Tine Bech, Jackie Chettur, Rebecca Spooner, Simon Whitehead
8th – 31st October 2010
A series of new public art projects commissioned by Swansea arts charity Locws International, are set to be staged during the Swansea Festival of Music and the Arts in October 2010. Each of the temporary projects celebrate the rich and diverse history of the city and explore aspects of the city’s culture.
Danish artist Tine Bech has been working with the communities of St Thomas, Grenfell Park and Port Tennant as part of the SA1 Swansea Waterfront Art Programme to develop an artwork that reflects the area’s rich maritime history. She is working with local people through a series of ‘Light Drawing’ workshops to explore the history and memories of the local community. These drawings are to be the inspiration for a bold, colourful sculpture for the SA1 area that represents the local communities’ relationship with this historic area of Swansea.
Welsh artist, Rebecca Spooner has explored Cwmdonkin Park and the inspiration it gave to the poetry of Dylan Thomas. The artist has responded to the park’s rich wildlife and created a film-based installation that explores the impact our urban parks can have upon us, both in giving us the opportunity to be connected to nature and in turn with ourselves. The final installation is set amongst selected visual art from the collection of the Dylan Thomas Centre.
Marking 70 years since the beginning of the devastating bombing of Swansea during the Second World War, Simon Whitehead returns to this traumatic part of the city’s history by exploring the bomb craters left across the city and collating stories of peoples’ experiences and memories of them. Using a series of aerial photographs of the city taken by the Luftwaffe, he has created an interactive map that takes the viewer on a walk through the landscape of the city to discover if any of the craters still exist and what happened to the ones that have disappeared.
There is also another chance to see Jackie Chettur’s ‘…it is 89 days since we left the Mumbles Head’. The history of the Swansea ‘Cape Horners’ journeys are beautifully told through a series of images that are displayed within stereo viewers. If you missed it last time here is a second chance.
Maps and further information about the artworks will be available at the Locws Hub at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea.
Locws International works with international and Welsh contemporary artists to create new visual artworks and projects that respond to the culture and heritage of the City of Swansea. With Support from The Arts Council of Wales, The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, The City & County of Swansea and the Welsh Assembly Government.
