Guided Tour of Locws International Projects 2011: Art Across The City
It was a great start to the day and we began our route faced with Holly Davey’s “We Speak Everywhere”. After discussing the subject matter and the positioning of the billboard, Tom instantly commented on the fact that maybe it’s a symbol of the castle.
Sophie asked, “were pigeons used as messengers during the war and did this have anything to do with the artwork?” The class created some great drawings of the work and started to think how they could create their own version.
We managed to pop into the Mission Gallery where a talk was kindly given by one of the staff in relation to Alex Duncan’s show “Surge”. This was very inspiring and some of the techniques that Alex uses will probably be carried out in school.
The Josef Herman Painting in the National Waterfront Museum was a delight to see and you could instantly see how it had influenced Helen Edling’s work.
Catrin asked, “Did miners use to take birds down into the mines with them to check for gas?”
Tom commented, “the cages have been bashed open, the canaries have escaped and have flown out of the painting”.
We also had plenty of fun trying to find the individual pieces of work which Helen had produced and which were placed elsewhere around the Museum – The fisherman being the hardest to find. This threw up some great ideas of how this could be achieved in a school situation.
Whilst at the next artwork, S Mark Gubb’s “Ambition Is Critical”, Harvey instantly recognised the Gallic lettering and the Irish colours on the banner in the bus station, which was impressive.
We concluded our tour, by having the added luxury of viewing Bedwyr Williams’ “Lionheart and Lightsout” and ironically one of the people that inspired this work of art was an ex-pupil of their school.
David Marchant 2011
