“Chosen moments or meditative texts? If you have not seen the Wales that is the subject of these photographs, then what obstacles of preconception have you put in the way? For this is how it is. This is Wales. In one man’s vision, momentarized and selective, untainted by an idealizing, a rhetorical, a sentimental, a proselytizing imagination.” – Jim Perrin
A Landscape of Wales takes a broad look at the contemporary Welsh landscape. James Morris challenges the tourist clichés and looks at the impact of human presence and the layers of history in the landscape. He reflects upon issues of identity, exploitation and regeneration; it is a land of beauty and of hardship where – in this post industrial, post rural economy – Tesco and tourism are the great employers.
These are the contrasting realities of the Welsh landscape – that seen by the many visitors and that experienced by most inhabitants. Morris moves between tourist hot spots and the terraces and back streets where the majority of people live. The latter are often hard-bitten un-pretty places, no longer the world’s largest producer of iron, coal, copper or slate; they have lost their historic reason and heroic status. By contrast the tourist landscape is one of pleasure seeking and escape – this is the Wales that visitors are sold and want to see. But in a small country, this selling of culture for the tourist pound has difficult consequences that build on the complexities of history that have shaped so much of this landscape.
James Morris was born in Wales but brought up in England, – the work focuses on the country that his people are from, it explores the place he has returned to but is not necessarily perceived as being of. It is in part the personal journey of an insider/outsider.
A book of the project, published by Dewi Lewis, will be available.
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Gallery 1
29 Apr Ebr – 05 Jun Meh
Free Talk with James Morris on 20 May 6pm, all welcome.
