept the refreshments flowing as we yomped our way through a networking event for studios, artists and funders in the South East (England), pulled together by Dover Arts Development (DAD), and on to a series of workshops for NFASP members that covered such useful topics as Public Benefit – what it really means, especially in terms of the Charities Commission  and sustainable business models for studios, followed by an opportunity for members to go into regional huddles to talk to each other and do a spot of networking.

I wasn’t there as an artist or a studio provider, but to attempt to write it all up for NFASP, with whom I’ve been working for the past year. All of my notes (a big fat notebook full) will go somewhere else, but I left with my brain fizzing after meeting a whole host of people intent on doing things to make life better for artists and the communities in which they work.

So here I’m just going to ruminate about artists studios, at a time when artists are possibly even more beleaguered than ever as they face hikes in business rates; a falling off in funding – especially from cash-strapped local authorities; the depletion in the organisations set  up to support them – following the various Arts Councils’ funding reviews; the decimation of arts education institutions – one of the key employers of artists; the drop in funding for small projects and corporate sponsorship. OK I could go on.

Fortunately artists tend to be very resilient and, as often as not, will see opportunities where others see despair – the rise in the number of empty shops  and office spaces being used by artists to make/show work illustrates this, although these might not be sustainable in the longer term.

It’s hard to define a typical artists’ studio model. In Margate I met with people making work or project spaces in: former farm buildings; unloved industrial workshops; heritage sites; empty shops; at the end of the pier and even on a decommissioned light ship, moored in the Medway. Other artists’ groups have re-animated schools, old mills, fire stations, factories, office blocks and even troubled social housing projects heading for the inevitable boarding up and police attention. Of course many more work from home and the South East Open Studios Network was represented at the networking meeting.

They’re rural and urban, big set ups with hundreds of studios and small collectives of five, six or seven members. Between them they have a staggering array of partnerships and networks, community, curatorial, educational and professional development programmes and they reach out internationally through residencies, exhibitions and exchanges, while covering the full spectrum of artistic practice and experience. From recent graduates, just starting the climb up the emergence curve, to established artists looking for the camaraderie of a shared space and, more practically, access to shared resources. What they have in common is the affordability factor. This is only natural as NFASP’s membership criteria includes the following statement:

“Our role is to represent and support all those engaged in developing and managing affordable studios for visual artists and studio groups and organisations form our core membership.”

At first sight £10 – £15 per square foot per annum seems exceptional. Why should these individuals get preferential rates? Well, as Marcel Baettig of the Bow Arts Trust points out, the average use of a studio is one day per week as artists juggle jobs and other responsibilities. We do all know that the majority of artists don’t live by making diamond encrusted objects to flog through the big auction houses don’t we? The sad fact is that most artists can’t earn a living from the production of their art alone. So they teach, or undertake project work funded by others and to their agendas and ambitions, or non-arts related jobs to pay the bills.

Should we care? Hell yes! Over the past couple of decades we’ve seen the fruition of capital strategies that have created new places and spaces to see and enjoy the arts thanks to the National Lottery, Europe and some regeneration funding. These have also attracted a big chunk of the available money from the charitable and corporate sector – new buildings are sexy and easy to put a nice, publicly visible plaque in. However this investment seems out of kilter with that going to the primary source of content for those buildings – the artists.

And artists need time and space to make work. It can be a lonely business so they need networks and support structures around them. Sometimes this is as simple as peer feedback and critical advice, but it’s also important to keep abreast of developments in contemporary practice and clusters of artists offer an easy hit for international curators doing the rounds to scout for new talent.

But more importantly artists’ studios can make an enormous contribution to their communities. This can range for support for emerging artists, to running exhibition/project spaces, workshops and other events and, perhaps most importantly for potential funders and planners, can re-invigorate those run-down buildings and parts of town that are suffering from changes to the economy. In his workshop about business models for studios, Marcel Baettig showed how Bow Arts Trust invests rental income in new studio buildings and in community programmes that really engage local people and help to create an understanding of what artists do and what they can do. Many studios are also now actively engaged in working with art schools to help bring on the next generation of artists: Spike Island, Grand Union, Elysium, tactileBOSCH, A Space, ACME and ACAVA being prime examples.

To be sustainable studios need a critical mass and a reasonable amount of square footage (opinions vary between 1500 – 2500 square feet) to be economically viable. Sadly spaces on this scale are not always available – particularly away from the big urban conurbations. But the waiting lists attest to the continued need for affordable work spaces.

And some developers, not always famed for their altruistic outlooks, have already worked out that artists make good tenants and help to add to the offer of new buildings, incorporating live/work spaces for artists in developments. The same can be said for more enlightened local authorities, who have registered that clusters of artists’ spaces can help to regenerate run down areas where enterprise grants for businesses have failed.

Keeping all of this on the agendas of those who can make a difference is what NFASP is about, but it’s a constant challenge to advocate and respond to new legislation (where are the artists in the nascent National Planning Policy framework?) and to support artists who suddenly find themselves with leaky buildings, dodgy leases or astronomical hikes in business rates (most are at the mercy of the discretionary reductions of cash-strapped local authorities).

As NFASP moves into a new phase without regular funding from Arts Council England, they are busily setting up networks for studio groups across the UK. So far there’s been one in the North of England, last week’s South East Network and, on 30 March  there will be one in Swansea for South Wales. If you’d like to be there (you don’t have to be an NFASP member to come along and meet other like-minded souls) you can email me to get on the list. The details of the day are here. Or if you’d like to set up your own regional network email NFASP and let them know.

With many thanks to Crate and Limbo for inviting us to join them after a really lively day in Margate.

And finally, a quick plug for Elysium who will be launching their new studio spaces on 16 March. Follow the link to find out more.

A Forensic Poetry – Iwan Bala’s Field Notes

It’s not often that charcoal and ink are used in anatomy, but Iwan Bala‘s exhibition, Field Notes – Noddiau Maes at Oriel Myrddin in Carmarthen show how this can be done.

Collaborating with poet Menna Elfyn, Bala has set about the many tissue layers of Wales, peeling them back to expose meanings; double meanings; family names; place names; story; history and the multiple senses of place that go with the territory of understanding what it is to live in Wales.

In the accompanying catalogue (a modest £7.50), Menna Elfyn relates the simple story of a woman, about to be displaced by the M.O.D’s clearance of Epynt to create a firing range. She asks if she can take her front door with her. Emblem of home and a family’s historical continuum.

It’s easy to dismiss work so rooted in place as parochial or somehow not quite in the broader canon of contemporary practice. But I’d argue that this work, while Wales-specific in its content, is equally universal. Anywhere in the World where there has been displacement, disturbance, threat; where language is the last bastion of memory and identity; where the future is conceived in the past – that’s where this work belongs.

I’ve written about whether the welshness of an artist is important here but it’s all in the context. Had Bala and Elfyn been from somewhere else, drawing/painting and writing about Wales, the work would be a colder, more subjective response and the real poetics of this careful dissection would be missing. Here the handwritten notes, the earth colours and lyrical maps seem to come straight from the heart, via the brain pathways of analysis, memory and personal response and directly down to the hand and onto the page.

Along with the dissection, Bala goes beyond his examination of place to lay out the seeds of a broader manifesto for artists and poets – roles and responsibilities that would flummox any Human Resources director, but make perfect sense.

The show continues until 18 February 2012. I strongly recommend that you have a look for yourselves and, while you’re at it, buy the catalogue from the shop-that-saved-my-Christmas.

There’s a Culture Colony video that’s a record of the presentations at the opening of Field Notes, given by yr Athro M. Wynn Thomas and Dr. Menna Elfyn who also reads one of her poems. Both speakers use Welsh and English, translating as they go.

Backwards and Onward

Happy 2012 blog fans and welcome, as the last pine needles embed themselves in the carpet, to a rather random review of the visual arts year in Wales.

And it was a good one, with lots of highlights:

• The new National Museum of Art galleries opened at the National Museum, Cardiff, to universal joy with I Cannot Escape This Place
• Tim Davies played a blinder at the Venice Biennale
• Paul Emmanuel won Welsh Artist of the Year
• Locws International filled Swansea with good things
• Bedwyr Williams won the Gold Medal at the National Eisteddfod in Wrexham, sharing the prize with Helen Sear
• The (very) special exhibition at the National Eisteddfod, Without Words highlighted the work of photographer Geoff Charles and was curated by Peter Finnemore and Russell Roberts
• g39 closed its doors in Mill Lane and moved to huge new premises in Roath, Cardiff
• The Jane Phillips Award was launched
• The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery finally got the go ahead for an ambitious makeover and closed in style.
• good cop bad cop’s Richard Huw Morgan and John Rowley launched a new weekly arts radio programme on Radio Cardiff – Pitch, creating a new platform for artists to talk to each other. Tuesdays 10-11am 98.7fm or online.                    

There have been some mighty fine shows on offer this year and I’ve been lucky to see a lot of them. In no particular order of favouriteness here are some of the ones that tooted my horn:

Project Object at Oriel Myrddin in Carmarthen had everything going for it. I love it when artists are let loose on collections, or people are invited to talk about or curate objects that mean something special to them. This show came in four equally good parts and gave me the chance to come as close as I’m likely to get to the Aurora Borealis and slip a poodle into a public gallery. The Glynn Vivian unleashed David Cushway and some delighted individuals on their precious collection of ceramics. The resulting film,  Last Supper at The Glynn Vivian, shows how passionate folk become when asked to talk about the objects they love.

One would never have guessed that the Glynn Vivian team had been holding their collective breaths, waiting to get the green light for the new development project – the programme was as lively as ever. I’ve already written up my highlight here. The off site programme continues – follow it here.

Neil Mcnally was let loose on Newport Museum & Art gallery to curate a show – The Institute of Mental Health is Burning. Mcnally selected objects from NMAG’s fine collection, mixing it up with a host of artists. Those who went will have Goldie Lookin’ Chain’s Newport State of Mind (You’re Not From Newport) etched into their memory banks forever more. NMAG also brought us Dis-location by Andrew Cooper, an artist who never fails to engage my attention. Pete Telfer, God of Culture Colony, filmed Cooper talking about his work.

In mid Wales, Oriel Davies gave us two artists associated with the 2007 Wales at the Venice Biennale offering: Bedwyr Williams and Paul Granjon. Williams’ show, Nimrod, launched with one of his trademark darkly funny performances and the humour threaded through the exhibition, which coincided with the National Eisteddfod up the road in Wrexham – Williams took the Gold medal and went on to win the People’s Choice and Ifor Davies Award in an unprecedented hat trick.

Granjon took over the gallery to create a workshop for unlikely gizmos with very willing volunteers for Oriel Factory. With a suite of his quirky drawings and a loop of films featuring some of his performances, inventions and songs to spur them on, the workshop elves came up with some highly inventive creations – none of which are likely to feature in the Innovations catalogue any day soon.

Across the Cambrian mountains, Aberystwyth Arts Centre has become an important venue for artists’ moving image with The Box seasons, but I’ve also enjoyed Visitor (still  on, if you’re quick) and Wild Thing.

Back in Cardiff Richard Higlett had his first solo show in Wales at g39′s temporary new home in The dairy, Pontcanna with Welcome to Your World. Higlett never fails to surprise and this show was no exception: a talking cat, the GPS (gallery of portable sound) car and a band (Bear- Man) playing from a hole in the gallery floor. Experimentica came back for its 11th outing at Chapter (where else could you find a man covered in mucus bouncing on a trampoline?) Chapter Gallery continued to surprise and delight with Pile and  The With Collective my personal faves.

Over in Penarth, Ffotogallery’s programme was as strong as ever, showcasing new and established talent and with complementary and engaging talks and the ever-popular Artists’ Book Fayre I’m so glad that this is my local. They’ll be bringing an international photography festival to Cardiff in 2013.

Artist-run spaces offered some really exciting shows and events this year: tactileBOSCH in Cardiff, continued to present rare opportunities to see performance, along with installations and painting shows that spilled out all over Cardiff for MOIST; Elysium ran another Bus Stop Cinema and disrupted the streets of Swansea; g39 hit Leipzig’s Spinnerei for the big Art Weekend; The Rhôd created a new series of site-responsive works in an old Mill in the hills of Carmarthenshire and created their own pavilion at the Venice Biennale (Rhodio). Swansea’s Supersaurus played host to shows by Gordon Dalton and Tom Goddard, while Supersuarus member Owen Griffiths dug up a football pitch to grow vegetables for Vetch Veg (sometimes you just couldn’t make this stuff up!)

Online artists’ film platform, Outcasting is heading for world domination. Not content with presenting international content, Outcasting’s evil genius, Michael Cousin, has joined forces with, er, me and St David’s Hall’s exhibitions officer, Ruth Cayford to form Fourth Wall. Pedwaredd Wall CIC, which will be filling Cardiff with artists’ moving image this autumn, thanks to festival funding from the Arts Council of Wales. Watch this space for more info and a call for artists to submit.

Goodbye and Hello

2011 was tinged with some sadness as Swansea lost two inspirational women: Swansea Metroplitan University lecturer Susan Griffiths and Mission Gallery Director Jane Phillips. Both died too young and leave a big hole in the visual arts community.

We also said goodbye to arts education as we know it with some major restructuring of fine art courses and a few closures. I’ve already written about this here so I won’t bang on but I’ll be watching as things unfold over the next few years.

And last, but not least, of the farewells goes to all of my former colleagues at the Arts Council of Wales, who find themselves staring at an uncertain future following the recent major restructuring (more on this as it unfolds).

Meanwhile some new faces appeared on the scene and began to make their mark:

Amanda Roderick took over as director at The Mission Gallery under very sad circumstance, but her work to date would, I’m sure, make Jane Phillips proud. Ben Borthwick got into his stride as Chief Executive of Artes Mundi, which is scheduled for this Autumn in Cardiff. Up in Llandudno we said goodbye and good luck to Martin Barlow, who left Mostyn after steering its development into one of the finest exhibitions spaces in Wales. He is  replaced as director by Alfredo Cramerotti, who took over as the first major retrospective of Blaenau Ffestiniog-based sculptor, David Nash - Red,Black,Other – launched to much excitement.

And finally, we said hello to #0 of tant magazine. They’re currently inviting submissions for #1 so please follow the link.

       

It’s been such a busy year and I’m sure I’ll have forgotten to mention a lot of the wonderful things that I have seen. Please feel free to add your own favourites in the comments section.

In the meantime I hope you have a very productive and creative 2012.

Writing The Future

The last month or so have been incredibly busy and it’s going to take me a while to catch up, but two things have happened in the last few days that raise a lot of questions and signal some potentially very positive things, so I’m going to try to weld them together.

The first happened last Saturday, when I went along to the New Critics Day at the Welsh College of Music and Drama. This was the culmination of a joint initiative put together by Literature Wales and National Theatre Wales to stimulate critical writing about theatre in Wales. The first cohort of mentored new critics came to share their experiences of covering NTW’s first year of productions with their mentors, The Guardian‘s Elisabeth Mahoney and Lyn Gardner (and you can read Gardner’s blog about the day here).

Now with the focus of the day on Welsh theatre and largely reviews, or the lack of them, in the (UK) national press, plus the inevitable kicking of The Western Mail‘s critical engagement, I wanted to consider how the what was said related to the visual arts. If Theatre thinks it’s got it bad, contemporary art in Wales and its communities can seem invisible.

One transferable thought came through, that without reviews and a wider critical dialogue around work, we lose opportunities on all fronts. Artists and curators don’t get the feedback they need to help them move on; potential audiences miss out on conversations that offer a way in to work that can often be challenging, daunting, perplexing but often inspiring (not a word I use often). Without the access to ideas, to critical conversations, how can audiences be expected to engage with contemporary practice? And if they can’t engage who will advocate for the arts in a climate where the chilly winds of the recession are whistling up everyone’s jumpers?

Hold that thought for a moment, as I go on to event number two. The launch of the rather sexily entitled strategic vision from  Stevens & Associates and Holder Mathias architects for Cardiff Council – Establishing Cardiff as Europe’s Largest Contemporary Art and Design Gallery: A Clever, Creative and Collaborative Cardiff Solution (yes, really).

I say strategic vision, but at this stage it’s more of an ambition as the meat isn’t on the bones of how it will be delivered yet. However the aim is  to get Cardiff on the European contemporary art and design map in five years, using existing organisations and resources to create a critical mass and profile for the plethora of activity in the Capital City.

This, I’m reasonably convinced, comes out of a pragmatic response to the Arts Council of Wales and National Museum of Wales’ joint study into the Future Display of Art in Wales, by consultants DCA  and the subsequent report, by ABL Consulting (who seem to have vanished, along with all traces of their report), that looked specifically at a National Centre for Contemporary Arts (non-collections based) for the Arts Council of Wales. That report concluded that a) such a centre should be in Cardiff and b) that it would cost around £40m, which put the wind up everyone in 2008, with then Heritage Minister, Alun Ffred Jones parking it as something to be considered in the future.

In the interim the National Museum has been able to deliver their stunning new galleries for Modern and Contemporary art, creating a new focus and context for contemporary art in Cardiff, but with no municipal art gallery to match the ambitions of The Depot project (part of the close, but not close enough bid for Capital of Culture 2008 bid) there is no real focal point (Chapter Arts Centre aside) for the fizz of activity in Cardiff.

So, it was a rallying day, with lots of feedback and suggestions from those present, including a heartening number of artists and curators, in stark contrast to the launch of @Creative Cardiff, but no real clear way forward.

Now it seems to me that this could go several ways – it could end up being a joint marketing exercise (although we were assured that this wouldn’t be the case) or it could signal real investment in the visual & applied arts and design in Cardiff from Cardiff Council, focussing on supporting activity rather than infrastructure (those with long memories are still smarting from the collapse of the Centre for Visual Arts). Where this investment will come from remains to be seen, but it’s obvious that Cllr Rodney Berman, Leader of Cardiff County Council is quite passionately and emphatically behind this.

So back to the first event – I promised they linked up somewhere – the problem with arts activity in Cardiff isn’t its paucity, it’s the lack of critical coverage to draw attention to it, to address the sometimes variable quality of what’s produced and to boost Cardiff up the search rankings for cultural tourists.

Supporting new critical writing is all very well, but it needs a platform. Who will be covering this year’s Experimentica, Made in Roath and tactileBOSCH’s colonisation of Cardiff under the MOIST umbrella, which links the two festivals and more besides? Where are the reviews for the current shows at Chapter and g39 (image above from Richard Higlett’s Welcome To Your World at g39′s temporary home in Pontcanna)? It’s clear that the Western Mail just doesn’t have the staffing capacity or the resources to cover these things, except as listings, so a concerted effort will be needed to create outlets for critical conversations.

We’ve got Pitch* on Radio Cardiff, we’ve got blown ** magazine  and Culture Colony is proving to be an important online forum across art forms in Wales (I’m not ashamed of plugging three projects close to my heart) and more magazines launching soon, but we need to be getting this stuff into the Nationals, onto the telly and generally out there if the Cardiff initiative is to succeed. And if it does it’ll have a very positive impact on the rest of Wales.

Anyway, watch this space for new developments, and if anyone has the answers, on a postcard (or more digitally, in the comment box) please.

* Read Elisabeth Mahoney’s review of Pitch for The Guardian here
** And Peter Finch’s blog take on blown here