A collaboration between the New Media Centre Gallery, Sichuan Fine Art Institute and the University of Derby. The exhibition formed part of the British CouncilUK NOW festival in China.
Monday, 12 November 2012
Sichuan Fine Art Institute, Chongqing, China
Installation image of - Everyday, exhibited in the Uncommon Past; visual explorations of time, history and memory at the Sichuan Fine Art Institute, Chonqing, China.
A collaboration between the New Media Centre Gallery, Sichuan Fine Art Institute and the University of Derby. The exhibition formed part of the British CouncilUK NOW festival in China.
A collaboration between the New Media Centre Gallery, Sichuan Fine Art Institute and the University of Derby. The exhibition formed part of the British CouncilUK NOW festival in China.
Sunday, 22 April 2012
'an Uncommon Past' - Sichuan Fine Art, ChongQing, China
The Exhibition ‘An Uncommon Past’ opens on the 26 April at the Sichuan Fine Art Institute in China – as part of the British Council's Festival of British Art in China entitled UK
Professor John Goto of the University of Derby has curated the show which considers questions of time, memory and history.
artist include:
Cesario Alves
Robert Casselton Clark
Huw Davies
Fletcher, Parker and Watson
John Goto
Sookyoung Huh with Bjorn Larsson
Vared Lahav
Heike Lowenstein
Louise K Wilson
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Silent Village, "Making Histories, Recreating Memories" conference - DOX Centre for Contemporary Art March 10th 2012
Saturday March 10th 2012 | ||
0930 - 0945 | Registration | |
0945 - 1000 | Welcome + Introduction by Russell Roberts and Jaroslav Anděl | |
1000 - 1100 | Presentation I – Jerri Zbiral Presentation II – Pavel Barša Presentation III – Daniel Blaufuks Chaired by Béatrice Gonzalés-Vangell | |
1100 – 1130 | Plenary I | |
1130 – 1200 | Coffee break | |
1200 – 1300 | Presentation IV - Ernst van Alphen Presentation V – Jaroslav Pinkas (Presentation VI - René Block – tbc) Chaired by Pavel Barša - tbc | |
1300 - 1330 | Plenary II | |
1330 – 1500 | Lunch | |
1500 – 1530 | Panel discussion “The Silent Village” (Russell Roberts + Peter Finnemore + Jaroslav Anděl) | |
1530 – 1630 | Plenary III – chaired by Alexis Nuselovici | |
1630 - 1700 | Concluding remarks - Alexis Nuselovici Thanks - Jaroslav Anděl, Russell Roberts | |
1700 - 1800 | Snack break | |
1800 | Departure to Lidice (bus) | |
1900 - 1915 | Introduction by Lidice Memorial Staff - tbc | |
1915 - 2000 | Public Reading “A Child Called Lidice” at Lidice Memorial | |
2000 | Departure for Prague | |
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Silent Village - DOX Centre of Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic - Jan 12 - April 9th 2012
poster
section from the artist book, Album, by Peter Finnemore
Monday, 19 December 2011
Silent Village tours - DOX Centre of Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic. Jan 12 - 9 April 2012
'The Silent Village: Humphrey Jennings / Peter Finnemore / Rachel Trezise / Paolo Ventura, curated by Russell Roberts for DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague: The exhibition opens on January 11 2012 and a symposium is planned to coincide with the exhibition for March 2012 to explore the roles of art and literature to reflect on historical memory. This exhibition coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Lidice atrocity which Humphrey Jenning's original film sought to evoke in his 1943 film of the same name; responses by leading artists Finnemore and Ventura along with the meomrable prose fiction of Trezise, introduce a number of strategies to examine the significance of the film as history and its contemporary relevance.'
On June 10th 1942, the Czechoslovakian village of Lidice, 20km north of Prague, was obliterated by the Nazis following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by the Czech resistance. Throughout the West, news of the atrocity was met with outrage that later inspired various acts of commemoration including poems, novels, symphonies and films. These memorials sought to come to terms with the total destruction of a village, a symbolic attempt to try to understand and remember what took place. However, a more immediate response came from within the British Government that turned to film as propaganda to reconstruct the horrific events as if they had taken place in mainland Britain.
Paulo Ventura
Peter Finnemore
Within weeks of the Lidice tragedy, work had begun on translating those events into a film supported by the Ministry of Information, London, that was subsequently made in South Wales. In September 1942, a Crown Film Unit crew arrived in the Upper Swansea Valley at the small village of Cwmgïedd, close to the town of Ystradgynlais. Under the supervision of the artist, poet and filmmaker Humphrey Jennings, they set out to make a short film that recreated the fate of Lidice. The Silent Village (1943) both memorialises a recent tragedy, and alludes to future scenarios involving loss of liberty and ultimately death.
This exhibition and attendant publications reflect on the distinctive relations of time and place that defined Humphrey Jennings’ original film. The artists Paolo Ventura and Peter Finnemore and the writer Rachel Trezise offer their response to a film that is both a reconstruction of the Lidice atrocity and an account of Welsh life in the early 1940s. The artists’ attention to the power of fiction and generational memory through different modes of storytelling, offers an imaginary and emotionally complex bridge to historical events. In Jan and Krystyna Kaplan’s film The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (1992), a similar strategy to The Silent Village’s initial dramatisation of history connects with increasing use of fiction as a way of ‘knowing’ the past when seen in relation to archival footage.
Jennings’ remarkable film that fused re-enactment and realism still retains a prominent place in the filmic imagination of Wales and remains an important example of a pioneering documentary practice in the service of the State. The performative and fictional devices used in the original film also have a relevance to expanded ideas of documentary within contemporary art. It is here between official and unofficial histories that new narratives can emerge to broaden the historical imagination, to offer ways that encourage of reflection on what it means to represent the past and to understand better the conditions under which ideas of history are both produced and consumed.
text by Russell Roberts
The Silent Village is a Ffotogallery commission in partnership with the University of Wales, Newport.
Curator: Russell Roberts, Reader in Photography at the European Centre for Photographic Research, University of Wales, Newport
Saturday, 29 October 2011
I Cannot Escape this Place....
...well anyways... The debate about the need for a dedicated space to Welsh visual culture at the National Gallery of Wales in Cardiff has been evolving since Peter Lord published his essay 'The Aesthetics of Relevance' (Gomer 1992). These new spaces are a welcomed addition to the arts scene in Wales and will show the range of artwork produced in Wales since the 50's and how they relate to a larger international artistic context. Hence in this new exhibition artworks by Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Richard Long, Keith Arnatt are seen alongside Shani Rhys James, Ivor Davies, Common Culture, Carwyn Evans, Tim Davies, Myself, and Awst & Walther.
All the artworks in this exhibition come from the National Galleries permanent art collection. My contribution to this exhibition contains a series of colour images from the series Lesson 56 Wales and Base Camp, a single screen monitor version of my three daylight screen installation of 31 short films exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennial in 2005.
Radio 4's Today programme did a feature on the opening of the new galleries and the exhibition and I got a mention... Hey ! waking up on a Saturday morning and hearing your name and soundtrack on a national radio station, I just cant escape from this place..... here is a link to the radio feature.
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
Evan Walters- Blackened Face with Reclining Nude - full essay
here is a link to my complete essay which is fully illustrated, discussing Evan Walters picture Blackened Face with Reclining Nude (1945) which was published in the recent book Evan Walters - Moments of Vision, edited by Barry Plummer.
Friday, 26 August 2011
Water Knows No Frontiers - Tryweryn, the story of a valley
here is a link to the film Water Knows No Frontiers, this is an expressionistic and non linear re-edit of the 38 min film Tryweryn, the story of a valley, made by the staff and pupils at Friars School in Bangor during 1963 - 65, which documented the events surrounding the flooding of the village Capel Celyn and its surrounding farm area. The re-edit includes inserts of the photographs of Geoff Charles who documented the same events for the newspaper Y Cymro. Geoff Charles' son John. was a pupil at the school and also worked on the film. The title for the re-edit is a direct quote from the original film. Water Knows No Frontiers was screened at the Geoff Charles - Heb Eiriau / Without Words exhibition at this years Eisteddfod in Wrexham. It is hoped that it will get further screenings in the near future such as the Drwm Theatre at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.
Dafydd Roberts, Caefadog
chairman of the Capel Celyn defence committee
farmer, postman, councillor and deacon
buried in Llanycil Cemetery on Oct 15 1965
On the stones of this cemetery are names
Renowned for their bravery,
of those names, your name will be
Alluring in its glory
Dafydd Roberts, Caefadog
chairman of the Capel Celyn defence committee
farmer, postman, councillor and deacon
buried in Llanycil Cemetery on Oct 15 1965
On the stones of this cemetery are names
Renowned for their bravery,
of those names, your name will be
Alluring in its glory
Geraint Bowen
here is a further link to a set of chapters of original film produced by Friars School, this is on the Casglu'r Tlysau / Gathering of the Jewels - the website for Welsh cultural history
http://education.gtj.org.uk/en/filmitems/30360
here is a further link to a set of chapters of original film produced by Friars School, this is on the Casglu'r Tlysau / Gathering of the Jewels - the website for Welsh cultural history
http://education.gtj.org.uk/en/filmitems/30360
Friday, 12 August 2011
Geoff Charles 'Without Words / Heb Eiriau' installation - Wrexham Eisteddfod 2011
link from National Library of Wales on the opening of the exhibition
Press release
A major exhibition celebrating the work of Wrexham photographer, Geoff Charles, will be showcased at the forthcoming National Eisteddfod of Wales, to be held in the town. Curated by artist Peter Finnemore and Curator / Writer, Russell Roberts, Without Words aims to to make the richness and extent of the Geoff Charles archive at the National Library of Wales better known and understood.
For nearly 50 years, Geoff Charles (1909-2002), a press photographer from Brymbo, quietly recorded daily life in Wales - a country transformed by post-war mechanisation of farming and industry, the acquisition of land for nuclear power and reservoirs and subsequent rise of nationalist politics. He covered the mundane, the prosaic, the remarkable and the exotic that made up daily life in the countryside, villages, towns and cities. School portraits, civic ceremonies, festivals, accidents, new consumer goods and fashions, all formed the staple diet of newspaper content.
“Geoff Charles’ dedication and understanding of people and their surroundings allowed him to access situations and capture them in a unprecedented way,” said the curators. “
Peter Finnemore and Russell Roberts’ research involved trawling through the vast archive of some 120,000 prints and negatives held at the National Library of Wales
“It has been a rollercoaster journey through a fascinating social and cultural period in Welsh history that is still part of national living memory that is always guaranteed to produce differences of opinion,” they said. “Never destined to be shown in a gallery environment, Geoff Charles’ photographs, in some cases, when isolated from the words and captions that once framed them, take on another life.”
“In re-presenting a selection of his pictures as new prints, projections and interspersing his images into archival film footage, we alter how these pictures were originally seen in terms of scale and make them perform differently. “
The exhibition also features a film produced by the boys of Friars School, Bangor during the early 1960s. Shot in vivid colour, it portrays the eviction of the village of Capel Celyn and its surrounding farms to build a new reservoir primarily for residents and businesses of Liverpool. 'The Story Tryweryn', involved Geoff Charles' son a pupil at the school who worked as a cameraman. Since 1956, Geoff Charles had covered the events and ramifications of the flooding of the Tryweryn valley in some detail.
“Combining the photographs with the film, produces some interesting social, cultural and political differences. The collision of the still and moving image, of garish Kodachrome colour with monochrome, of amateur cinematography and newspaper coverage of events, conveys something of the deep tensions of the period.”
Without Words : The Photographs of Geoff Charles is exhibited at Y Lle Celf, National Eisteddfod of Wales, Wrexham & District, 30 July – 6 August 2011.
Without Words : The Photographs of Geoff Charles was commissioned by the National Eisteddfod of Wales with the assistance of the National Library of Wales and the Univesity of Wales, Newport and Swansea Metropolitan University. The exhibition is supported by a grant from Arts Council of Wales.
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