On the Edge of the World

We said goodbye to our summer exhibition at Oriel Myrddin Gallery today, On the Edge of the World has been a delight to live with for the eight weeks it has been with us. The work was curated from the British Council Collection and was originally shown at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh in 2010 as part of a bi-centenary programme of events to celebrate the achievements and lasting legacy of Charles Darwin.

The exhibition featured work from: boredomresearch, Christine Borland, Dalziel+Scullion, Anya Gallaccio, Tania Kovats, Rob Kesseler, Michael Landy,  Heather & Ivan Morison, Simon Starling, Alison Turnbull, Marc Quinn.

"The 14 contemporary artists selected for this exhibition assume the role of modern-day explorers.  Through their work, they make connections between us, our environment and nature.  For many of them, travel is an important part of their practice; they seek to examine and interpret the complex and changing natural world around us.  Here we see the enduring legacy of Darwin and his commitment to bringing new interpretations, rare discoveries and insights to a wider world carried beyond a scientific community into the imaginations of artists today."

My personal favourite from the show was Tania Kovats' two hundred and eight two, a slice of oak tree  onto which Kovats has traced each individual ring in india ink to make a delicate, poignant record of the  tree's life span.

It was also a great pleasure to host 8 of Michael Landy's etchings from his 2003 Nourishment series. Each etching depicts a common weed that might grow between paving slabs - 'street flowers' as Landy describes them. These were the works that emerged after Landy's famous work Break-down which saw him destroy all of his posessions in 2001.

One of the favourite pieces in the show for our visitors was boredomresearch's Oriental Bug Garden (2004), a digital piece that uses gaming and artificial life modelling technology to create a screen based work that has a self-generating pattern of triggers and collisions which, in turn create an incidental soundtrack. Meditative and tranquil, the sound sets the tone for the whole exhibition in many ways.

The centre piece of the show was arguably Anya Gallaccio's installation, Preserve Beauty (2003). 800 brilliant red Gerbera flowers were installed behind a sheet of glass and left to disintegrate over the duration of the exhibition. The process of decay was quite present in the gallery as the piece went through various stages - sometimes the smell was quite interesting!

Vetch Veg

Owen Griffiths seen here

Swansea has seen a marvelous art project develop on part of the old Vetch site of Swansea City Football Club over the last nine months. Owen Griffiths has been the inspiration and the engine behind creating and populating a community vegetable garden on the site with the enthusiastic participation of local residents and groups. Glynn Vivian Gallery is holding an off-site event, the Sandfields Festival of Ideas on the site this weekend with a lovely programme of events including performance from Peter Finnemore, food from the Bangladeshi Community who have a plot at the garden, music from Joan Joans, Sarah Passmore and the Swansea Ukelele Orchestra, yoga with Glynn Vivian Gallery's Karen MacKinnon and much more...

Vetch Veg is a socially engaged art project commissioned as part of the Cultural  Olympiad, you can read all about the project on the Vetch Veg site.

Assemble/Cydosod at Melin Glonc

If you missed Mike Murray's exhibition, Assemble/Cydosod at Goat Major Projects in Cardiff, you can see selected works at Melic Glonc in Carmarthenshire until 1 September.

Antonia Dewhurst - Ty Unnos/One Night House

Antonia Dewhurst - Tŷ Unnos/One Night House - courtesy of Antonia Dewhurst

 If you are in the Newtown area of Mid Wales, make sure you drop into Oriel Davies to see Antonia Dewhurst's Test Bed Project - Tŷ Unnos in the park adjacent to the gallery. Antonia built the house in accordance with the historical Tŷ Unnos/One Night House tradition:

"Tŷ Unnos is an old Welsh tradition dating back to the 17th century: if one could build a house between the hours of sunset and sunrise and have smoke rising from the chimney by dawn, the ownership of the land could be claimed. While Antonia does not lay claim to Newtown’s park on 19 July she will build a Tŷ Unnos - literally overnight - in the town’s parkland opposite Oriel Davies. This will be a temporary structure made from recycled materials - wooden pallets, tarpaulin and corrugated iron. After a night of feverish building the structure will be in place by the morning of 20 July, complete with smoke rising from the chimney."

Here's a short stop motion video of the construction.

You can also see Antonia's Gimme Shelter series of small scale constructions in the Test Bed Space inside the gallery - including the newly made piece of the Tŷ Unnos in the park.

Courtesy of Antonia Dewhurst

The house remains in situ until 5 September and Antonia is occasionally 'In Residence' - ring the gallery for times on 01686 625 041

Mike Murray - Assembled at Home/ Cydosod yn y Cartref

Mike Murray - Who ya going to call - Seen here

My favourite show of the moment is Mike Murray's Assembled at Home/Cydosod yn y Cartref currently showing at Goat Major Projects in Cardiff.

"Mike Murray will be presenting new works on paper at GMP from 12/08. Murray's watercolours are the result of using the techniques associated with 'Free Association'. The resulting observations look at how we define and associate ideas of self-awareness and character traits through the placement and assembling of groups of what may seem random objects. All these objects come together through a process of experience, memory and personal preference which the person assembling is likely to be unaware of as it is automatic and beyond conscious knowing. The collections appear as dislocated from their surrounding, the places that bring meaning to their use and purpose are removed. A subconscious dialogue occurs between mute objects and we are invited to contemplate the meaning and purpose of the objects that surround us everyday. Mike Murray's work explores ideas and processes that we could term as surrealism, the influence of the subconscious in our everyday and what exists beneath the thin surface we mistakenly describe as reality. The resulting work presents a form of dark humour at odds with the delicate and refined process of the watercolour.

For part of Assembled at Home, Mike will be resident in the project space responding to a book of diagrams for making house hold objects that forms the title of the show."

The show continues until 28 August - look here for opening times.

Colony: Contemporary Art in Alternative Spaces

Sean Puleston

I went to the inaugural opening of a nice new initiative a couple of weeks back in Cardigan, west Wales. Artist, Lee Williams, recently returned to his native Wales from London has gathered together a group of artists to show work in a couple of buildings either side of the river Teifi on Cambrian Quay and Teifi Wharf.  The works on show include installation, photography, video and sculpture and make use of some lovely interior spaces, partly renovated (above Fforest on Tefi Wharf) or partly derelict (Cambrian Quay). Artists showing include: Jonathan Anderson, Alex Duncan, Sean Puleston, Erin Rickard and  Lee Williams. 

The show continues over the bank holiday weekend until 27 August 2012 and if the weather is nice you can also get a bite to eat at Pizza Tipi - lovely!

Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru 2012

Carwyn Evans - Cast

Congratulations to Carwyn Evans for his gold medal win at The National Eisteddfod of Wales 2012 in the Vale of Glamorgan. I was particularly proud to see Carwyn's work win as I know that his time working with us at Oriel Myrddin Gallery in 2011 as part of our Project Object series of exhibitions was instrumental in bringing this current work into being.

The Gold Medal for Craft was won by Anne Gibbs with a series of abstract arrangements of ceramic objects Am gael bod rhywle arall / To be elsewhere.

Other highlights for me were Angharad Pearce Jones' new Tirlun y torrwr / Disc cutter landscape series and Sarah Ball's little portrait paintings.