Back on the trail

After a break in the UK for some photography work, I'm now back on the trail. The High Route in the Pyrenees.

This post relates to the end of the first section of the walk as I complete the section through the Basque Country.

- and the walk continues. I remain a solitary figure in a huge landscape.

I make a successful descent from the Pic d'Orhy as the weather deteriorates. I cross the Port de Larrau and via the Pic de Gastarrigagna at 1732m eventually reach the unstaffed Cabane Ardane.

This is effectively guarded by a couple of brutish shepherd's dogs, howling, and snapping at my ankles.

The shepherd is nowhere to be seen, and, tired after the adventures of the day, I ignore the standard wisdom of giving them a wide berth, as I swing a walking pole at them, and lob a couple of useful stones at them as they retreat.

I share the Cabane with a couple of clean cut French boys. They tell me a tale of the sky that afternoon. How it was full, thick with vultures. That a sickly sheep had become bones within the space of 20 minutes. Our collective mind naturally explores the likelihood of this happening to us, and I sense us scanning the sky with a certain nervousness.

And they worry about the mice scurrying around the hut too, and, in the morning, inform me that they  'didn't sleep a wink' on account of the scuttling of midnight feasts.

I've had an excellent night, undeterred by anything as harmless as mice, preferring to save my nerves for more important stuff, like exposure above glacial lakes on steep sided snow, or pulling up on precipitous holds as the darkness gathers, or even falling and twisting an ankle, and having nothing but walking poles to fend off a skyful of vultures.

I avoid the dogs in the morning by a simple ruse, and continue circumnavigating around the huge hills of Chardekagagna and the Pic de Bimbalette.

And then, almost without warning, I'm in a weird and wired landscape  I'm in a pass between the Col de Uthu and the Col de Anaye. It's the wildest place I've ever been. Neither the sketchy Spanish mapping or Ton Joosten's guide have prepared me for this beautiful lunar terrain. Limestone sculptures jut from snow fields and ancient pines rise toward a hard blue sky. And the entire scene is surrounding by punchy peaks.

The day is winding on, I've had a couple of navigational setbacks, and have failed to find water recently. There has been a fiercesome thundery heat throughout the day and my stalwart 2 litre water bottle is as empty as a broken promise.

I become benighted here, in this larger than life landscape, and the soft rain that had previously and delicately washed the beach leaves in the lower parts of the valley becomes heavy, sharp sided and cold.

I have the night trapped in my ridiculously small tent amidst a fierce electrical storm. I dub the tent 'The Coffin', and feel as squeezed as a genie in a coke can. It feels as though there's an earthquake in the sky, and the rocks are seemingly fizzing with the energy of the lightning. It's hard to describe the terrible sense of entrapment in the coffin. Certainly it feels bad enough to consider exiting the tent to the preferance of the storm as the fearful weather seems easier to deal with than the claustrophobia.

I grit it out, and realise that the hail and steep sided rain is maybe a godsend, and assemble my billy and drinking cup outside to collect enough water to drink in the morning, although the constrictions of the space and the necessary unzipping of the tent soak the sleeping bag.

Naturally, or perhaps luckily, I survive the night, but these extremes of weather make me feel small, vulnerable, alive only via the benign good humour of the gods.

But now it's as if they're pleased to have a chance to demonstrate their good will, and the gods arrange for the day to dawn like a child's smile after a tantrum.

Its wonderfully clear, and there's an energy in the air as there is near a waterfall. I make tea, break camp, head off with renewed energy to Lescon. At one point, following an extremely sketchy trail of cairns I encounter one made of chocolate bars. Yes. A chocolate cairn. A cairn is a waymarker, usually constructed from a small piles of stones. I wonder if I'm hallucinating. I eventually suppose that some party must have left it for part of their party that has lagged behind. Maybe. Or maybe it's the benign gods, looking out for me. I dither, and then assume that this is probably the case, and help myself to a Peanut Brittle. 

After a seemingly interminable stretch on snowfields, and a little slip on some sneakily slippy and steep snow I make it down to fresh water. Its the source of a river, the Marmitou. The sound of the water is exquisite. The taste exotic. I drink about five litres of the stuff straight, wondering how I've never appreciated it so roundly before and why I've ever bothered to drink beer.

I saunter down to Lescon, and safety, and check into a Gite d'etape, a bunk house with food. There's singing, food and company, and the fact that we don't have a lot of language in common is a minor detail, after this taste of solitude and frisson of danger. 

Second Pyrenean Blog

'The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast', I quip to my friends Rob and Barbara as we sit on the terrace at their house in Rasquera, Catalunya.

It's day zero. My adventure's about to start. I'm to take the train to Irun on the West Coast, and then to get to Hendaye and the start of the walk. The High Route from the Atlantic to the Med. The tarantulas are larging it again. We drive to the train station. Rob offers me helpful advice about what to do if caught in a thunderstorm up there in the hills. 'Don't shelter in a crevice in the rock', he says, 'It can act like a spark plug'. I swallow, but don't pursue the metaphor. They put me on the local train to Barcelona, where I'm to catch the train to Irun. We have a jubilant parting.  And now I'm alone. It's just me and the 55 litre back pack. The Barcelona-Irun train is full. The guy behind the glass is profoundly helpful, books me a ticket via an obscure route, with a change in the middle. He's smiling all the while. I photo the departure board, to ensure I get off at the right place.

The train is slick, powerful, air conditioned. We speed across seeming desert under bruising skies for hours. I consider the distance. I distract myself with 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles' on   the kindle. I have an hour and a halfs wait at Castel Jon Del Ebro. It's a station in the middle of nowhere. There's no cafe, no bar, no departure board, just a bewildering amount of track and platform. The guy behind the glass this time is profoundly unhelpful. Curses me for not understanding Spanish. I wonder off, I sit on the platform, imagine myself in a spaghetti western. I'm Lee Van Cleef. I walk back into the booth, pull the cheroot from between my lips menace the guy as I assure him that the Irun train will stop here. I can't imagine missing this train in this no horse town. Another employee turns up, with a smile as wide as summer. He asks me where I want to go and escourts me across the track to an obscure line, waits with me until the train arrives. We communicate with smiles. I settle back into the kindle, arrive in Irun, after more spaghetti landscape and brooding skies. I wonder why I thought it'd be fun to do this trip alone. I find a pension, buy a couple of beers and a sandwich, wonder about the reality of  Tumbleweed, my imaginary footloose persona. I awake to the sound of trains passing the window. I'm surprised to see that one has 'Hendaye' illuminated in orange on its side. I feel as if the Gods are giving me chances. I'm confident enough to put marmalade on chocolate croissants, against the waiter's better judgement. I tell him that this is how I like them. 'Me gusto esta', I say, presumably fairly incoherently. I shuffle toward the subway train, there's a dusty white van parked opposite. The first three letters of the registration plate are HRP. Now this has to stand for the Haute Route Pyrenees in anyone's lexicon. The happenstance of coincidence and omen accelerate my progress toward the now imminent fulfillment of a dream. I'm in Hendaye. I shuffle around this tourist town in full kit, feeling a little foolish. I follow the guide book to the letter, become almost immediately lost. I ask a guy selling vegetables if he knows the way to an obscure railway underpass toward the outskirts of town. Rather miraculously he understands my worse than school boy French, points me in the right direction. He looks at my bag. We smile. I show im the front cover of the book, 'The High Route, Pyrenees', we look at each other, smile again. I set off, chuckling.

I cross under the M10, have a can of sardines. I look toward the Atlantic, and the big ships nestled against the safety of harbour. I wonder about the next couple of months of my life, alternating between exultation and funk. I follow well marked paths, pour water over my head to cool down, meet a charming guy from Holland, intent on listening to the football match between Spain and Holland in a Spanish bar. I hike on, digressing from the GR11 toward the HRP, as dictated in the bible. The path trickles out, I'm thrashing around in the mist and prickle bushes. Precipitous, edgy, ugly conglomerate looms around me. I curse myself for a fool. The mist clears monentarily, I regain the obvious school boy ridge, with its safe passage down the mountain, shuffle down to the closed hotel that is the first nights stop. I'm  surprised to find my new friend from Holland already there, relaxed against a tree with headphones and a beatific smile. We're delighted to see each other. I settle into a routine over the next few days.

The bleak dirt tracks full of hunters jeeps and quad bikes changes character, slowly transmogrifying via a Christo like sculpture above Pamplona into my imagined heather hollows.

I gain my first glimpse of the high hills themselves around a squat and snowless ski resort at Iratty. A days marching and now I'm amongst them. I'm atop the first 2000 metre peak of the trail, The Pic De Orchy, a pointy mountain writ large like that from a child's picture book. It's as if I'm up with the Gods, looking down on mortality. The world seems to fall away, and I take care where to place the accoutrements of domesticity as I make a cup of mint tea, with extra sugar and exultation.

As scarey as a bagful of Tarantulas

The last few months of my life have seen a steady diminution of my material possessions.

All my lendable stuff has been lent, my stashable stuff stashed, the flat sold.

I'm down to one 55 litre back pack.

I'm staying with friends, on a small olive and apricot farm near Rasquera, Catalunya, Spain.

I'm making the final preparations for the trek.

Tommorow I'll catch the Barcelona train 

to Irun, and from there I'll make my way to Hendaye, the border town between France and Spain on the Atlantic Coast.

From here I'm set to walk the High Route across the Pyrenees.

500 miles from the Atlantic to the Med. The route stays roughly on the central spine of  mountains that separate France and Spain.

There're mountain refuges along the way, and there's also a couple of remote sections, where you have to rely on your wits.

I wonder how I'll cope with the solitude, the navigation, the physicality of it all.

I have a bag of essentials and very few luxuries.

About a week ago, on the way down from the UK, I'd crossed the Pyrenees around Andorra and Ax les Therms in the car. As I reached the top of the pass the mountains wrapped themselves in a vicious storm, and became as scarey as a bagful of tarantulas.

It rattled me at the time,  and last night I dreamt that my bagful of high tech survival kit had turned into the metaphorical tarantulas, gibbering up at me as I attempted to make camp for the night.

I grimace, steel myself, make a final check through the bag.

It's compartmentalized in dry bags. I have 'wardrobe' for sox and a spare T-shirt. I have 'office' for maps, and the luxury kindle, 'hardware' for the Sat nav and solar charger. There's a 'larder' too, a first aid kit, an ultra light weight tent the size of a bottle of coke, a tiny stove, crampons for the higher sections .... And not a tarantula in sight.

It doesn't seem much for 500 miles but it weighs over 15 kg.

But it's ready. I'm ready. I hope I'm ready enough. And if not. Well. I'm coming anyway, like we used to say as kids, when we played 'hide and seek'.

 'Coming, ready or not'.

Writing this, I realise that I've the same overwhelming mixture of sensations, now, as I had then, squashed in the airing cupboard or wherever, and they're taking short cuts between my mind and stomach.

Anticipation, delight, excitment and fear.

A heady combination.

I think back a couple of days. Barbara, my friend from Rasquera and I had been on the coast for lunch, and we'd spotted this sculpture at l'Ametlla de Mar.

Now then, I wonder, if I had legs s long as this, what would I be feeling now?

To be able to walk like the Gods, amongst the Heather Hollows of High Hills, and to take one's rests, with such elegance.

To tackle the mountains with style. That's what I'd like to do. Even if my legs are pint sized, human, and 53 years old to boot.

To tackle the mountIns with style. As my favourite poet, Charles Bukowski might have said; 'That is what I call art'.

Sky Blue Pink

I recently painted the front door for our house bubble gum pink

and didn't think too much more about it until a friend of a friend asked me:

Is it legal ?

Legal?

Well, yes

I said

I think so, no complaints so far...

Later that day, about to relate the tale to a friend of how the colour of my front door's legality had been brought into question I got no further than

I've painted my front door pink

before she asked

Is that a euphemism?

and looked at me faux coyly in a lovely way she has that she reserves solely, I suspect, for simpletons.

Determined to catch up I resorted to hearsay and Wikipedia and was surprised to learn that pink is controversial enough to have a campaign aimed at it's elimination. Well, that's not quite true but there is a campaign railing against the 'culture of pink which invades every area of girls’ lives'. www.pinkstinks.co.uk. Pinkstinks thinks that the culture of pink for female tots leads to a whole load of bad stuff including body image obsession, as girls are conditioned to subscribe to the damaging boundaries within which they will grow up in via pink. There's a lot of conviction and a high degree of passion flying around the site and although they don't seem to say if they think that pink would be just as damaging if it were to be foisted on boys instead of girls, I was surprised to learn that the correlation between boys:blue and girls:pink wasn't always the case.

[Is this true? Ed.]

Yes. According to Woman's Journal, a women's rights periodical published from 1870-1930:

pink being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.

So. Pink is a moveable feast. It arouses strong feelings and it used to be a colour associated with boys and now it's associated with girls. Just when Pink shifted it's association is unclear but I was pleased to learn about the mutability of pinkiness as I've always been intrigued by the choice of colour for the doors and down pipes of Swansea's old J Shed - a very masculine building if ever there was one.



J shed was re-developed in 2004 as part of the bland chic-ification that was the then Welsh Development Agency's best efforts around Swansea's old Prince of Wales Dock. Thus J shed's now shows a very National Trust style approach to colour which resolutely eschews pink. In fact it's grey and sage as, amusingly, The Bland tend to ignore the ravages of time on colour intensity when they redecorate, and assume that history chose faded colour schemes.

J shed was built in or around 1895, about the time the PoW dock was expanded to accommodate the larger steam ships that were then giving sail ships a run for their money.

But does anyone know when J shed was painted pink?

The Prince of Wales' Dock was probably in decline in the later half of the 20th century in the face of competition from the larger King and Queens' Docks to the West and the loss of traffic due to the demise of Welsh coal. So I'm guessing that the last redecoration was probably in the 50's or 60's when pink should have been well on the way to being re-aligned from boy colour to girl colour.

You can see the actual colour transition at J shed in this picture of a wheel from the bottom of one of the doors.



J Shed's doors & downpipes were once blue and mutated to pink via British Empire Blood Thirsty Red thus showing an anachronistic embrace of what was probably the then accepted colour code for gender - assuming of course that we subscribe to the notion that J Shed is indeed a 'masculine' building. That's another subject, but it certainly existed in a whole heartedly male world - that of Swansea's dockers and the world's sailors. I suspect J shed was pinked up in the 50's or 60's by someone who thought that pink was still associated with masculinity .. Tho as we're unclear as to when pink or gender shifted it's allegiance it's hard to know just how far out of line this thinking was.

Whichever way you look at it, J shed's choice of colour is curious, and begs the larger questions of how the exclusive assignment of a single colour to gender is assumed, as well as how the shift of this colour between genders occurs. In the currant maelstrom surrounding sexual identity, pink, and the assumptions we all make around colour & gender, should be well worth watching.

More research, as they say, is needed. Also, and far more importantly to a boy whose pink credentials are nailed firmly to the door at Number 4 Uplands Crescent:

When will it be our turn again to have another go with pink?

Boys. Really now.

What's not to like about pink ?

Paul Roche :: Genius Potter

How do you make clay do this?

I met Paul in 2004 and over the years have taken great delight in photographing his work. Not least of course because he'll usually give me a piece of work in exchange for the snaps, and when we saw Paul for tea recently I was proud to receive a 'Trophy for Underachievers' from his recent show at Picton Castle.

The first time I photo'd with him was for an exhibition he and fellow arts tutors at the West Wales School of the Arts, Carmarthenshire were holding at St Clears, Pembrokeshire. Paul's pieces were a series of movie projectors and wall plaques. Ceramic projectors projecting ceramic movies - how beautifully off the wall is this?

This is Paul, adjusting the focus on one of the machines.






Later that year he was holding a joint exhibition with Ingrid Murphy: Stilled life. His pieces were a series of portraits in clay. This is 'Sloaney Ranger'.




And this is Claire, seen against one of Ingrid's pieces from the exhibition and the image used for the invitation.



The next two exhibitions that I photographed for him were at the Queen's Hall Gallery in Narbeth in 2007 - a joint exhibition with Mick Morgan, and then a one man show at Aberystwyth early in 2009. The Queen's work was a mixture of domestic objects: irons, food mixers & taps along with a series of cakes. Wedding cakes. It was more or less a sell out show. Here's a selection of domestic objects made less ordinary, celebrated by an extraordinary mind.

The Aberystwyth show was all about the 'glory of the ride' as Zen Dog would have seen it.. about ascending, for example, a rickety set of stairs or a fantasy ladder thro a fantasy tree. The prizes at the end of this journey are of course, only implied. Here's some of the trees and stairs.





There were other exhibitions that I didn't photograph but this brief foray thro' Paul's work over the last few years gives some idea of it's range. Wonderful. Witty. Thoughtful. Wise. Whenever I see Paul I'm delighted by his enthusiasm and exuberance and always surprised at what his next project is. Stoves, fishtanks, go faster stripes .. anything that no-one but Paul would consider making in clay. I've watched Paul work a few times now and can vouch for a chaotic fluidity and an instinctive passion. It's almost as if his hands are connecting directly with the clay and bypassing any need for the brain to get involved with those hum drum motor functions. As the clay seems to grow organically between his fingers Paul takes delight in the developing form, and as it finishes, seems almost as surprised as I am. Ingrid Murphy, now Programme Leader at the BA Ceramics Course at UWIC, talking to me about Paul's working technique said something along the lines of 'Clay's not supposed to be able to be made to do things like that'. Check this last picture below. A self portrait in clay.





That's Paul the maker on the left. Paul as made by Paul on the right. Just in case there's any confusion. But seriously now. How does he make clay do this?

You may have more in common with your cups than you think

How pots have a handle on our stregnth & fragility

Around 1991 I impulsively ended a long term relationship & moved out of the safe shared house that I'd lived in with the girlfriend I'd met at Uni ten years previously. For three or four months I enjoyed a lively madcap adventure of sculpture, travel & photography as well as new friends and a new, and naturally doomed, business venture

It was a manic episiode, not that I knew or cared and after it had run it's course I found myself in an unfamiliar world at 29, The Street, Aldermaston with a whole load of new possessions and not a lot of my old ones, a self-pillaged bank account & a bowel-curdling fear of the future

Aldermaston is mainly known on account of it's connection with WMD and I guess a lot of people wouldn't know there's a village there at all. There is & it has a pub, post office & shop as well as a Manor House whose owners let the locals walk in it's grounds. It's a friendly place, and the best refuge I could possibly have hoped for with such a headful of nonsense

As well as the pub and the post office there's also a pottery which was then employing seven or so potters. They used local willow wood to fuel the kilns & the clay was often hand dug nearby. It was run by Alan Caiger-Smith, who, although I didn't realise it then, is a giant in the ceramic world

I was drawn to the pottery and to the people in it as well as to this magic way of making in such a self contained, organic way. And, luckily for me, I was welcomed



 

This is the throwing room at the pottery with two of the potters, Lou and Ursula. They were playing up as I was fumbling with the camera and the picture works largely by accident, somehow managing to explain something of the pottery's exuberance and creativity.

I love how Lou's gesture appears to be dispensing with time, in the shape of the pottery clock. I could identify with that & felt certain solidarity with Lou as image; it helped me realise that I wasn't the only one to have ever had a reckless throw of the dice.

 

Maybe on account of this Lou & I became friends & during the friendship Lou gave me several pieces of work including this earthenware cup and saucer:



This was her own work as opposed to the more mannered pieces that the pottery produced and all the more special to me for that reason

Pottery is the earliest craft, probably discovered accidently via clay hardened under a hunter-gatherers' fire. Humans have grown, even evolved with pots; we use the same language to descibe ourselves physically as we do vessels. We share neck and shoulder, belly and feet with them as well as a mouth and lips. The Potter Bernard Leach goes further than this and suggests that pots also share strength, fragility & quietness with us

I didn't feel any of this then in an articulate way but in the topsey turvey days and months when the enormity of turning your own life upside down becomes a flat-lining reality, the turmoil I'd wake with would take some distraction. I'd make coffee with Lou's Cup and would feel less worse. It lent me windows of calmness because there was something there that I could share my fragility and quietness with. And later, strength too. It was a godsend

Two or three years went by & the pottery was starting to close. Lou was moving on & one day appeared with the plates below 

casually & gracefully handing them to me. It was a while before I realised that she wasn't just giving them to me for safekeeping & I was touched. They became the feast plates on account of their gargantuan size and I loved them instantly. I love them still, because of what they are: accessories of celebration, and, ipso facto, for what they helped me regain: celebration itself

All clay pots were once earth, and, because of their colour and weight, the feast plates remind you of this. They're not pretending to be anything other than raw fired earth that's had just enough adjustment to allow you to eat, clean and store them. And just enough decoration to let you know that although they're understated, they have form. And with this lack of artifice, they can take you back to the first hunter-gatherers' fire, and help you to understand the quietness of your place in the world



The strength, fragility & quietness that vessels can meaningfully share with us could be extended to include the qualities of flaws & weaknesses. And the capacity for playfulness. The bowl above has the beauty of counter intuitive rhyme to it as the curve of the brush responds to the curve of the bowl itself. Playfully. And the glaze drips and finger marks flaw it. It was the last vessel that Lou gave to me and it came with an understanding that playfulness & the beauty of flaws & weakness, not to mention beauty itself, are all intertwined



Here's Lou in the pottery: Anyone familar with the work of 'The Pottery, Aldermaston' will recognise the characteristic brush strokes just visible on the bowl she's painting and also on the bowls behind.

Something real remains for me within this photograph. A ghostly angel maybe, perpetually painting with an quiet grace and turning clay into metaphor



Before Lou left we took a trip to the Atlas mountains in Morrocco and after that the patterns shifted and our lives took different paths. So this is Lou & how I'd like to remember her. 

 

Irrepressable, optimistic &  crackling with enthusiasm for the start of the day. 

Locws 2000 - 2010 Photographs by Ken Dickinson.

Locws International, the original brainchild of artists David Hastie and Tim Davies, has been hosting art interventions in Swansea since 2000. Here follows some photographs & thoughts on some of these interventions over the last decade or so along with a comment or two on art intervention itself.

Sail Bridge Music Action : 2009 : Paul Granjon : When is a bridge not a bridge? When Paul decides it has something of a giant harp about it and, with the help of Swansea Dance Group Dynion performs a number on it making it, probably, the largest musical instrument in the world. Meaning can be gained by an understanding of the compromise between two contradictory statements regarding the same event. As the twang on a sitar string results from the tension of a wire strung between two opposing points so to can the truth be approached as the peculiar resonance as witness or experience is stretched between two opposing points of view. The bridge as bridge gains from the the additional meaning as bridge as musical instrument and our understanding of it, and therefore the place it has for us, is enhanced by this particular intervention. This is the value of art and, as the sail is re-presented as harp and the performance comes to a close our minds are alive with other possibilities of mischievous and artistic mis-use. Or they would be if we had the imagination. I loved this piece and I hope the pictures capture some of the energy of this re-presentation of Swansea's sail bridge. I know it's axiomatic to say that there's an important distinction between representation and re-presentation but here's a concrete example of the power of re-presenting rather than representing an object. Beautiful.

Ship Shape: 2009 This is the work of Megan Broadmeadow and borrows beautifully from Edward Lear's poem of the green headed, blue handed Jumblies, who went to sea in a Sieve. Okay, there's no one actually in the shoe but the implication's there. We all love the outlandish & wildly optimistic behaviour of the Jumblies and, amongst other things Megan's shoe was an open invitation to participate, Jumblie style in a fantasy adventure. There are other links too, to Old Mother Hubbard and to Joyce Dunbar's 'Shoe Baby' and more recently I remember reading about a pair of Burmese fishermen who survived a 25 day ordeal in a 5' by 4' ice box amidst shark infested waters. This is probably a step too close to reality for most of us but it reinforces the notion and the opportunities offered by Megan's shoe, if only in our Jumblie style dreams. For what it's worth, I liked it, as shoe, as I like a lot of work transposed and transformed by seemingly innocuous means. This tranformation, by scale, speaks as eloquently to the beauty of form as a 1000 real shoes and I'd have loved to have seen more of them, scattered simultaneously around Swansea. A giant lost shoe, for instance, discarded sideways on the Kingsway, or Wind Street, testament to the hugeness of the vast bank of lost & mentally abandoned nights out on the town. And while we're at it how about a giant glove too? Abandoned somewhere on Kilvey Hill, a memorial to all those lost and lonely gloves we see after a spell of bad weather, mourned only by their owner and, presumably, their erstwhile partner. Or how about a location on the very tip of the hill, by the communications tower? A giant dropped glove, helpfully impaled on a giant post, waving thanks in reply to all those digital morsecode like heartbeats beaming in so thanklessly to Kilvey. And of course it goes without saying that, out of respect to the Jumblies, this giant glove should be blue.


And this is the work of performance artists Neil Bromwich & Zoe Walker: Seige Weapons of Love: 2007 and -assuming of course that the love cannon could be read as both a conventional and a human cannon- another piece commenting on the surprises offered by a change in scale. This was the opening piece for Locws International's 2007 show 'Art across the City' and was based at the Guildhall. Accompanied by a small orchestra, participants were encouraged to load, and -after a bit of huffing and puffing aided by a petrol driven leaf blower- launch helium balloons from a large pink gun. The work also included the siege weapons of love themselves, plasticine models of guns and the tools of war mutating into objects of beauty. Alongside this metaphorical spiking of rifle barrels with flowers was the raising of a flag on the Guildhall's flagpole. The first flag to have been flown there for 25 years. I was initially surprised as to the trainspotty importance attached to this lapse of flag flying in the -what I see as- sometimes daydreamy world of high art but was to be firmly put in my place. A very local resident bustled over to us during a practice session that I was photographing to enquire, breathlessly, 'Do you know, that's the first flag to be flown here for 25 years?'

Touche. It just goes to show.

And, incidently, on the day, the flag flew beautifully with just the right amount of unfurling wind.


Peter Finnemore. 2000 Shed; The Passion No. 1 at The Dylan Thomas Centre. I've always enjoyed Peter's work. It's often witty, always thought provoking and generally gentle or even kind. This work was no exception and, unusually for Peter's work, included himself as 'shed man'. The shed was inside the centre & Peter was in the shed itself, holding the golden ball of thread in the photo below. A beautifully whimsical metaphor of magical potential illustrating the universal symbolic appeal of the shed's connection with inspiration and creativity.


Rhona Byrne: Learning to fly over Swansea 2007 at St. Mary’s Church. All of Locws' work is site specific inasmuch as the artists are asked to respond to some aspect of the city. Rhona took this invitation more literally than most and learned to fly at Swansea airport before going on to fly over the City, film it, and then to show the film behind the altar at St Mary's Church. As an organisation Locws always impresses me by the way it's able to gain the access and permissions neccessary to show something as seemingly outlandish as a flying machine in the house of God. I'm not saying that I think there's neccessarily anything ungodly about flying, after all, the Angels themselves set a bit of a precedent regarding this, & nor indeed, would I say that there's any precedent for peacefulness regarding the outbreaks of Christianity over the last 2000 years. But I think there's certainly something unchurchy about aeroplanes in church. Or certainly something incongruous about the idea of a flying machine in an institution that takes refuge, by and large, in the archaic language of the 17th Century. The work itself of course is all the stronger for this seeming incongruity, and speaks volumes of the dissconnect currantly discernable between a ghostly god of nonmaterialism and mammon. And this in turn speaks volumes regarding the cleverness of the location of the work as well as the wisdom, in my opinion, of the permission from St Mary's that made it possible. The fact that the church itself was extensively damaged during the Blitz, by the Luftwaffe's own machines, adds to this poignancy, and the view of the cross of the altar, becoming the cross hairs on a target in the third photo, speaks on many levels.


Brigitte Jurack. Junge mit Jack : The River Tawe Bridge : 2002 Jurack's work comments on the 'otherness' of times gone by and uses the oval shape of the top of the old Neath - Swansea rail bridge pillar as a reference for Swansea's youth's skateboarders in Castle Square. The work itself was beautifully executed and is possibly the most crafted piece of work commisioned by Locws. That's not to say that the concept of the work itself isn't similaly considered. I believe it is; and also that the work was brilliantly referential, even deferential to Swansea's industrial and industrous past. The figure itself can be read as thoughtful, wistful & even despairing - and was certainly read this way by those members of the public, who, mistaking art for life itself, phoned the police to report a would be suicide. This was a brave piece of work, and one that commands respect for the past. Swansea Council would do well to consider this approach as it pussyfoots around the pressing decision of what to do with the abutments of the old Slip Bridge.

Sara Rees This work, Kairos, 2009 involved the construction and launch of a floating shelter and it's mooring in the heart of Swansea Marina. Kairos is one of the Greek words for 'time' and means either a period of time or the way in which time passes, the qualitative quality of time. It's been said that Sara's work is about the altered states of consciousness induced by trauma - and that these states - perhaps induced by significant loss- cast us into a different world. As a piece of work, Kairos can be seen as the world itself entering an altered state as the crisis of late-capitalism casts the planet itself into a different and apocalyptical world. The shiney yachts in the marina would become the ravaged shelters of the future and we were invited to take a glimpse into this world. Viewed at twilight there's a warmth about the floating structure due to the tungsten light installed and it becomes inviting as a shelter, and so too then, by implication, does the potential of apocalypse. Kairos presents the possibility that altered states of consciousness, induced by trama, may be a route to the sublime. Or put another way: that a post capitalist world may be desirable. Amen to that. I've always thought those sleekily shiney yachts in Swansea - judged recently by think tank Centre for Cities as one of the 5 most economically vulnerable cities in Britain- a bit too sneaky & ostentatious. It's good to see an artist challenging the assumptions of excessive wealth and asking the obvious question in eloquent fashion: What times are these?


Niamh McCann's mural painted on the intriguing back of the Dylan Thomas Theatre has the fantastic title 'Flock Of Ospreys Looking For The Old Blind Sea Captain Who Dreams Of His Deceased Sea Fellows Under A Visiting African Sun'. It's an ambitious piece. The Ospreys replace the seagulls in James Harris' painting ‘Swansea Bay in Stormy Weather’ that the mural is in part based on and the African Sun (visible in the 4th shot as a single red disc) presumably references the voyages that Swansea's seafarers may have made.The work's a masterpiece of understatement in as much as it would be incomprehensible without reference to the title itself. I like that. The poetry of the title mixing with the simplicity of single colours celebrating Dylan's Theatre modernised by Ospreys. And the blindness of the Captain & de facto blindness of the radio audience of 'A Play for Voices' identifies with the blindness of the viewer of this work as they grope around the title searching for clues. Master, or perhaps Mistressful. I think it's also true to say that it's one of only two pieces of work commissioned by Locws that has remained in place (the other is Bermingham & Robinson's glass works above the doors at the Brangwyn Hall). And rightly so. Locws has a genius for recognising potential and this magnificently quirky wall with it's beautiful concrete folds representing a theatre curtain is enhanced immeasurably by this intervention.


Jaan Toomik: 2007 This piece of work, making accessable the shadowy memories of Swansea's old council chamber, speaks volumes about the way we communicate. There were four short films: Dancing with Dad, Seagulls, Jaan and the piece that these photos are from, Waterfall. 'Waterfall' is an incredible piece. A lone figure screams soundlessly against the back drop of a waterfall and as the camera zooms out to reveal a wider context the sound slowly becomes increasingly audible. But it's not the sound of the scream that we hear but the eventual roar of the waterfall itself. This work is about communication with benefits. It neatly counters the first lines of Ella Wilcox's poem Solitude: Laugh and the world laughs with you; Weep and you weep alone. It reminded me of Diana's funeral and the very public out pouring of grief from, what seemed at the time, the whole of the UK. I remember thinking how much easier the loss for her sons must have been to bear knowing that the entire nation was effected. For less pivitol characters loss is a private and personal grief and the beauty of Jaan's piece Waterfall allows us to believe that we can be cradled, rather than buffetted by the world. It's like singing in a crowd at a football match. You're given this great big voice! Only here, in the a-synchronous unfamiliarity of the dark and bygone council chambers this amplified voice is the whole of your world and that of the environment around you.

Richard Higlet's' A song for Jack, 2008 is a celebration of local hero Swansea Jack, the 1930's black retriever that, legend has it, rescued 27 people from drowning played on some dogs' ability to yodel in the way that wolves howl at the moon. The auditions were chaotic and rehearsals cacaphonous. But come the final concert the Dogs pulled it off, and, with accompaniment from local musicians there was a fine semblance of song. What surprised me most about the unlikely event was the dignity of the canine performers, visible in the photos below. Outstanding. And, given that in addition to rescuing 27 people Jack also saved 2 fellow canines, appropriate. There was pride too for the owners and the event was treated with fitting seriousness. Many of the dogs were finely dressed and as well as being a piece of performance art the end of the event had the feeling of the end of a party - or a funeral - in that some resolution - even canine coming to terms with - had been reached for Jack. As Phoebe Hesketh's poem says: The day of death is better than the day of one's birth. And the end of a party is better than the beginning. Quietness gathers the voices and laughter into one cup - we drink peace. And it really did seem, as we all went home, that we- the dogs and us I mean- had learnt something about the way we interact together, as well as about the bravery, and the universality of heroism.


Alice Maher. Mnemosyn. Swansea Museum. 2002. Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, created here in the form of a refrigerated bed. Beds are our refuge for love, birth, death and loneliness. Places perhaps for the making of memories. What wackier location then, for an evoker of a memory maker, than the Museum itself? The maker of memories, frozen in time & housed in the memory store.




Davide Bertocchi is a cerebal performer and his works appeal both to the head and the heart. Once Upon a Time in the West: 2003 was an extravagant performance on Swansea beach outside County Hall referencing Guglielmo Marconi, surrealist painter Giorgio De Chirico, the 70's Spaghetti Western's and Swansea's Metal Detecting Club. Impressive. Marconi is generally credited with the invention of 'the radio' and it's his first transmission over the open sea -across the Bristol Channel- that this work principally explores. This was a complex performace and hinged on the detectors finding all the letters of this first transmission, the individual letters of the cryptic sentance 'Are you ready?' that had been buried in the beach the previous day. The soundtrack was Ennio Morricone's from 'Once upon a time in the West' and the giant inflatable Cacti provided the reference to de Chirac. It must surely rate as some of the most powerful scenes outside of shipwrecks Swansea beach has seen. And as such a fitting tribute to the invention of Radio itself, which was soon to be credited -and just for starters- with those whose lives were saved from the loss of the Titanic. So much for setting the scene then - how does it rate as art? I think this piece of work is seminal and beautifully simple. Why? Because it simply reverses the problem of wireless transmission & re-presents it in a way that enables us to understand the initial impasse. Such is the value of art. What was then about dematerialising the spoken word and sending it across the ether to rescramble it successfully is translated, via this piece of work as the message is literally scrambled and buried before being searched for, found, and rescrambled by the metal detecting brigade. And the the heroic backdrop of cacti and soundtrack emphasise this poetically. You have to admit: It's a pretty neat metaphor of the original problem of transmission & the joy that must have arisen from cracking the code.The value of art, in this case then is to explain and elucidate as well as to entertain. And for my money, with this piece of work, Davide has done this in spades. But that's not all, because the other thing about it was that as one of the photographers there I got to dress up in a white suit too, like the detectors, and was also seen as part of the art. Fantastic, or, as it was put in art-speak later: I became a metaphor of researcher.


It's been said that Art is the screaming pulse of humanity, trying to beat, & it's also been said, by Henry James in fact, one of the sanest of writers that: We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. The rest is the madness of art.

Where do these interventions of Locws fit then on the spectrum between heartbeat and madness?

Locws has nailed it's colours to the interventionist mast, it's work is therefore a form of conceptual art and as such values the idea or concept as more important than any aesthetic treatment of any materials involved.

Now this itself may rule out it's consideration by some; certainly anyone who expects the artist to create special kinds of material objects.

Anti-conceptual art sentiment abounds, the Stuckist movement memorably if simplistically criticised it on the grounds that 'Artists who don't paint aren't artists ' and whilst some of their tirade is probably tongue in cheek the sentiments expressed are widespread.

But art can't all be Rodin and Rembrandt, and conceptual art has two big hitters playing for it:

1. Ambiguity: We're not told what to think; as in a David Lynch film, there is only the basic outline of a plot; the conclusion is up to the viewer & so to with interventions: there is no 'right answer': meaning will depend on mood as well as the instinctive reaction we feel when confronted with a piece of artistic intervention. This hands a lot of responsibility back to the viewer or participant to apply themselves to the piece of work & this itself may not be what we initially expect.

2. Price: Conceptual art is free & rails against the commodification & capitalisation of art. It can require a different mental approach to appreciate a piece of work without the endorsement of a six figure price tag.

I like both of these two premises and think that in the context of the understanding of art they're important & linked as both factors mean that we have to think and respond for ourselves.


Broadmeadow's work as well as the work by Bromwich & Walker depends on transformation by scale for impact: A super size shoe or canon allow us a reality check on shoes and canons & allow a clean slate to appear for us to think anew about shoes and cannons and, by implication, anything else. The work by Jurack, Rees & to an extent Bertocchi require us to suspend our obsession with chronological time, and this too, is of obvious benefit. Rhona's work questions our assumptions of context and Higlett's piece with the dogs challenges our anthropomorphic assumptions regarding heroism and the collective memory. There are other straightforward assumptions that conceptual art can challenge apart from size, time, context & humanism and this has obvious and huge ramifications. Assumptions are the true dictators and it's good to see them challenged in an intelligent, poetic and sometimes beautiful way.

Sure: I agree that there are times, artistically, when we need Contstables as well as concepts but there can never be times when we can rely solely on romance. Neither in art or in life; or, indeed, the twilight zone inbetwixt.



Perhaps anyone who's read Tom Robbins' novel 'Skinny Legs and All' can sympathise with would be figurative artist Ellen Cherry as she sees her conceptul artist partners' star soar:

He tricked me, Ellen Cherry was thinking now. With art and sex, he tricked me into love.

And, albeit in parellel or maybe even in reverse, we can understand something of the work that Locws International is doing in Swansea: Because, by using concepts instead of craft, Locws has tricked Swansea into thinking about art.

I suggest Swansea has gained immeasurably from these transient interventions and the assumptions they may have caused us to reconsider.


The next Locws event will be opening on the 16th April 2011 and closing 15th May 2011. Open daily from 10-5pm. There will be an information hub with maps located in the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea with artworks sited in public areas around Swansea city centre.