2014

ArcadeCampfa
Last year Amelia Johnstone and Peter Hathaway made a short movie of their Arcadecardiff festive installation for all to see.

A massive walkthrough advent calendar was created out of cardboard, in our old unit 17. Two people animated the spectacular hand drawn set and figures to take you on a post apocalyptic seasonal journey.
ArcadeCardiff 5.12.14 - 27.12.14
What you see is all there is - Jason Pinder

This exhibition sees works that are part of an ongoing conceptual thread. Simple and succinct sculptural interventions using that exist to be looked at, considered, dismissed, remembered and/or forgotten.

‘What you see is all there is’ is a psychological phenomenon about the fallibility of human judgment cited by Daniel Kahnemann in his best selling book ‘Thinking, fast and slow’. Although sparked by Jason’s interest in this subject, the title in this case is taken out of context and posed as a challenging statement to the viewer, presented upon entering the gallery space.

Jason Pinder works and lives in Cardiff. He is a founding member of the BRG collective and a long standing member of the tactileBOSCH collective.
Arcade Cardiff 13.11.14 - 29.11.14
Black Forest gâteau and other works - David Green

David Green: Black Forrest Gateaux and other works is a mixed media exhibition of new work exploring the biographical legacy of how historical events form personal experience.

David Green: Mae Black Forest gâteau a gwaith eraill yn arddangosfa cyfrwng cymysg o waith newydd yn archwilio cymyn bywgraffyddol o sut mae digwyddiadau hanesyddol yn ffurfio profaidau personol.
ArcadeCardiff 23.10.14
in audible: The Baroque Cello Project

A celebration of the hidden, the underheard, the disregarded, the nevernoticed: the sounds, the silences, the stillnesses, and the subtleties of power always present in any act of thinking and making a unique evolving collaborative project based on the hand-crafting of a Baroque cello. A multi-layered performative sound-led audio/visual installation centering on the cello surrounded by the sounds of its own making.

︎ baroquecelloproject.com

ArcadeCardiff 9.10.14 - 30.11.14
wishboat - Sean Vicary & Steve Knight

Create your own wishboat by entering your wish; then find your boat in the viewer and launch with a tap. Your wishboat will circle and then make its way to Queen Street in the centre of Cardiff, where the old Glamorganshire canal lies buried below the streets. Here your wishes and dreams will be released to form part of a bigger wishboat whose hull will slowly change over the course of the festival, reflecting the wishes that have been sent to it.

You can use the wishboat app to view the boat in person at the Queen Street entrance of Queens Arcade, or see the latest wishes at wishboatapp.com.

A giant floating paper boat is moored up outside the Venetian front of the Queens Arcade. Below it’s gently rocking hull the Glamorganshire Navigational Company Canal lies buried and forgotten beneath the streets. Created using 3D augmented reality, this giant boat can be navigated with the wishboat app and an iphone or ipad. Use the app to create your own personal wishboat and launch it on a journey to Queen Street. Here your wishes and dreams will be released to form part of the bigger wishboat’s hull, which will slowly change over the course of the festival reflecting the wishes that have been submitted.

Playing with the Reveal/Conceal theme of the festival wishboat explores aspects of the Queens Arcade’s original 1870 Venetian frontage and the memory of the vanished canal, once a vital communication link for Cardiff. aprojectcardiff.wordpress.com Artist Profile: Tinderfarm is an ongoing collaboration between Sean Vicary and Steve Knight.

Steve’s background in communications software and interactive systems development fused with Sean’s fine art practice and their shared passion for emerging technologies has enabled them to generate compelling work across a wide range of media.

︎ www.seanvicary.com

ArcadeCardiff 6.10.14 - 19.10.14
Cwm - Jason Portt

Magwyd Jason Portt yn Ystrad, Y Rhondda. Er ei fod bellach yn byw yng Nghwm Rhymni, mae wrth ei fodd yn dychwelyd i baentio llefydd cudd, anhysbys ei ardal enedigol. Mae Prott wedi gweld newid yn Y Rhondda, a oedd unwaith yn le llwm a chrachog nawr yn fôr o garped gwyrdd yn cuddio difrod diwydiannol y gorffennol. Y mae’n brydferthwch bregus wedi ei niweidio gan ddiweithdra a dirywiad, wedi ei staenio gan domenni, adeiladau masnachol ac o dan gwmwl du cynlluniau ffracio. Mae Portt yn dianc i’r bryniau i baentio’r llefydd cudd, gyda phaent swmpus, cryf sy’n ymddangos fel petai’n gallu gwrthsefyll unrhywbeth.

Jason Portt grew up in Ystrad in the Rhondda. He now lives in the Rhymney Valley but still loves to return to his place of birth, to paint the secret places which very few people know about. He remembers the Rhondda when it was a scabby grey sort of place but has seen it grass over and become beautiful, hiding its decades of industrial ravagement under a green cloak that almost seems to have been there forever. But it’s a fragile kind of beauty, frayed around the edges by unemployment and decay, blotted by dumping and tawdry new commercial developments, threatened by the looming possibilities of fracking. So Jason goes up into the hills to paint the secret places, getting it down with muscular slabs of paint which look about ready to resist anything. By day he is a security guard in the Queens Arcade shopping centre. There is no work locally so for the last fourteen years he has been travelling to Cardiff to earn his bread and he is proud to think of himself as a working man as well as a self-taught artist. Until recently not many people knew about his activity as a painter, although Jason has received great encouragement and inspiration from another self-taught artist, Mike Jones, who, in turn, in his own early days was encouraged by Josef Herman, with whose paintings the walls of his house are covered. There is a line, then, of support running through the years, based around that old ethic of working-class solidarity and mutual support. For Jason, as artist, what matters is to get up into the hills and to paint and draw on the spot, letting the weather and the stones dictate gestures and marks, letting the painting happen, riding the feedback loop of surprise. Sometimes the work has an almost monumental quality, tough, craggy, elemental, reminiscent of Kyffin Williams, one of Jason’s heroes (along with William Selwyn and Will Roberts). Technique can be very subtle, often improvisatory, slabby paint letting chinks of washed ground show through, swift ink sketches, fluid, scratchy. Whatever the subject – rocks, fields, waterfalls, cows and the people who look after them, terrace-edges where the hills suddenly reveal themselves, chapels slowly crumbling into eerie and mysterious dereliction, they all seem made from the same elemental material. There are, perhaps, points where Jason’s work as a security guard feeds into his art. Years of observing the behavior of people in the shopping centre, weighing them up, speculating on their moods and intentions, have given him a feel for the nuances of gesture and movement by which people unconsciously reveal their quirks of character and motivation. This can be seen sometimes in the economy of treatment with which Jason makes his human figures – often ordinary working people of the valleys – come alive, though many of them are portraits from memory. Under the formality of the security guard’s uniform, then, beats the heart of the painter, with its passion for the wild upland spaces and the people and buildings of quite another place than the one he finds himself in five days a week. A very different kind of space, and a different kind of self, although, perhaps, not so different. The fortuitous intersection with Arcadecardiff in his place of work has enabled Jason to bring together these two divergent aspects of his personality, revealing that more hidden part to the scrutiny of strangers for the first time.


ArcadeCardiff 11.9.14 - 27.9.14
It’s All the Rage - David Garner

David Garner is an installation artist known for his use of found objects and overtly political themes. At Arcadecardiff he presents a series of emotive and disturbing works, most of which have not been seen in Wales, that reflect the current political climate. Garner will be present throughout the exhibition to discuss the themes within these works.

“Although these works are not new, they are as relevant now, as when they were made, which demonstrates that certain abhorrent issues are ever present in our society.”

Artist gosodwaith yw David Garner sy’n cael ei adnabod am ei waith â themâu gwleidyddol amlwg a’i ddefnydd o ddeunyddiau wedi eu darganfod.Yn Arcadecardiff, mae’n cyflwyno cyfres o waith emosiynol a chythryblus – gan gynnwys nifer o ddarnau sy’n cael eu dangos am y tro cyntaf yng Nghymru – sy’n adlewyrchu’r sefyllfa wleidyddol sydd ohoni. Bydd Garner yn bresennol trwy gydol yr arddangosiad i drafod themâu ei waith.

“Although these works are not new, they are as relevant now, as when they were made, which demonstrates that certain abhorrent issues are ever present in our society.”

︎ garnerdavid.com

ArcadeCardiff 21.8.14 - 6.9.14
Infinitas - Hannah Biscombe 

Hannah Biscombe’s work is grounded in the use of photograms – a primitive photographic technique that records the space around objects on paper- made with living creatures. A fundamental concern in this primal form of “writing with light” is extending what is a basic but nevertheless deeply connotative visual language.

Mae gwaith Hannah Biscome yn seiliedig ar waith ffotogram- techneg ffotograffig syml sy’n cofnodi gofod o amgylch gwrthrychau ar bapur. Mae Hannah yn defnyddio creaduriad byw yn ei gwaith. Bwriad sylfaenol y ffurf o “ysgrifennu gyda golau” yw ymestyn y iaith gweledol syml ond hynod gynodiadol yma.



ArcadeCardiff 31.7.14 -16.8.14
Vena Cava - John Abell

“Woodcut” yw prif ffocws Abell. Mae ei waith yn gymleth ond eto’n ddramatig sydd yn anarferol gyda gwaith o’r fath. Mae’r pren a ddefnyddwyd wedi eu hachub o sgipiau a safleoedd adeiladu ayyb
Anaml iawn bydd Abell yn cynllunio


Woodcut is Abell’s main focus. He works intricately but on a dramatic scale not commonly associated with the medium. His materials are scavenged discarded wood from skips, shop fittings, and building sites. The unpredictability of the half-carved woodblock offers openness as opposed to firm conclusions. His work is seldom planned, he favours improvising further compositions as space gets scarcer on the block, and this often makes the returned image subtly detailed and complex. Abell takes inspiration from the cityscape, a passion for literature, and the desire to mix myth with modernity.

︎ johnabell.blogspot.co.uk

ArcadeCardiff 17.7.14 - 27.7.14
CAAPO : Formal Interference

New works by artists; Kathryn Ashill, CAAPO, Lee Campbell, Jamie Davies, John O’Hare, Paul Rooney, Spazi Docili & Brychan Tudor – exploring themes of appropriation, contamination and corruption.



ArcadeCardiff
Bloody Poetry - Beth Greenhalgh

The scene is taking place within a shop, within a shopping centre. The scene will involve body, sound, sculpture, text and voice. Behind the scene a relationship with  a seagull is formed.

The scene:

So I open my mouth and you look inside. It is enlarged now and easy to follow the arrowed path down to the heart. You reach it’s beat. The Vena cava is stretched at length. It has darkened. The aorta, a distant throb, a distilled ripple.The landscape is forming, between the mouth and the heart. It grows at its own pace and is measured in colour. The mouth makes noise. This noise, a fuzz of sound causes light to freeze around objects. We become poetry. We become beat. We become beat poets.

︎ bethgreenhalgh.wordpress.com





ArcadeCardiff 26.5.14 - 31.5.14
MICROWORLD ARCADIA 2
 
Another chance to enter a digital ecosystem of interacting artworks at ArcadeCardiff.
This year’s show will include work by Genetic Moo, Sean Olsen, Myles Leadbetter, Jockel Liess, Sean Clark,
Banfield&Rees, Gudrun Sigridur Haraldsdottir, Radio Arts and Julia Schauerman.

Peski  http://www.peski.co.uk/
Sean Olsen  http://www.seanolsen.co.uk
Myles Leadbetter https://www.facebook.com/myles.actuatedlab?fref=ts
Genetic moo http://www.geneticmoo.com
Jockel Liess http://www.jockelliess.org/
Sean Clark   http://www.seanclark.me.uk/
Banfield&Rees  http://jaguarmin.co.uk/
Julia Schauerman  http://youtu.be/MS7kHwTEMDA



ArcadeCardiff 1.5.14 - 16.5.14
Landscapes of First World Problems - Geraint Evans

Geraint Evans’ inaugural solo exhibition “Landscape of First World Problems” is the umbrella title given to this body of work examining contemporary life on the fringes of the urban landscape. He considers both the turmoil and the banality of these circumstances using large scale drawings, prints and installation. The work looks to provoke dialogues within audiences and to engage the viewer in some of the social issues affecting a post religious, post financial crash Britain.

Alongside this recent body of work, Geraint will showcase a new drawing, ‘Map of the Estate’ 2014, Evans will also be working on site on new work responding to his city surroundings as well as hosting a number of related events in this exhibition come residency.

︎ www.geraintevans.net

ArcadeCardiff  22.4.14 - 30.4.14
Matthew Britton – Out of Office

Out of Office is a micro curatorial platform that utilises the auto-reply feature that is present on most email accounts as a method of distributing art. I wish to suggest an even more intimate way of distributing and viewing online works, one which is primarily in the comfort of your own mailbox.

In order to view the work you need only send an email to the assigned email address and wait for the auto reply.

a project devised by
Matthew Britton


Unit 17 & 3b 31.03.14 – 19.04.14
Everything else is just the weather - Kelly Best & Mark Houghton

Following nicely on from their very recent G39 Unit(E) collaborative investigation…

‘This residency will solidify a new collaborative partnership between myself Kelly Best a painter,and Mark Houghton, a sculptor. Our project will see us working firstly at ARCADECARDIFF, followed by Mark Devereux Projects, at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, in an experimental collaborative touring exhibition aimed at drawing attention to two emerging artists based in Wales.

The project will begin with an investigative production stage, subsequently formalizing ideas into new works for exhibition. These works will be informed by each other’s practice, but also draw inspiration from the spaces where they will be created and shown. We will explore the visual overlaps and thematic parallels between our work, as well as investigating the links between a primarily 2D and 3D practice.

A 10-day development period in ARCADECARDIFF will result in a finalised exhibition open to the public for 2 weeks.

ARCADECARDIFF is interesting as it poses two opposing gallery spaces, which will allow for conversations to occur between the two individual spaces, as well as between our work. Integrating the two practices will lead to stimulating and engaging experiences for a diverse audience to encounter alongside the interesting concept that challenges the role of the author of an exhibition within a wider social context.

The new works made in ARCADECARDIFF will subsequently tour to Mark Devereux Projects for further exploration of the work within a new visual context.’

︎ kellybest.co.uk
︎ @dmhoughton


Unit 3b  19.03.14 - 29.03.14
OPject - Jin Eui Kim

Jin Eui explores in depth of tonal effects and spatial illusions, creating works that are both visually and intellectually challenging. He makes both none-functional sculpture works of horizontal and vertical cylinder forms and functional ware, applies the principles of creation of illusory spatial phenomena such as gradient in tone and size of bands. He also tries to understand more of the quality of clay and how it can be combined with subtle variations of tone to create the illusory spatial phenomena.


ArcadeCardiff 12.03.14 - 29.03.14
A Fine Beginning

A Fine Beginning, from which this collective takes its name, is the first chapter of Dylan Thomas’ unfinished novel Adventures in the Skin Trade. The central character of the story leaves his parents home in South Wales for Paddington Station and when asked where he’s going, Samuel Bennett replies, ‘I don’t know where I’m going, I haven’t any idea in the world, that’s why I came to London’.

A Fine Beginning is a Welsh photography collective, established by James O Jenkins with the ambition to develop a platform to discover and showcase contemporary photography being made in Wales today.

The collective launched with a publication in May 2013 at the publishing weekend of the inaugural Diffusion: Cardiff International Festival of Photography. The issue showcased the work of four of our current members; Gawain Barnard, Jack Latham, Abbie Trayler-Smith and James O Jenkins. In foregrounding photography in Wales, the festival provided an opportune moment to launch the first instalment of A Fine Beginning.

A Fine Beginning aims to offer a platform to photographers making work in Wales to have their photography seen and appreciated in Wales and beyond. To find out about future projects or to submit your work, please get in touch.

Our first exhibition ‘A Fine Beginning: Made in Wales‘ was at Arcade Cardiff (14th-30th March 2014). The exhibition showed work from the collective as well as selected images from work we have featured on our blog. The exhibition opens again at Oriel Colwyn on September 5th to 31st October 2014.

Coverage of the exhibition can be seen via these links: BBC , The Guardian, The Independent, The Western Mail, BJP, Foto8 and Panos Pictures.

Louise Hobson


︎ @afinebeginning



ArcadeCardiff 05.03.14 - 15.03.14
Christopher Holloway



ArcadeCardiff 21.1.14 - 26.1.14
GREEN HOUSE - BALLOONS FOR EVERYONE - Francesc Serra Vila

GREEN HOUSE is an installation that explores the connections between space, light and sound in an interactive environment. In GREEN HOUSE, people are invited to enter a netted dome made from 1000 balloons.

︎ Exhibition website
︎ fserravila.com

ArcadeCardiff - 18.2.14 – 6.3.14
Painted Thought - Pluspace Coventry
NEILL CLEMENTS, GORDON DALTON, ANDREW GRAVES, TERRY GREENE, RHIANNE MASTERS-HOPKINS, RACHEAL MACARTHUR, DAVID MANLEY, SARAH MCNULTY, PHEOBE MITCHELL, MIRCEA TELEAGA

The idea that painting must die out and be replaced by newer art forms is not the case. Painting as a discipline over the last twenty years appears to have taken a back seat, and it does not enjoy the widespread cultural attention that it enjoyed for hundreds of years. In this exhibition we offer up a group of painters that show how individual painters are deconstructing and reinventing what a painting is and what it can be.

The artists on show are all critical in the creation of their paintings, and their work reflects the growth of painting. These painters have recognized areas of activitiy not previously associated with it, and revealed new freedoms for the medium.

The change and diversification of the components of the paintings production and presentation show that painting today does not exist in a bubble and is developing. While some artists have maintained a link with traditional materials in their practice they have still been influenced by new technologies and art forms. The new forms are not conflicting, but together with painting, are parts of an expanded field.

Painted Thought continues a thread of Pluspace exhibitions, such as Without an Edge there is no Middle (2013), Form / Function (2013) and Meditations (2013), that examines contemporary painting.


ArcadeCardiff - 6.2.14 - 16.2.14
Contra - Claire Kern & Jorden Williams

This exhibition brings together for the first time, the photographic and film work of Claire Kern and Jorden Williams in a new installation at Arcade Cardiff.

ʻContraʼ unites Kern and Williamsʼ shared concern with current socio-political factors that affect female sexuality, fertility and the choices and welfare of women today.

Their commentary is far-reaching and delivered with a sense of urgency and activism. Kern presents Silent Genocide, a series of photographs and texts documenting the heart-rending stories of women from Tibet living in India, facing potentially life-threatening sterilization procedures. Whilst Williams mines and questions the Western systems and values placed on contraceptive drugs that affect those a little closer to home, in her video work and installation,
The Doctored Oath.

︎ clairekernphotography.com
︎ Documented at petetakespictures.com

ArcadeCardiff - 3.2.14 - 1.3.14
Monochromatics - Andy Fung

Andy Fung’s practice is rooted in drawing, which is predominantly a monochromatic discipline. For this arcadecardiff project the artist will make an intricate black and white specific piece emanating from a central place and spreading around the room.


ArcadeCardiff 21.1.14 - 26.1.14
GREEN HOUSE - BALLOONS FOR EVERYONE - Francesc Serra Vila

GREEN HOUSE is an installation that explores the connections between space, light and sound in an interactive environment. In GREEN HOUSE, people are invited to enter a netted dome made from 1000 balloons.

︎ Exhibition website
︎ fserravila.com


ArcadeCardiff 17.1.14 - 1.2.14
Electronic Gamelan - Sean Olsen

Electronic Gamelan is a collaborative musical sculpture running two synthesizers a computer controlled guitar based instrument and a manually controlled analog tape player. It is designed to simplify music creation by easing control of timing and tone via microcontrollers, leaving the participants to freely improvise and experiment with sounds. Each instrument has its own place and part in the overall sound and is designed to work together giving each player a separate part of the sound to take control over. This creates a collaborative and interactive environment where creativity and playfulness is explored confidently as participants play off each others input.