FROM THE RUINS

04/02/2012 2pm FREE ADMISSION

Iwan Bala and Osi Rhys Osmond, both artists and writers, discuss land, memory and history in Kiefer’s work and how this relates to contemporary art in Wales.

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From The Ruins accompanies the exhibition and takes the form of brief personal presentations and an ensuing conversation between Iwan Bala and Osi Rhys Osmond, two of Wales’ most perceptive commentators on the visual arts. In broad terms, From The Ruins will try to untangle the complex relationship of land, memory, symbolism and nationalism in Kiefer’s work, and ask how this might benefit an understanding of visual art in Wales.

Iwan Bala

“Bala has proposed what he sees as a uniquely Welsh form of ‘custodial aesthetics’: an approach to practising art that engages both with international trends and with deeply-rooted Welsh symbols and ciphers. Such a confluence of the international and the local can be seen in Bala’s own work – in his witty, post-modern take on the Welsh costume, for example, or in his re-mappings of the ‘island’ of Wales as a distinct and independent entity…” 1

Artist and writer Iwan Bala has a multi-disciplinary approach to his practice, involving wall hung painting and drawing, assemblages and site-specific three-dimensional work.
He won the Gold Medal for Fine Art at the National Eisteddfod of Wales in 1997. He is a founder member of The Artists’ Project, a member of the Beca group and has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad and participated in several international site-specific art events. He has published numerous books, articles and essays on contemporary art in Wales, and organised and curated several exhibitions. He has also contributed widely to both radio and television programmes in Wales. Bala is currently senior lecturer at the School of Creative Arts and Humanities, Trinity St David’s College, Carmarthen.

His work is currently on display in Iwan Bala & Menna Elfyn: Field-notes, at Oriel Myrddin, Carmarthen (until 18 February 2012).

1. Francesca Rhydderch. New Welsh Review. Issue 71, Spring 2006.

Osi Rhys Osmond

Originally from Wattstown in the Rhondda Valley, Osi Rhys Osmond lives in Llansteffan. From 1959–65 he studied painting at Newport and Cardiff Colleges of Art. He was elected to the Gorsedd of the Bards in 2006, in recognition of his contribution to the arts, education and the promulgation of the Welsh language. As a practising artist his concerns, integrating myth and modernity, encompass contemporary tensions, and he exhibits widely.

In 2005 he contributed to the volume Imagining the Imagination: The Word and the Visual Image in Wales, published by Corner Press. He is the author of a recent monograph on the Polish painter, Josef Herman, published by The Institute of Welsh Affairs and is a patron of the Josef Herman Art Foundation. For many years he has written reviews and articles on art and culture and regularly broadcasts on art and culture on radio and television in both Welsh and English. In recent programmes Byd o Liw for S4C, Osmond invited contemporary artists to make their own interpretations of important historical artworks of Welsh destinations, his interesting and infectious presenting style gaining a new audience for the visual arts. He is a lecturer in Drawing, Painting and the History of Art at Swansea Metropolitan University School of Art and Design.

This event is related to the following exhibitions:

ANSELM KIEFER - ARTIST ROOMS ON TOUR WITH THE ART FUND
03 Dec, 2011
to 11 Mar, 2012