Art Across The City 2012

The rain is still trying to dampen our spirits, but camaraderie is high and everyone is focused not only on the launch, but on the six weeks ahead. That’s where we will come face to face with the public.

I can’t remember how the conversation started, but at some point over the summer, we acquired an Ifor Williams 505 Horse Box and converted it into an Information Hub.

The Hub will be mainly situated on Oxford St, Swansea, but being a horse box in a former life means we can get out and about.

It will also house David Blandy’s amazing Dylan Thomas Meets The Swansea Devil, a Guitar Hero style video arcade game.

It’s first outing will be at our launch on the 28th Sept at the National Waterfront Museum, before heading to Oxford Street in the city centre. It will also go out on various school and community group visits and to the National Engage Conference at the National Gallery, Cardiff.

We are looking forward to hearing people’s responses to the work but also asking a few of our own such as:

Is public art important?
What does it mean to you?
What is your favourite piece of public art (if any) and why?
What would you like to see in your city?
Who is your favourite member of One Direction?

OK, I made the last one up, but anything goes really. We want to start a conversation with people and hear their opinions. We want to hear new ideas, give a voice to old concerns and try and provide a platform for the young, old and everyone inbetween.

Louise Wright, a Portfolio Manager at Arts Council of Wales sums this up neatly. ‘Meeting contemporary art in unexpected locations can be an exciting, often challenging and sometimes playful encounter, and in my experience always a fascinating conversation starter.

Successful artistic interventions in the public realm often call into question the dynamics of our relationship to place, community, ownership and can at times demand our participation to be an active citizen. Opportunities which provide artists and audiences to engage in Wales in this way and which inspire dialogue, such as Locws International are necessary and critical meeting points.’

So let us know what you think. You can comment here, or get involved on Facebook and Twitter @locws_art #artacrossthecity

Art Across The City 2012 Project Manager, Gordon Dalton, falls down in a forest, but does anyone hear him?

Four days before our launch isn’t probably the best time to get philosophical. Installation is well under way with Fiona Curran, David Marchant and Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan’s work in place, with David Blandy and Jock Mooney all ready to install.

Despite the weather, the technical team of Eifion Porter, Richard Robinson and Sean Puleston have worked tirelessly and without complaint. I’m pretty sure philosophy isn’t at the forefront of your mind when it’s blowing a gale and the rain is horizontal.

However, a comment by a passer by yesterday raised an interesting point. Battling with an umbrella, a rather dapper gentlemen said ‘No one will see it if this weather keeps up,’ and then added ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?’ before he was blown down Oxford Street.

We made a concentrated effort this year to make the commissions as public as possible. They are slap bang in the city centre and all within a ten-minute walk of each other (five, if this wind keeps up). I’ve seen far too many projects go ignored, or rather, seen them hidden away by curators and artists from the most important element of public art – the people who see it.

The artworks are placed where people shop, where people socialise, where they relax and on routes where they walk to work. They are almost impossible to miss on a daily basis. A large proportion of the public will see these works at least twice a day for over 40 days and nights. Whilst that initial hit of surprise and curiosity of what has arrived in their city centre is crucial, a long-term daily relationship can be very rewarding.

We know that the people of Swansea will see the work. What we don’t know quite yet is if anyone else will. Does it have a significant effect outside of Swansea? Outside of Wales? The UK? This is why partnerships with www.a-n.co.uk are so important. We need to spread the word as far as possible. Social media allows our reach to extend further so more people get to see the work, even if it is remotely.

So maybe it should be the wittier ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, where are they?’

The dapper gentlemen had a point but should maybe have asked ‘If public art is placed in regional cities but no one outside those cities are there to see it, does it exist?’

The answer, through curiosity, outreach, education, pr, social media, critical dialogue and good old word of mouth, would be an unequivocal yes.

Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan introduce their work for Art Across The City 2012

We have designed a pair of shelters for the gardens in front of Swansea Museum. The shelters are simple temporary constructions with no seating and are lit only through the aperture created by the cut out mouth of a cartoon face. They are painted with a “found” pattern of rainbow coloured stripes. It’s a pattern with a number of possible allusions, including LGBT Pride and the peace flags of anti-war protests.

The simple hand drawn face used on the shelters is a recurring motif within our work. This work is one of a series of similar such pieces that function by creating disjunctions and disruptions in relation to their contexts. The cut out faces act to shift the status and nature of the work and a viewer’s relationship to it, with the objects functioning more as a theatrical stage set, rather than as sculptural objects.

Fiona Curran introduces her work for Art Across The CIty 2012

An Accident Looking For Somewhere To Happen presents a fractured and splintering wooden structure situated between two trees at the entrance to St.Mary’s church. The structure has been caught in a moment of explosion or collapse, it’s not clear which.

The heightened colours are borrowed from the world of the digital screen and advertising whose presence has become such a ubiquitous part of our everyday lives. Digital media enable access to local, regional, national and international sites simultaneously, in this process territorial boundaries dissolve as one location is caught up in another and distances collapse due to the compression of the near and the far. The speed of technology contributes to a sense of fragmentation as the instantaneous and dematerialized ‘real-time’ screen reality begins to replace the ‘real-space’ presence of objects, places and people.

These themes are explored through presenting an “accident” in the making, a precarious structure that engages the viewer through its form, colours and materials and through its unstable physicality.

The install over the last few days was relatively stress free. The only exception was the passing traffic and crazy range of responses / comments. These ran the full gamut of human emotions from the delight of some lovely OAPs to a someone who called me “an old hippy” (this did seem to be the most vitriolic and abusive term he could think of).

One man asked me if I was a Christian and began to inform me that the ancient pyramids and cave paintings were clearly built by aliens … I’m not sure what I was meant to deduce from this in relation to my own work – does it look like it has landed from outer space? One of the technicians mentioned that he thought they looked like crashed spaceships. This gives it a slightly Ballardian feel to it which I might go with…

Artist David Blandy introduces his work for Art Across The City 2012

I’ve made a Guitar Hero-type game that pits two Swansea figures against each other, Dylan Thomas and the Swansea Devil. I was reading Thomas’s “And Death shall have no dominion”, and it really reminded me of some 90’s rock lyrics, like the Melvins or Jesus Lizard. So I worked with this band, The Wailingest Cats, to create a dissonant rock song version of the poem. I guess I wanted to point at the way we find meaning and insight in strange places, like thinking about world politics while playing along to Black Sabbath’s War Pigs on Guitar Hero 2.

I like to work with things that already exist, like songs, films and games, changing their contexts to try to work out what they mean, how we interact with them, and how they might change us.

It makes things like this “Battle of the Soul: Swansea Devil vs Dylan Thomas” feel familiar, approachable.

It’s been a great process, gathering Manga artist Inko’s interpretations of Thomas, a guitar wielding Devil, and the gates of hell, and The Wailingest Cat’s interpretation of the poem, and trying to weld them together using a DIY song game programme called Frets on Fire.

I’m glad the machine is going to move around (in a converted Horse Box!), haunting different spots with its crunching guitars and gaudy graphics. I’m hoping it’s not obviously “art”, but something that engages people’s attention enough to make them try to figure out what it might be, what it might mean.

David Blandy