Projections into LLwyn Celyn

Llwyn Celyn is a Grade 1 listed building, regarded by Cadw as one of the finest medieval hall houses in Wales.

The Landmark Trust with PEAK created an artist in residency project around its restoration. As well as the residency artists, some others, including me, have been given access to this special place.

image courtesy Landmark Trust

Like human beings, dwellings throw out a kind of penumbra of physical and psychological noise around themselves. A farmhouse such as Llwyn Celyn, spreads its influence into the fields around it - in this case a process that has been going on for centuries. 

It's not merely a case of objects which have been used and abandoned: it is the landscape itself which is changed - refuse heaps, footpaths, different forms of enclosure and so on.

Perhaps when a place is in a state of flux - being gutted ready for restoration, this shadowing effect becomes temporarily stronger and more chaotic.

I'm interested in the detritus or frass around the periphery - elements and processes which may ordinarily escape notice - and bringing these somehow back to their human and domestic origins.

I set about documenting this by photographing the surroundings
then projected those images into particular spaces inside the house, and photographed the result.  

By this means, what has passed from the inside to the outside finds itself returning to a kind of origin, and the space of origin becomes mingled with its external effects.

trees pollarded on the boundaries

snagged detritus on the perimeters

 Discarded fireplace, onto re-discovered bread oven 

A stump suspended, batlike

or like a bottle washer

 Burnt glass from a bonfire, fused with foliage

 a purse

When Llwyn Celyn is beautifully restored, I'd be interested in projecting some of these dusty, decrepit mementos back into the new interior as another way of thinking aout how systems collide and intermingle - bringing them into new relationship and offering a new perspective on them, their purpose and their value.

I'll use some of these ideas in a workshop - Seeing through Landscape - at Nottingham Lakeside Arts on 13th March.

Caves

Back to the caves

Thanks to Arts Alive Wales' Creative Network mini-fund I've been able to buy a portable projector to experiment with film in Eglwys Faen cave using the tunnels and layers of graffiti as canvas, and making new film and recordings. 

These are stills from some first trials: projecting and re-filming clips of roads and waterways linked to past and present industry in the area.

refilming onto collected cats eyes flipped to the side of the road

This blog has charted work over the last few years, observing, drawing, photographing some of the strange remains of the interplay between human and natural activity in and around the caves - see systems and following posts.

 This new work continues exploration of the translocation and transformation of found objects as a way of thinking about how we navigate systems - relational, cultural, geographic, historical - 

and what happens when connection's lost, broken or hidden. 

Beyond Orpheus

Combining poetry, improvised music, movement, voice and film, Beyond Orpheus formed the closing event of the Tales We Tell extravaganza at 
Un Deg Un, hosted and co-ordinated by Steve Kenyon-Owen

Beyond Orpheus was the latest manifestation of 

The Orpheus Project, which over the course of a few years has brought poets, musicians, artists and performers together in a series of collaborative ventures

Our collaborations began in 2010 in an exploration of the Orpheus / Eurydice myth transposed to Craig y Cilau Nature Reserve, Wales - with particular 
focus on Egwys Faen cave.

My films and soundtrack took the sounds and sights from that location to 
Un Deg Un's cavernous upstairs retail-cave in the heart of Wrexham.

For the previous month of Tales We Tell, the space held a film triptych 
and some 7' drawings.

For the final event, thanks to Steve's expertise we were able to open up the space in a new way with 4 films - creating an environment for the poets/performers who were joining us.

image Anthony Mellors

me and audience
image by Anthony Mellors

with Scott Thurston

 Steve Boyland 

  Rhys Trimble  

Lyndon Davies

Anthony Mellors
image by Jo Delyse Packwood

Thanks once more to those other poets and musicians who feature on the film soundtrack, but who were not able to be at the Tales We Tell event:

Musicians and composer Gillian Stevens on Crwth, 
Sound Performers - Team Sports, (Matthew Lovett, Jimmy Ottley, Ian Watson)

Poets: Graham Hartill, Christopher Twigg,
 John Goodby, Claudia Azzola.

For more information about previous Orpheus /Eurydice events, go to
projects on my website and scroll through the pages.

Boxing the Chimera

I was surprised to find the chimera alive and well in Fort Collins, Colorado -  appearing in various guises in the work of Mary-Ann Kokoska and students.

On returning from the trip, it was time to finish a series of 7’ drawings, for the next phase of my own chimerical project.

The drawings will be on display in November and December at Swansea Museum Collections Centre (open every Wednesday). You can also meet me on site between 10.00 am and 4.00 pm on Friday 14th November.
Please ring for appointment to view at othe times: 01792 467282

Originally part of the Morfa Copper Works site, the Swansea Collection Centre is now a marvelously eclectic treasure trove of material relating to a huge variety of subject matters, both land-based and maritime, natural and man-made.

It was exciting to work with Katy Williams, Collections Technical Officer and Huw Davey, Collections Technician, in placing my drawings - making the most of all their knowledge and experience of what works best in the Collection Centre.

photo courtesy SMCC

It involved the moving of some of the collection, either to make space, or to bring objects relating to the drawings into new prominence.

In the Collection Centre, objects of vastly different form and function rub up against one another as if haphazardly, and I wanted to capture something of the way the strangeness of these juxtapositions seems at once to intensify the visual presence of the objects and to suggest shadowy new possibilities of meaning, use and derivation. 

Kate turned the lights out so that I could take these new possibilities further, by projecting films made about the collection onto objects.

The exhibition forms part of the Arts Council Wales funded Boxing the Chimera project, for the purposes of which I made drawings and a film from objects discovered in three museums: Newport Museum, Merthyr’s Cyfarthfa Castle and the Swansea Museum Collection Centre itself. By combining elements, the drawings attempt to create dynamic new configurations, suggestive of alternative orders of reality, whilst celebrating the individuality of the things themselves.
More info. at www.pennyhallas.co.uk and at www.axisweb.org