locws.qxd 29/7/03 4:13 pm Page 1 LOCWS INTERNATIONAL SWANSEA CENTRAL LIBRARY RIVER TAWE BRIDGE 26 CASTLE STREET SWANSEA CASTLE ST MARY’S CHURCH DYLAN THOMAS CENTRE SWANSEA MUSEUM RIVER TAWE MARITIME & INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM RIVER TAWE BARRAGE HELWICK LIGHTSHIP Publishers: Locws International THE GUILDHALL SWANSEA MARINA Swansea Museum SWANSEA OBSERVATORY Victoria Road Swansea SWANSEA BEACH SA1 1SN 1 locws.qxd 29/7/03 4:13 pm Page 2 Publication copyright: © Locws International 2003 Texts copyright: Tim Davies David Hastie Felicia Hughes-Freeland Emma Safe Artworks copyright: the artists Photography: Graham Matthews Andrew Dueñas Ken Dickinson Layout: Christian Lloyd Peter Lewis Printing: DWJ Colourprint Published by: Locws International Swansea Museum Victoria Road Swansea SA1 1SN ISBN 0-9545291-0-3 2 locws.qxd 29/7/03 4:13 pm Page 3 AUTHORS TIM DAVIES DAVID HASTIE FELICIA HUGHES-FREELAND EMMA SAFE ARTISTS ERIC ANGELS DAVIDE BERTOCCHI IWAN BALA ENRICA BORGHI MAUD COTTER ANGHARAD PEARCE JONES DOROTHY CROSS BRIGITTE JURACK TIM DAVIES ANNIE LOVEJOY PETER FINNEMORE ALICE MAHER ROSE FRAIN PAUL & PAULA HUGHES GERMAIN ANTHONY SHAPLAND DAVID HASTIE CATRIONA STANTON KAREN INGHAM GRACE WEIR PHILIP NAPIER DAPHNE WRIGHT TINA O’CONNELL BENOIT SIRE LOIS WILLIAMS CRAIG WOOD LOCWS 1 LOCWS 2 2 SEPTEMBER – 1 OCTOBER 2000 7 SEPTEMBER – 29 SEPTEMBER 2002 3 locws.qxd 29/7/03 4:13 pm Page 4 Working site-specifically places particular demands on an artist not experienced in quite the same way in other fields, in the sense that the work becomes part of the site, not reflective of it. The site, in this case anywhere in Swansea, becomes your potential studio and material. Although some sites, like Swansea Museum, have an already accessible structure, walls and floors literally, others, like Swansea Barrage or the River Tawe, have none. Invention and negotiation become key factors in the realisation of idea to image. The artists involved in both the first Locws event in 2000 and Locws2 LOCATING in 2002, have in the main displayed a real sense of tenacity and commitment. Each installation week was full of ups and downs, LOCWS emotions running wild and high, but an ability to keep focused and INTERNATIONAL good humoured is a prerequisite of such events and the Locws artists have had no lack of these qualities. Both of us see Locws as a kind of ongoing time-based event. Although two years have passed between Locws 1 and 2, in our eyes 4 locws.qxd 29/7/03 4:13 pm Page 5 we see them as one. The same gig but spread out over time and allowing a kind of opening up of multi-layered place and night and day. A few venues were repeated whilst discourses and offering an alternative others were opened up anew, facilitating a dialogue between democratising of the art object. It is the installations from the same and different sites. So what we experience that matters, not the commodity. perceive is a kind of virtual art map of Swansea. Walking down High Street from the station, we first encounter at number 226 a Sometimes though as either a document or as metamorphic, alchemical sculptural work accessible only by an introduction to those who did not experience looking through the shop-window (2000), whilst a few metres the events in the flesh, a visual record is away at 26 Castle Street we witness a night-time shop-front necessary. To this end this publication acts projection of a lyrical yet political journey up the River Tawe as both document and further signifier of the (2002), whilst again a few moments later we experience the strange and sometimes beautiful event that is transformative potential of light at Swansea Castle where the Locws International. We both wish to thank viewer is invited to question context (2000), and so on. The work everyone that has helped in all sorts of ways is collected and collated in memory. To this end, it is important to make it happen, especially the artists for and relevant to us that the Locws works are only physically their works and commitment. apparent for the duration of the events and are dismantled as quickly as possible afterwards. Their ephemerality necessarily Tim Davies & David Hastie transcends fixture and permanence as a nuance of meaning, curators 5 locws.qxd 29/7/03 4:13 pm Page 6 Mae gweithio ar safle penodol yn gosod galwadau arbennig ar arlunydd nas profir yn union yr un ffordd mewn meysydd eraill, yn yr ystyr bod y gwaith yn datblygu i fod yn rhan o’r safle, ac nid yn adlewyrchiad ohono. Y safle, sef unrhyw le yn Abertawe yn yr achos hwn, yw eich stiwdio a’ch deunyddiau posib. Er bod gan rai safleoedd, fel Amgueddfa Abertawe, adeiledd sydd eisoes yn hygyrch, waliau a lloriau yn llythrennol, nid ywír pethau hyn yn bodoli mewn safleoedd eraill, fel Argae Abertawe neu Afon Tawe. Mae dyfeisio a thrafod yn ffactorau allweddol wrth droi syniad yn DARGANFOD ddelwedd. Mae’r arlunwyr a oedd yn gysylltiedig i’r digwyddiad Locws cyntaf yn LOCWS 2000 a Locws2 yn 2002, ar y cyfan wedi dangos gwir ymdeimlad o RHYNGWLADOL ddyfalbarhad ac ymroddiad. Roedd pob wythnos osod yn llawn uchafbwyntiau ac isafbwyntiau, gydag emosiynau’n rhedeg yn wyllt, ond mae’r gallu i gadw ffocws a hwyliau da yn angenrheidiol ar gyfer digwyddiadau o’r fath ac nid yw arlunwyr Locws wedi bod yn brin o’r nodwedd hon. 6 locws.qxd 29/7/03 4:13 pm Page 7 Mae’r ddau ohonom yn ystyried Locws fel math o ddigwyddiad a’u bod yn cael eu chwalu cyn gynted‚ phosib ar parhaol mewn amser. Er bod dwy flynedd wedi mynd heibio arôl hynny. Mae eu byrhoedledd o reidrwydd yn rhwng Locws 1 a 2, rydym ni’n eu hystyried fel un. Yr un rhagori ar osodion a pharhad fel awgrym o digwyddiad ond wedi’i ymestyn dros amser a lleoliad a nos a ystyr, gan alluogi trafodaethau amlhaenog a dydd. Ailddefnyddiwyd rhai lleoliadau ac agorwyd rhai eraill o’r chynnig democrateiddio’r gwrthrych celf mewn newydd, gan hwyluso dialog rhwng gosodiadau o’r un safleoedd ffordd arall. Y profiad sy’n bwysig, nid y nwyddau. a safleoedd gwahanol. Felly rydym yn canfod math o rith-fap arlunio o Abertawe. Wrth gerdded i lawr y Stryd Fawr o’r orsaf, Ond weithiau mae angen archif gweledol fel mae cerflunwaith metamorffig, alcemegol yn rhif 226 sy’n naill ai dogfen neu gyflwyniad i’r rheiny na hygyrch yn unig drwy edrych trwy ffenestr y siop (2000), ychydig phrofodd y digwyddiadau yn bersonol. I’r fetrau i fwrdd yn 26 Stryd y Castell, mae tafluniad blaen siop perwyl hwn mae’r cyhoeddiad hwn yn gyda’r nos yn daith delynegol ond gwleidyddol i fyny Afon Tawe gweithredu fel dogfen ac arwydd pellach o’r (2002), ac ychydig eiliadau’n ddiweddarach rydym yn profi digwyddiad rhyfedd ac weithiau prydferth sef potensial trawsffurfiol golau yng Nghastell Abertawe lle y Locws Rhyngwladol. Hoffwn ddiolch i bawb a’n gwahoddir y gwyliwr i gwestiynu cyd-destun (2000), ac yn y helpodd mewn pob math o ffyrdd i gyflwyno’r blaen. Mae’r gwaith yn cael ei gasglu a’i gyfosod yn y cof. I’r digwyddiad, yn enwedig yr arlunwyr am eu perwyl hwn, mae’n bwysig ac yn berthnasol i ni bod gwaith gwaith a’u hymroddiad. Locws dim ond yn amlwg yn gorfforol am barhad y digwyddiadau Tim Davies a David Hastie ceidwaid 7 locws.qxd 29/7/03 4:13 pm Page 8 U/W Locws international: a place – locUs – in Wales – locWs – visited, invaded, graced by a cast of transient actors: objects, events, installations, works. ART INTO LANDSCAPE Art has traditionally been associated with particular kinds of places, such as galleries and museums, where we go to look at paintings and sculptures. Indeed, a dominant strand in Western art has involved capturing the landscape in a framed two-dimensional artwork, a process of transforming landscape into art1. Sculptural traditions have taken a different track. While sculpture is often museumized, there have also been the long-established conventions of three- dimensional figures of human or godly forms being set in public spaces in the open air. ART Locws International organisers Tim Davies and David Hastie have ACROSS pushed the logic of the processes of art into landscape and have ruptured the conventions of dimension and context even further, A CITY bringing to Swansea two multi-sited multi-media art experiences. Locws International started in conversations and journeys around the urban landscape of Swansea between Davies and Hastie, and then with a number of artists who came to Swansea to select the sites. The works provided the infrastructure for a series of ongoing FELICIA HUGHES-FREELAND 1. As in the book of the same title by Kenneth Clark, first published in 1949. 8 locws.qxd 29/7/03 4:13 pm Page 9 situations and multiple dialogues: the initial dialogue between the 'methodological philistinism3: artist and the site set in motion a dialogue between the work and the site, realised in the responses of the visitors to the site, to the work, 'A purely cultural, aesthetic, 'appreciative' or more accurately, to the site-with-the-work. approach to art objects is an anthropolog- ical dead end. Instead, the question which So Locws International has not simply been concerned with art as interests me is the possibility of formulat- object and end product. From the very outset, the emphasis has been ing a 'theory of art' which fits naturally on interaction, negotiation, production, placing, transaction – the into the context of anthropology, given the very stuff of social relations.