Hello! Welcome to this Autumn edition of the newsletter. Alongside an exciting forth- coming programme at the The Curious Moaning of Gallery we are very pleased to announce that the first Kenfig Burrows Friends talk of the season is by the acclaimed painter Shani Rhys James (page 12). Sophy Rickett The new folding stools, funded by the Friends are now in place for those of you who wish to sit and contemplate the fabulous work on show over the next coming months. Fantastic news in that our Chairman Daniel Trivedy, won the gold medal at the Eistedfodd this year for his work Welsh Emergency Blankets (page 8). Thank you all for your continuing support and we look forward to seeing you at our forthcoming Events and of course at the Gallery! Tree (divided), Margam Mountain, 2019. Courtesy of the artist. Louise and Kay The Curious Moaning of Kenfig Burrows is a multi-disciplinary (Editorial team) project inspired by the life and work of Victorian astronomer and photographer Thereza Dillwyn Llewelyn, and her father, John. The project combines photographs taken at locations associated with Thereza’s life with film stills and images sourced from internet searches. Focusing on a moment in the history of photography, both as a technical process, but also as a visual language, the project explores the dialogue between individuals, institutions and other canonical orthodoxies that are asserted in contemporary life, and normalized through notions of custodianship, conservation and care. The following paragraphs are extracted from Sophy Rickett’s text, The Curious Moaning of Kenfig Burrows. The unabridged version Front Cover: Sophy Rickett, Caswell features alongside forty photographic works, in her recent Bay 1, 2017. Courtesy of the artist publication of the same title. 2 “Where is it?” “Underneath the carpark at Caswell Bay”, comes the reply, and I think how I would like to go there with her, be guided by her experience and understanding, her matter of factness, her warmth. I wait for her to continue but the question tails off and I decide not to pursue it. Later she mentions that she doesn’t want to be featured in my project, to appear in it in any way. * * * There are several photographs of the Caswell house in the Dillwyn Llewelyn archive, part of which is held in a drably functional building on an industrial estate in the outskirts of Cardiff. The Dunes, Kenfig Burrows, 2019. Courtesy of the artist. house has been photographed looking inland from the beach; limestone marked moorland multiple imperatives driving it forward; ‘climb rising steeply up behind, black rectangles of the the cliffs, enjoy the view, spot the lizards, take gabled roof windows suggestive of a vacant inte- some time’... rior. It’s as if all the pictures have been taken on the same wintery day, variations on a theme. And then, ’The only evidence of the [Llewelyn] estate today are a few garden plant escapees in * * * the woodland’. Later, in the library, I find a list The house that’s underneath the carpark is written by Thereza of trees planted when the Caswell Cottage and was built by John Dillwyn cottage was built. She describes the Nothofagus Llewelyn as a holiday house for his family. I look betuloides as having thrived, and by 1878 being it up on Wikipedia, and read that Dillwyn 17ft high. But as I stand looking up into the thick Llewelyn’s grandson, John Michael drowned canopy of conifers and evergreens, seeking there in 1878, aged 12. Caswell Cottage was material echoes of its past; nothing. demolished in the 1960s, and the grounds concreted over to create the Caswell Bay car ‘The river that once created the valley now flows park, a public facility managed by the City and somewhere underground beneath your feet, but County of Swansea. I wonder how I can sub- can still be found surfacing on Caswell Beach.’ stantiate the details about Dillwyn Llewelyn’s son, and feel a sudden weariness at what will be The tide that afternoon is low, flat sands stretch- involved; the documents, forms, appointments, ing for miles, shimmering pools of shallow acid free sleeves. Protective gloves. water, the bright glare of the Bristol Channel in the background. Backlit by the sun, the rocks * * * form hard black silhouettes and small clusters of I go there one day, and find the carpark long people appear in the shadows as I approach. and thin, fitting Thereza’s 1853 description of it as ‘a strip of land’ with ‘a good garden, I find the river emerging from the spherical already there’. The plot runs perpendicular to drainage outlet that runs under the road. It’s the beach, the white painted parking bays similar, in engineering terms at least, to the out- facing forwards, towards the sea. In a shady let of the River Llan as it enters the ‘picturesque corner is an information panel, with its own little landscape of Penllergare’, which, as I hear damp roof, spongy swards of green moss. many times, is ‘topsliced’ by the M4. The faded text has a helpful, hopeful tone, * * * 3 Further along the M4 is Margam Castle, built have done in Thereza’s time, its ebbs and flows on the side of the mountain, a bleak landscape subjecting the bank to the kind of forces of dissected by ravines and rivers, small wooded erosion that cause collapses, silting, small valleys and black peat bogs, where Thereza changes in its flow. would stay as a girl. From that high-up posi- tion, they could hear a storm approaching by “It’s doing what rivers do” she says. I like her the sound of the wind whistling up from the manner, her briskness, her knowledge, her beach; a ‘curious moaning’ that was, according understanding. Near the end of the walk, I ask to Thereza’s uncle, Kenfig Burrows ‘talking to if we might meet again, just one more time. Margam Mountain’. It’s a striking image, a land- scape in dialogue with itself, the way it evokes “Yes…” the contours of the valley and ‘The Legend of Margam’, as Thereza described it, years later, She looks at me straight in her memoir. “But I think you have it all.” * * * The idea of the house at Caswell being under the carpark stays with me, the sense of it as still ‘Cupid and the Curious Moaning of Kenfig there, like the bones of Richard III; a layer in the Burrows’ is at the Glynn Vivian Gallery from 27 statigraphic column, haunted. September to 24 November 2019. I wonder if she will see me again, if she can be The Curious Moaning of Kenfig Burrows by persuaded to be involved in the project after all, Sophy Rickett is published by GOST, London maybe just her hands. Walking along the river RRP £30.00, 210x290 mm the last time I see her, we talk about the erosion 80 pages/41 duotone images of the riverbank, about how the river still bends Hardback, cloth covered foil deboss and folds in much the same way that it would Undo Things Done - Sean Edwards Wales in Venice 2019 Daniel Trivedy Contemporary artists have on the use of commonplace simplification in order to always sought to use the most materials such as earth, rock, represent the complexity of our appropriate materials for their paper, clothes and rope. times. concepts. Ever since Marcel Authenticity matters when Duchamp proposed that a it comes to materials and As expected, many artists have urinal could be a piece of art, concepts; striking a balance chosen to tackle major con- not only was the readymade between the two is perhaps temporary concerns; such as legitimised but he also opened the real challenge of artists. climate change, migration and up further conversations relat- fake news. Notably, other ing to the use of materials The selected title for the 58th conversations have fallen within art. In fact, whole Venice Biennale exhibition is off the table, with feminism movements have been centred May You Live in Interesting seemingly taking a back seat around the use of particular Times. Such a title evokes a this time. This year the artist materials; Arte Povera is an sense of challenge for the chosen to represent Wales in example with their emphasis selected artists to go beyond Venice was Sean Edwards. 4 Above Left: Free School Dinners, 2019, Above Right: In parallel with the past i-iv, 2019. Above: Detail from Wholecloth Quilt in The Sun pattern, 2019. Photographs courtesy of Daniel Trivedy. Sean Edwards proposition for Wales in Venice is Edwards takes a number of approaches in an autobiographical one and takes as its starting translating his experience into language. The point the artist’s experience of growing up on a font from the masthead of The Sun newspaper council estate in Cardiff in the 1980s. There is an can be found in a number of works, including inherent danger is presenting autobiographical his whole cloth quilts and ‘confessional’ MDF work which can often appear self-indulgent on screens. The Sun was banned in his household the part of the artist. However, what quickly as a child with the left leaning Daily Mirror the becomes apparent in Edwards’ work is that it newspaper of choice. During his studies in opens up wider conversations related to class London, Edwards bought The Sun as an illicit and social mobility. In the artists own words he is daily ritual in order to inform his practice. We interested in capturing and translating the notion learn from interviews that Edwards attributes The of growing up ‘not expecting much’. Sun with having many negative influences on society.