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

Calling all sculptors

Last summer I went to Kidwelly for a look at Sculpture Cymru’s Ironstoneexhibition in the ruins of the castle. It’s so rare to see sculpture outside in Wales that it was well worth the wiggle down country lanes to get to it.

The collaboration with Cadw obviously worked well as they’re going back next year, with exhibition fees for selected artists, chosed by Locws International‘s David Hastie, so I thought I’d give it a plug here.

Sculpture Cymru : Sculptors in Wales

Castle : Sculptural Responses

Call for Entries

UK artists are invited to submit sculptural proposals for an exhibition to be held in the grounds of Kidwelly Castle, South Wales. The exhibition will run from June to September 2012.

Artists are asked to propose work to be created in response to the Castle and its site. The artwork can consist of any material but must be robust to withstand four months outside in a public venue.

Plans and photographs of the site, together with Application details can be downloaded at www.sculpturecymru.org.uk from 1 September 2011.

Selected by David Hastie, Director of Lowcs International, in consultation with Cadw Inspectorate and Sculpture Cymru.

Submissions to be received by 31 October 2011 at kidwelly2012@gmail.com

Supported by the Arts Council of Wales, Cadw Inspectorate and Sculpture Cymru

One Day I Will Be…

Last month this year’s batch of new fine art graduates left their institutions for the last time, ready to start their lives as professional artists, or not. I wrote the following text as an accompanying essay for the UWIC Fine Art Degree show and thought that it might have something to say to other graduates, so I’ve updated the useful links and will happily add more if anyone wants to send me some.

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At this time of year the art school trees are thick with pupating artists, preparing to fall off their twigs onto the hard ground of the outside world. Some will land gently, with just enough bounce to propel them up into the air again, stretch their new wings and take off. Others will fall harder, languish in the long grass for a while, then begin a cautious climb upwards, wings slowly unfurling. A very few will never recover from the drop and remain locked in their chrysalis. Such is the way of nature. So it is with the life of an artist.

Before the fall though, anything is possible and art colleges hum with unleashed potential – the excitement and trepidation are palpable. The run up to the degree shows is the beginning of the end of one stage and the start of something new.

Graduating from Art College is a peculiar process. One day you’re a student, the next day you’re a … a what? An artist? Not necessarily. In some ways the journey to becoming a professional artist can only begin after the art college training has finished. It’s just one of those things. How can you decide what kind of artist to be in the cocoon of college? OK, so you’ve followed your specialism, but how does that translate out there? Perhaps you’re not even meant to be an artist at all.

I decided to conduct a not-very-scientific bit of research into the career destinations of past CSAD Fine Art graduates through the power of Facebook. Friends and friends-of-friends circulated my request for information and back came the responses, thick and fast, with respondents spanning several decades and many cohorts of Howard Gardens graduates.

So here, for your edification, is a sample of what happens to those pupae when they hit the ground.

Out of what we’ll call Cardiff Art School, as it’s changed its name several times over the years, have come artists, naturally, and/or:

Arts administrators, scenic artists, film editors, sound technicians, project managers, journalists, magazine editors, press officers, gallery interns, gallery managers, gallery technicians, gallery directors, gallery invigilators, gallery educators, clothes designers, bronze founders, community artists, artists-in-residence, artists working in the public realm, art therapists, teachers, lecturers, film directors, workshop leaders, course leaders, social agitators, social workers, transport co-ordinators, play workers, studio managers, festival coordinators, shop keepers, film animators, museum workers, theatre managers, cultural entrepreneurs, creative producers, TV camera operatives, commercial photographers, rock musicians, artists’ mentors, shelf stackers, art handlers, research fellows, civil servants, arts development officers, arts consultants, strategists, pundits,  pet portrait artists, environmental/animal rights campaigners…and a few who are still working out what they want to be.

Howard Gardens alumni have gone on to become: The Pioneers, ArtStation, tactileBosch, Open Empty Spaces, Milkwood Gallery, Cinetig, Fox Studios, Clock Performance, Underworld, The Threatmantics, The Wave Pictures, The Victorian English Gentlemens Club, Islet, Radioactive Sparrow, The Sound of Aircraft Attacking Britain (S.A.A.B.), British Racing Green and Mermaid & Monster but this is a tiny and certainly not definitive list. Some of these have just set up, some older ones are still going, while others had their shining moment and have faded away.

And that’s just from a non-scientific trawl and doesn’t include the MA graduates or the artists from other courses at Howard Gardens. Nor does it encompass the myriad initiatives started by the Fine Art teaching staff that are fed and energised by successive generations of new graduates.

The creative impetus, which starts in the college studios and workshops, spills out across the city, the country and the globe. Cardiff Fine Art graduates are exceptionally good at using what’s available, working their networks and creating links with each other and with artists and arts institutions across the world. That this is often unremarked seems a shame, that it isn’t captured and waved in the faces of the politicians, the cultural strategists and the money-brokers is more worrying.

But the point is graduating is just the start, and not everyone can go on to be a professional artist (do the maths – it’s unsustainable). But a Fine Arts training can set you up for all manner of things. It’s trite to talk about transferable skills I know, but the ability to problem-solve creatively is incredibly valuable across a multitude of careers.

And it’s natural to pick up the degree and wait for the future, and wait, and wait. I did – one nice write up in a glossy mag and I thought I’d just have to sit by the phone and choose the opportunities that would surely come my way. But they didn’t and they don’t without a bit of proactive engagement and some derring-do.

While the Cardiff Art scene is quite different from the day when I left Howard Gardens in the mid-80s, it’s still the same in many ways: no commercial sector to speak of and a dearth of critical attention from the national or even the local media. However it’s still characterised by the collegiate nature of the arts community. Alright, there are little gangs that cluster around certain institutions, but there are performance, exhibiting and studio collectives; project clusters; communities of interest that pool their resources.

Survival strategies vary from individual to individual. Some chose jobs that will pay the bills but demand little of their creative juices. Others attempt to combine both, although those who go into teaching often find themselves drained by the increasing layers of measurement and evaluation. The only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is the wait-by-the-phone one.

Cardiff graduates are lucky to have the excellent mentoring services of WARP  Welsh Artists’ Resource Programme) and the test beds for emerging artists at g39, Milkwood, Oriel Canfas and tactileBosh, while ARC (Artists’ Resource Cardiff) offers networking and a promotional platform and Ffotogallery’s Forum provides an opportunity for much needed discussion and debate while, online, Culture Colony is linking up the creative communities of Wales with its Beyond TV initiative. Chapter Arts Centre is a major employer of artists, and the bar is where some of the most interesting creative collaborations are concocted. The Arts Council of Wales has, in the past decade, refocused its attention on supporting creative individuals and now offers grants and other support at significant levels.

There are new things popping up on the horizon every month and opportunities there for the taking for the enterprising new artist – empty shops, green spaces, festivals, international projects, local projects, group exhibitions, performance platforms.

Soon this year’s grubs will be fluttering into our lives, adding the annual blast of colour to the arts scene.  And I can’t wait.

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Some useful sites for networking and/or kick-starting a career as an artist in Cardiff and beyond:Welsh Artists Resource Programme (Warp); g39; Milkwood Gallery; Oriel Canfas Gallery; tactileBosch; Artists Resource Cardiff (ARC); Ffotogallery Forum; Culture Colony; Chapter Arts Centre; The Arts Council of Wales ; Engage Cymru; Bloc; Art Tawe; Elysium Art Space; National Federation of Artists’ Studio Providers; Axis; A-N; AiR

Image: Rose Attewell, from Addiction Library. CSAD Degree show 2011

Blog Evolution

Dear Readers,
The blog has changed as I realised that the blackness made it hard to read and some of the info I thought was available wasn’t appearing. Please let me know if you think this is easier to read or if there are things that you’d like to see on the blog that aren’t there.

If you’d like to plug a project or artwork and would like it featured in the top picture bit of my blog, please email me your image (but bear in mind the letterbox format) with the name of the work/project and your name in the file name and I’ll try and get it up for random appearances.

If you’re wondering why the blogging has been so erratic of late it’s because I’ve been writing for other sites and magazines (which makes my bank manager very happy). Here are some places to find more stuff to look at.

Venice blog for blown magazine – a sideways look at the biggest art show (and there are more on the way here too.

Review of Animate Projects Open Digitalis

Review of this year’s Locws International Art Across the City for a-n‘s Interface

And this weekend a group of us got together to start a new platform for writing about contemporary art of, from, for but not necessarily in Wales, called Rooters, which lives on Culture Colony. Hope you’ll join us there. We’re looking for more contributors to give critical writing about art in Wales a boost.Thanks to warp and g39 for helping us get this off the ground and Pete Telfer at Culture Colony for immediately setting up our platform.

My first post for Rooters looks at The Nihilists project on Sugarloaf (16.07.2011).You can also find other bits of writing by me on Culture Colony too, including more on The National Museum of Art and Andrew Cooper’s current exhibition at Newport Museum & Art Gallery Dis-Location.

Modern Times at the National Museum

As one door closes and Cardiff’s g39 pack up their Mill Lane store to move to pastures new, after a day-long party on 02 July, so another one  opens a week later. The new  National Museum of Art opened for visitors on Saturday 09 July and Cardiff now has something very special in its midst.

Spool back to the mid 1980s, to the Welsh Office building a stone’s throw from the Museum. A motley bunch of angry artists, members of the Association of Artists and Designers in Wales (AADW), wearing assorted outfits and costumes, is attempting to storm the political outpost of the Westminster empire. They are angry because they have just learned that the Government is about to introduce admission charges to the National Museum and they will be cut off from a resource that they need, albeit one that doesn’t reflect their own practice that much.

I was there, as Max Boyce would say, as we managed to get ourselves trapped between the outer and inner doors, to the amusement of the security guards, who weren’t quite sure what to make of a crowd of  frankly scruffy looking types, some dressed as skeletons. Of course the outcome is history and it wasn’t until  2001 that the Welsh Government, as one of their earlier acts, decreed that all Assembly sponsored Museums should be free for everyone.

That same year (2001) David Pratley & Associates conducted a Review of Galleries in Wales, which caused a lot of excitement amongst the visual arts community in Wales, and some conflicting ideas of what was needed. The findings were used to inform the next study, The Display of Art in Wales, by DCA. This scoping study pulled together the ambitions of the National Museum to increase its capacity to show its collection of modern and contemporary art and the Arts Council of Wales strategic objective to create a non-collections based National Centre for Contemporary Art in Wales. That report, in 2006, laid the foundations for the new galleries created in the West Wing of the National Museum, Cardiff.

So much for the history lesson, but it’s important to recognise that within a decade of David Pratley’s review, a new, beautiful space for modern and contemporary art was built and opened. In the scheme of things that’s pretty speedy.

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to get a sneaky peek at the newly finished, empty galleries. Without the art it was possible to see the fine attention to detail (as you’d expect when working within a listed building) and, most significantly, the space afforded to a chunk of art history (some still in the making), which gives it an importance and status that has been severely lacking in the past.

Filled with an extraordinary and really well curated selection of works, spanning the breadth of  visual art practice from the 20th and 21st centuries, the galleries really hum with ideas in the first exhibition I Cannot Escape This Place. You can see Pete Telfer’s images, which include Wales’ tallest and smallest contemporary artists here (though you’ll need to register/log in to Culture Colony first, but it’s free and worth doing). Outside the new galleries, John Cale’s 2009 Venice offering, Dyddiau Du/ Dark days and Carwyn Evans‘ installation Unlliw in the Landscape Gallery (see top picture) add another contemporary dimension to the museum’s offer.

Here’s the low down:

• Wales’s National Museum of Art cost £6.5 million, most of it raised from private sources and the Welsh Assembly Government.
• The National Museum of Art covers 4,000 square metres of space at National Museum Cardiff.
• The National Museum of Art will be one of the largest art venues outside London.
• The contemporary art galleries – the West Wing – are nearly 800 square metres, making the largest space for contemporary art in Wales.
• The redeveloped galleries offer 40% more space for the national contemporary collection.
• The first display in the West Wing – I cannot escape this place –  includes works by 44 artists including Josef Herman, Bedwyr Williams, Francis Bacon and Richard Long.

The general consensus has been very positive – artists and curators gave it the thumbs up. There will be a few voices of dissent. Some still feel that there should be a gallery dedicated solely to Welsh Art. But we’re not a hermetically sealed nation and it’s really important for artists and the wider public to see Welsh art in a national and international context, as well as within an historical one. School parties visiting the Museum will have the chance to relate modern and contemporary works to the historical collection and respond to them, Artes Mundi aside, these opportunities have been few and far between.

And while this is a milestone for the Museum and the arts in Wales, let’s not forget that it’s one of two. With the best will in the world the Museum’s new galleries will not be the hotbed for ideas and the push/pull of production and presentation that a non-collections based contemporary art centre could be.

Back when Cardiff was bidding to be Capital of Culture in 2008, there were plans afoot to convert an old bus depot into just that kind  of space, but the plans died with Cardiff’s failed bid and the Welsh Government probably feels it’s off the hook in terms of the visual arts for the time being. The Arts Council of Wales seems to accept that investment into contemporary art will probably continue to be focused on the existing gallery network. However all of those key galleries would benefit from a national status centre because it would help to develop new audiences for them, offer professional development opportunities and add to the vibrant but often under-valued art community in Wales.

Let’s just hold that thought shall we?

Love and The Beast in Swansea

On the monitor screen a couple cling together on the dance floor, fingers slide softly up and down backs, bodies pressed up against each other. I am thrown back to the 1970s and the Marconi Club in Lavernock – hanging off a lanky youth in black velvet jacket and flares to whatever’s playing: Chicago’s If you leave me now, 10cc’s I’m not in love (I couldn’t be too fussy, The Clash didn’t do smoochie numbers). The slow dance, the kiss, the wait for the phone call, the trip to the cinema, the hand casually snaking across the back of the seat. This is a scenario that most will recognise. The end of the night, droopy eye-lidded and lost in the moment.

All of this before I put on the headphones in the gallery to hear Diana Ross’ When You Tell Me That You Love Me (hit the link if you’re feeling sentimental). I am just considering the intimacy that the slow dance engenders and what might grow from that proximity, when a figure interrupts the dancers, cutting in and taking over, and the intimacy is transferred. Something that will be endlessly repeated over the course of 24 hours in Cypriot artist Christodoulos Panayiotou‘s Slow Dance Marathon (2005)

I’m visiting the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, in Swansea, for the preview of two shows: Parasol Unit‘s I Know Something About Love Part II and an outing for Laura Ford‘s Beast & Other Works. The former suggests fluffy kittens and flowery meadows, but it’s a more in-depth look at love from different cultural perspectives. When I take the headphones off again, I’m still looking at the dancers as I become aware of a passionate Arabic oration from the next part of the gallery. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. In one room casual intimacy, in the next sit rows of men and women, gender-separated by a black curtain, with two characters -a  man and a woman – slowly becoming the focus of a developing visual narrative. The work, Fervor (2000) speaks of the destructive effect of the post-revolution regime in Iran that restricts human relationships and places a wedge between men and women. Which, of course, could be said in an essay or tract, but not as eloquently or poignantly as this two-channel, black and white filmic poem by Shirin Neshat. The work is eleven years old, but the situation in Iran hasn’t changed.

Another shift, another apparent contrast, in the final work of the show named after The Exciters’ lyric from Tell Him, occurs in the final tri-channel film by Yang Fudong, Flutter, Flutter… Jasmine, Jasmine (2002). Here a Shanghai couple talk about falling in love and being in love, sing, dance and canoodle. It’s sweet, occasionally funny and visually engaging. But Yang is not an artist concerned with sweetness and light or the flowers of romance. A closer look at the scenery and the context  – glossy skyscrapers and run-down alleyways – China’s jump from a culture of repression and suppression to one of embracing Western mores and materialism is not one that Yang wholly approves of. And the volte face of the current regime doesn’t seem to be entirely driven by a desire to liberate and liberalise the Chinese people. The Westernisation seems to be a glossy façade, like the skyscrapers, covering something that is still held together with sticky tape and blood-stained string.

Fresh from my explorations of love I trotted down to the Atrium space to say “hello” to Laura Ford’s Beast, an old friend from the Welsh offering at the Venice Biennale in 2005. The Glynn Vivian acquired this work for their collection after Somewhere Else (the Wales in Venice show) had toured Wales and have given it a regular airing since. This is hardly surprising as its bathetic presence, speaking obliquely of the atrocities at Guantanamo Bay, of degradation, humiliation and disorientation,makes an immediate connection with audiences.

This time it’s accompanied by equally strong works – Mummers (2011) and Espalier Girl (2007). While Ford’s work is made from materials that make them immediately familiar and the human forms create a strong sense of empathy, there is a dark thread throughout her work that slowly reveals itself. The child-like figures, covered in shaggy felt costumes in Mummers, speak of play at first and the title references ancient rustic theatrical tradition, despite the obvious character lying on the ground. But then you notice that one of them is holding something that looks like a crow bar and the mood darkens. It’s not hard to draw a connecting line between this childish scene and the increasing incidence of child knifings and shootings by other children.

By the same token Espalier Girl draws the eye in to what seems to be a comic costume – girl as tree – but of course espaliering is a gardening technique to force plants to grow to the gardeners will.

These are dark themes for a public gallery but, just before the show officially opened I met the team who had been working with local schools in Swansea, who were rhapsodising about the response of children to these sculptures.

Perhaps the response is not so surprising. Ford recently showed a new work, Little Bird (2011) in the Locws International Festival earlier this year, which provoked strong reactions – some people wanted to protect the forlorn figure in fancy dress, while others tried to destroy it. You can read my review of Locws for a-n here.

So I left the Glynn Vivian, once again, knowing something more than I had when I’d entered it and with The Exciters tune thrumming in my mind.

I know Something About Love Part II and Laura Ford: Beast & Other Works runs Tuesdays to Sundays until 04 September 2011

And while you’re there… don’t miss two shows in artist run spaces:

Thomas Goddard: 1961 – 1999 at Supersaurus. Goddard takes up residence with the friendly collective until 15 July 2011

and

Sublinear 5: Perspectives on Drawing at Elysium Gallery. Dalit Leon, Elizabeth Waterhouse (image), Fran Williams, Penny Hallas & Richard Monahan
24 June – 16 July 2011

and last, but by no means least, Second Star to the right and Straight on Until Morning at The Mission Gallery  for Ben Rowe’s take on escapism

How Dumb Are We? Kim Howells and Dougal

I did O level Maths at school, but I’d never set myself up as a mathematician for the purposes of punditry, so why did the Western Mail feel the need to ask Kim Howells, a politician who once went to art school, for a response to the winner of the Welsh Artist of the Year? And to do so by looking at Paul Emmanuel‘s winning work online.

That’s it. The final straw. I am so fed up with the way that the (admittedly tiny, circa 32,000) readership of the self-styled Newspaper of Wales are treated like unintelligent morons and that contemporary art is regularly denigrated, dismissed and misrepresented. It makes Wales look stupid and backward-looking and can’t, I am sure, do much to make the case for Wales as a lively, critically-engaged nation to which big companies would want to re-locate.

Of course my comments were taken out of context in the WM piece as, I suspect, were the quotes from Howells. I am sure that he would have been careful not to juxtapose his criticisms of the Turner Prize judges with a reference to my colleagues and I as the judging panel of the WAotY competition this year, as we’re skating towards libel here. Now, we didn’t all sit down and decide to come up with something controversial, to be seen as being ‘avant garde’ (a term that I don’t believe has been seriously used for many decades). We chose works that reflected current practice in Wales and rewarded artists at the top of their game in their areas of expertise. Paul Emmanuel was an obvious choice for winner. He’s taken seriously by those who really know about art and has carved himself an international reputation with his exhibitions in Taiwan, amongst other places. At home he’s been shown at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery , the opening show of the Mostyn and had a stunning solo show at Oriel Myrddin

I’m just back from Venice and the 54th Biennale of Art. There, even tiny, economically challenged nations take contemporary art seriously and present it as such to appreciative audiences. They know it’s important to present a forward-looking face and to champion their artists and the arts in general. Isn’t it about time we did the same?

You can make up your own mind about the Welsh Artist of the Year competition by seeing it in the flesh at St Davids Hall until 06 August 2011.

From Mill Lane to Cotton Mill – g39 in Leipzig

I’m just back from my first gig as an embedded journalist – not, I hasten to add, a flak-jacket, helmeted journo reporting from a war zone, but still in the front line of international cultural relations. Cardiff’s g39 were making their presence felt as international guest curators at Halle 14 in the giant ex-cotton mill in Leipzig for the big art weekend Zeit Fuer Kunst. For some reason Ute Volz, manager of  Halle 14 (the title grossly belies what she actually does, but it’s the closest translation I can come up with)  thought it would be a good idea if I came along too.

It all started when the Contemporary Art Society sent g39′s co-director, Chris Brown, on a research visit to Leipzig last autumn (2010). From there he invited Ute Volz and Karsten Schultz of Halle 14 to speak at the On Collecting symposium at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff at the end of last year (some of you might remember me writing about it here). After the formal presentations things became more relaxed as we shared some of Cardiff’s less salubrious watering holes with Volz and ended up pledging to visit Leipzig as soon as possible.

Well these things get said in the afterglow of a lively seminar. So imagine my surprise when an invitation to come for the big event on April 30/ May 01. Halle 14, along with all the other creative enterprises and galleries that make up the Spinnerei, takes the interesting approach of each inviting an international partner to exhibit in their space for the big art weekend and this year g39 was it.

As the logistics of shipping big and complex artworks across Europe would have wiped out a big chunk of this small-but-perfectly-formed gallery’s budget, g39 decided that works should fit into a suitcase, or small crate, and the show Portmanteau began to form. Chris Brown, with curator Michael Cousin selected a show reel of  12 existing moving image works and some works by artists who’d already shown in the gallery. Then they went on to commission three new works by Dawn Woolley, David Cushway and Sam Aldridge – two performance/installations and some very mobile sculptures.

Now this isn’t going to be a formal review of the show – that’s going on Culture Colony (and when it’s up I’ll put in the link), but I hope it’ll provide a glimpse into how this kind of international enterprise works.

Arriving a few days after Brown, Cousin and some of the exhibiting artists (I draw a veil over my accidental diversion on a high-speed train to Hannover), things had already begun to take shape. Helen Sear’s beautiful wall print of a photoshop-manipulated image of stuffed birds in a glass vitrine, first seen at g39 in 2009, had been hung on a wall in a space already twice the size of g39′s diminutive exhibition area; Richard Bevan‘s black vinyl triangles – a deceptively simple rendering of information based on significant times and places in g39′s history – stuck to the wall, facing  Candice Jacobs‘ gold vinyl “Thank You!”, a starkly decontextualised pleasantry glinting in the sun. Anthony Shapland’s film poster (text deleted), hung next to the film projection area, linking it to the film work he was showing – an introduction to a longer project about the life of Raymond C.Cook. In fact several of the exhibiting artists also had moving image work – g39 having been an early pioneering promoter of this kind of work in Wales.

Away from the yellowing beams of the same sunshine that poured into the vast third floor of Halle 14, Lesley Guy‘s painstaking pen work on images from  a series of a hundred obituaries pages formed a ghostly phalanx around the space that Dawn Woolley was filling with her photographic installation, which would provide a setting for a gruelling performance that she did not once but twice. Halle 14 had provided technical support through the wonderful Denis, who managed to source all sorts of extras to make sure that the show and the performances were presented to g39′s exacting high standards.

As Cousin tweaked the projector for the 12 moving image works and David Cushway set out his plates and poles for his plate-spinning performances, I helped Sam Aldridge assemble his nine cardboard traffic cones. These would be placed in the gallery with instructions in Google-translate German to move them around, wearing hard hats he’d made a couple of years ago.

By the end of Friday everything was under control and we could go into VIP mode with the option of Porsches to ferry us about (I opted for Volz’s Peugeot, I’m not really a Porsche kinda gal) to the various events associated with the big art weekend: the Blixa Bargeld/Carsten Nicolai (the latter also showing in the Spinnerei)  concert was a definite highlight for me, as was the enervating trip to Bimbotown, possibly the maddest nightclub ever. I was eaten by a sofa – ’nuff said.

Over the weekend I had a chance to look at what the other galleries  and organisations were offering. The g39 floor was host to Basel Art Academy’s student show – demonstrating what can be achieved with proper resourcing and support – and to put the Welsh offer in context. I know I’m biased but I think we kept our end up, and the 5-7,000 people (the g39 attendance clicker was still in Cardiff) who visited Portmanteau seemed to agree.

The love and respect between g39 and Halle 14 just seemed to grow and grow – possibly because there were no tantrums, no hissy fits and everything was possible and effortlessly dealt with.  At the end of the weekend Halle 14 announced that g39 were to become permanent international partners. And nothing could be more perfect.

My profound thanks go to Halle 14, g39 and all the exhibiting artists for making me so welcome and so proud to see contemporary art from Wales make such a big impression in an international context.

 

Opportunity Alert: Halle 14 is just launching a new residency programme with a May 20 deadline. If you’re an artist who is interested in living and working in Leipzig for three months and can respond to the theme “What Happened to God?” then follow the link asap.

 

Portmanteau featured:

Sam Aldridge, Richard Bevan, David Cushway, Lesley Guy,  Candice Jacobs, Helen Sear, Anthony Shapland, Dawn Woolley (installed works/performances)

Pascal Michel Dubois, Maia Conran,  David Cushway, Candice Jacobs,  Tamara Krikorian, Jennie Savage & James Tyson, Helen Sear, Anthony Shapland, Lisa Stansbie, Dawn Woolley (moving Image)