- Venue
- Porth Melgan
- Starts
- Friday, March 10, 2017
- Ends
- Thursday, March 30, 2017
- Address
- St David's Head (at low tides walk north along the coastal path from Whitesands Beach to the last beach before the Head)
- Location
- Wales
In the spring of 2017 visual artist Kenji Lim will be making a new piece of work in Pembrokeshire, at Porth Melgan, the beach closest to St David’s Head. Inspired by a story from the Mabinogion The Words Come From the Land and the Sea Takes Them will combine text, performance, installation and the environment itself to create a piece which re-wilds the mythic in the Welsh landscape.
In the story How Culhwch won Olwen the young hero Culhwch is set forty impossible tasks by the giant Ysbaddaden Bencawr which he must overcome in order to marry the giant’s daughter, Olwen. Their exchange features a repeating phrase — a challenge — that becomes a rhythmic and poetic chant, which will be written out in the sand across the beach at low tide, every tide for forty tides, day and night:
‘It is easy for me to get that, though you may think it’s not easy.’
‘Though you may get that, there is something you will not get.’
Each time the words are written the tide will come back in and wipe them away, taking them back out to sea with the water and requiring the artist to put them back. After the fortieth tide the task will have been overcome, the story completed and only the memory of it will remain.
Kenji will be making the piece from the 10th March until 30th March 2017 and welcomes visitors to view the work. The project is supported by the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority and the National Trust North Pembrokeshire.
